This dream always starts with the sound of weeping.
Not loud, not human. A slow, rhythmic shuddering, like the old barn itself is crying. Suddenly the world feels too small, like she's dreaming inside a locked chest. Grazia is standing in the barn again, barefoot on the cold dirt. Leaning, one leg being shorter than the other. The old barn, her bedroom, domestic exile. The moonlight seeps in through the cracks, pale and sickly, painting everything in long, ghostly stripes. She knows the rats are there, she can feel their eyes glinting in the dark, but none of them move. None of them whisper. Not yet.
She hears it. A dragging sound, dry and soft, as if something vast and weighty is pulling itself across the ceiling. Eight points of pressure, slow and deliberate. The weeping stops.
From the rafters, dust falls like rain. Something heavy shifts in the shadows above, and two glints of pale purple appear. Then four, then eight. Each one wet, mournful, and far too large. The monster lowers its body slowly, hanging upside down, its carapace mottled dark and darker still. Its size defies the barn. The rafters bend and creak, but it doesn’t fall. Its legs are long as spears, the razor tips twitching gently, almost shy.
It watches the young farmgirl for a long while, its many eyes moving but never blinking. When it finally speaks, its voice isn’t a sound at all. It’s a vibration in her skull, a demonic language that fills her mind, like the heavy droning of waves in a blood-black sea.
She takes a step back, but the dream won’t let her move far. Her uneven legs feel heavier here. The monster lowers further, so close she can see her reflection warped and mauve in the slick surface of its eyes. There’s pity there, and then something else underneath, something hungry.
“She sends it for the broken ones,” the rats in the barn suddenly whisper.
A drop of its saliva hits the floor with a hiss. The dirt blackens.
Grazia wants to run, to cry out, but her body won’t obey. Her breath comes in small, sharp sobs. The creature tilts its head and for a moment, she feels it mourn. Then the sorrow changes. The voice rages in her skull, becomes a sea of angry clicking teeth, a vast ocean of hissing cockroaches. Its fangs part, and the air fills with a high, screeching sound, the sound of every black rat in the world screaming at once.
It lunges.
The old barn seems to collapse inward around her, its walls folding like wet paper. The monster’s legs slash through the wood like blackened scythes, cutting through the moonlight, pinning her shadow to the ground. She feels the heat of its breath, smells its grief. It’s crying again, even as it opens its jaws. She tries to run, but her uneven legs betray her, the shorter one buckling under the weight of her panic, each lurching step sinking into a mud that wasn’t there before.
And then she’s falling, not away from it, but into it, into the darkness beneath its body, a space that shouldn’t exist, full of shadow and whispering teeth. She lands on her hands and knees in the straw, her heart pounding so hard it hurts, her breath gasping.
The barn is whole again. The rats are silent, and the moonlight is gone.
Not loud, not human. A slow, rhythmic shuddering, like the old barn itself is crying. Suddenly the world feels too small, like she's dreaming inside a locked chest. Grazia is standing in the barn again, barefoot on the cold dirt. Leaning, one leg being shorter than the other. The old barn, her bedroom, domestic exile. The moonlight seeps in through the cracks, pale and sickly, painting everything in long, ghostly stripes. She knows the rats are there, she can feel their eyes glinting in the dark, but none of them move. None of them whisper. Not yet.
She hears it. A dragging sound, dry and soft, as if something vast and weighty is pulling itself across the ceiling. Eight points of pressure, slow and deliberate. The weeping stops.
From the rafters, dust falls like rain. Something heavy shifts in the shadows above, and two glints of pale purple appear. Then four, then eight. Each one wet, mournful, and far too large. The monster lowers its body slowly, hanging upside down, its carapace mottled dark and darker still. Its size defies the barn. The rafters bend and creak, but it doesn’t fall. Its legs are long as spears, the razor tips twitching gently, almost shy.
It watches the young farmgirl for a long while, its many eyes moving but never blinking. When it finally speaks, its voice isn’t a sound at all. It’s a vibration in her skull, a demonic language that fills her mind, like the heavy droning of waves in a blood-black sea.
She takes a step back, but the dream won’t let her move far. Her uneven legs feel heavier here. The monster lowers further, so close she can see her reflection warped and mauve in the slick surface of its eyes. There’s pity there, and then something else underneath, something hungry.
“She sends it for the broken ones,” the rats in the barn suddenly whisper.
A drop of its saliva hits the floor with a hiss. The dirt blackens.
Grazia wants to run, to cry out, but her body won’t obey. Her breath comes in small, sharp sobs. The creature tilts its head and for a moment, she feels it mourn. Then the sorrow changes. The voice rages in her skull, becomes a sea of angry clicking teeth, a vast ocean of hissing cockroaches. Its fangs part, and the air fills with a high, screeching sound, the sound of every black rat in the world screaming at once.
It lunges.
The old barn seems to collapse inward around her, its walls folding like wet paper. The monster’s legs slash through the wood like blackened scythes, cutting through the moonlight, pinning her shadow to the ground. She feels the heat of its breath, smells its grief. It’s crying again, even as it opens its jaws. She tries to run, but her uneven legs betray her, the shorter one buckling under the weight of her panic, each lurching step sinking into a mud that wasn’t there before.
And then she’s falling, not away from it, but into it, into the darkness beneath its body, a space that shouldn’t exist, full of shadow and whispering teeth. She lands on her hands and knees in the straw, her heart pounding so hard it hurts, her breath gasping.
The barn is whole again. The rats are silent, and the moonlight is gone.