The plaque on Andrew’s lap hummed, its runes flickering invitation, and the boy dropped his eyes from the strangely familiar face flickering beside him as if in dappled shadow, drawing them back down to the characters carved in the cool, muddy brass; he touched the runes with burnt fingers and pursed his lips to pronounce them out loud.
“Well’s gone dry, gonna make my woman cry,” the flickering man sang in a whispered baritone, and reaching through the dusk of his apparition, he grabbed Andrew’s forearm and moaned, “they’re called ‘runes’ for a reason, cuz they ruin your life, fill your soul with strife, mebbe you never gonna see your wife…no more.”
“This can’t get any crazier, can it?” mumbled Andrew as his arm numbed under the cold pressure of the shadowy man’s grasp; he looked up at the quicksilver runes now pulsing in the sewer wall beside him, and again pursed his lips.
“Sit you down and shut your mouth, rescue’s comin’ from the south, it takes the Two to set us free and bring us home, abide by me…” the singing settled into a chant as the man flowed around and down into a sitting position between Andrew and the edge of the walkway.
“So crazy it’s almost making sense,” muttered Andrew, as he pushed the plaque off his lap and on to the walkway, and the man gathered and shook the dust off threads of memory and sense and fully felt the harsh wages of partial knowledge and a foolish gamble that had trapped him in the bowels of the haunted mansion for so many years.
© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2022)
To get back to the serial’s start, click here for Part 1
The challenge? Write a story in 6 sentences, no more & no less, and if you’d like, share your creation or just visit and comment on others’ ideas, with GirlieOnTheEdge, Denise. The prompt is “EDGE”, and here’s where you join the party: Six Sentence Stories
Valley of the Trolls 
Excellent install causing this reader to shout “give us more!, Liz”.
But you have! Will add Chapter 20 to my weekend reading list 😀
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Beautifully evocative and tense, Liz. I’m waiting…
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Episode 20’s just been posted… 🙂
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Oh the suspense, I really want to keep reading this one.
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Great! There’ll be another installment (99 words, no more no less) later today/early Saturday. 😉🙉
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Heed the warning, is all i can think. The consequences are too dire not to.
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Spot on. Thank you, Mimi!
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Very good! You do know how to keep up the suspense!
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Hope you’re enjoying! Another installment (99 words, no more no less) will be dropped here late Fri/early Sat…
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yow! what an excellent job of setting mood while bringing the setting out in to the Reader’s imagination
(like the others), loved the rhyming thing… very much a ‘show’ for the character of the flickering man/ghost.
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Thanks, Clark! Not sure what he’ll sing/say next…
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what chris said, love it
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Thanks!!
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I like the description of runes as “they ruin your life”. It sounds like some sort of spell was broken at the end when Andrew pushed the plaque off his lap.
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I hadn’t thought of the spell-breaking
You may be right!
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Curiouser and curiouser… lovin’ it Liz!
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And into the rabbit hole we disappear…
Thanks, Chris!
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Bowels of haunted mansions are not where you want to be trapped!
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Lol…it is the sewer…!
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Another haunting chapter, Liz… the chanting adds to that! 😀
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Thank you, Tom!
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“So crazy it’s almost making sense,” is the best line 🙂 Brilliant writing, Liz!
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Thank you kindly, Reena!
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Another one:”… rescue’s comin’ from the south” …Liz you should patend them (Noah for sure!)
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I’m with Andrew. “This can’t get any crazier, can it?” Keeping us in suspenders, as always. 🙂
PS – A whole lot of flickering about going on here. 😉
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