Post #261683 by procinema29 on Thu, Oct 19, 2006 3:32 PM

"The Necklace"

PART FOUR

For a moment I panicked silently, wrestling with the urge to bolt up and get out--and finally decided, squinting in the darkness, that I must collect myself and light the lighter. I did, leaving the flame on for several seconds.

The door in front of me was now closed.

I froze.

And then I scolded myself. I was always so gullible. I began to contemplate the possibility that this might be some kind of bizarre practical joke, perhaps even orchestrated by more than one person. The situation couldn’t be the thing I was imagining it was. I refused to accept it. I let the lighter go out as I approached the doorway with plans to relight it as I opened the door, to surprise my tormentor or tormentors.

But when I opened the door the flame revealed only the next room, its emptiness like the other’s. Outside the rain continued steadily. I stalked in, seeing another connecting door across this room. I approached it. Moonlight came in through breaks in the ceiling, providing just enough illumination to see things here without keeping the flame alight. Did I hear whispering over the rain? A noise? I did think I heard whispering coming from behind this second door.

Certain I was on the verge of discovering what was going on, I flung the door open.

Don’t ask me to explain what I saw more than this, because it might have been a trick of my mind, my imagination. It seemed as though something in the room vanished, disappearing suddenly just as I opened the door, but it’s hard to say what this something was. I might describe it as a sort of murky, cloudlike mass, like a shadow impossibly cast in midair and with nothing to cast it, which disassembled instantly into fragments which leapt back into the corners and crevaces of the room, as though the darkness had been gathered in pieces and commandeered for some purpose of which I was not to know.

Whatever the case, something seemed to be there one moment, and then gone the next.

I stood there for a moment, staring into the dimness.

By this time, I was becoming certain that my imagination and my injury had everything to do with this predicament. I realized now that I had been programmed by the woman’s story, that I had been prepared to expect unusual things to happen, and so now they were. It had only been a breeze that had shut the door in the other room. I had imagined the sound of the footsteps, and it was not difficult to imagine that the din of the rain obscured the sounds of voices.

And then I saw it--a glint of greenish light, coming from the floor.

I approached the glint warily, bent down.

I didn’t want to find the necklace at that moment, because I feared this final validation of my employer’s tale. When I grasped the pearl string and lifted the object up, I knew that it was too late.

I held the necklace up under a shaft of moonlight and saw the beautiful green stone, mounted in an ornate gold encasement and whose outer surface was cut into ten facets, one in the center and the others, smaller, surrounding it.

After debating a moment, because I felt for some odd reason that I was doing something wrong, I placed it in my coat pocket. I knew that, despite the problems I had encountered, my compensation was secure and waiting for me at the house, and I had only to complete the final step of returning; and, fortifying myself with this knowledge, I started for the door I had come in through.

I had little difficulty getting outside, and was very glad to be in the open air again. The rain, which still fell unchangingly, had revitalized the air and charged it with an electricity. I got through the weeds and shrubbery surrounding the house and started back on the path, which was now very slick with mud. I had done it.

I had trudged through mud and rocks for a couple of minutes when I felt something very odd. The necklace appeared to be getting heavier in the coat pocket I’d placed it in, seemed, indeed, to be sinking deeper into my coat. I stopped, and reached into the pocket and pulled the necklace out, hefting it in my palm and scrutinizing its weight intently. The necklace seemed to lose this quality as soon as I began to examine it, for everything seemed normal once again.

I put it back in the pocket and continued on, keeping my hand clenched tightly around it. I was determined, despite anything, to achieve my goal.