The Plagues

A wind chime tingled softly from the eaves of a large house, carved into a dark green hillside. The sound echoed throughout the brick terrace below it, worming its way on the wind into the waiting ears of a woman standing at the edge, overlooking a village below. She didn’t turn her head at the sound, though it pierced through the silent air, causing one of the cats to scurry through the wide-open patio doors, back into the house. The woman stood still as stone and listened to the wind chime. This was her first time ever hearing it. The chime had been still since the house was built one hundred years ago, the act tearing the trees apart and scattering the roots across the bone-dry ground. The soil around the house remained a deep red color, as if the ground itself still bled from the invasion.

The woman, hearing the sound, closed her eyes slowly and re-opened them. She did this to make sure she was not dreaming. Once her eyes opened again, and she stood looking out over the village, and the chime still sounded, then she finally moved. She only stretched out her right hand towards the village houses, extending as far over the terrace wall as she could. The sound of the chime was unheard to the villagers. It would be her job to inform them of the doom behind it’s ringing. Though, even now, she knew that no one would believe her. No one ever had.

But the town’s unbelief did not change the events that were coming. She knew this, and a small part of her hoped that they knew it too. Because the chiming that still rang out, louder now, it seemed, meant only one thing according to the old prophesies. The plagues were starting, and the first one was nearly here.

Once the chime ceased, the woman turned on her heels and fled into the house, closing the patio doors quickly behind her. There was an old book in the basement that told the order of the plagues, and she sprinted down the stairs, through the kitchen, and burst through the door that led to the basement stairs. A cloud of dust billowed in the doorway before her, but she threw herself through it. She coughed once, twice on her way down the cold, concrete stairs. There were too many stairs. It seemed as if she would never reach the bottom. A sheen of sweat appeared on her forehead, dripping down towards her eyes. She cursed herself under her breath for letting her guard down, letting her mind slip from the studying the plagues; their origins, their timings, and how to survive them. She tried to comfort herself in the failure of the last step, because no one was supposed to survive the plagues. They are meant as a punishment, after all. This, however, was no consolation as she dropped to her knees before the worn box that held the books of the prophecies.

Her grandfather had stored the books in the basement when the woman was a little girl. She had helped him reorganize his house when she lived with him after her parents’ death. A violent shiver raked through her body now as she recalled her grandfather’s words to her, nearly thirty years ago.

“Don’t let these books collect dust, my dear,” he had patted the books, as if to make himself perfectly clear. “Dust will cloud them from memory and hide them in times of desperate need.”

She had disobeyed him. She had not cared for them, had not read and studied them, as he meant her to. Dust smothered the box, however, once she parted the cardboard, the books inside were still clear. She let out an audible breath into the silent basement. She reached her hand in immediately. A sharp shock bit her fingers as they grazed the top book, and she pulled her hand back. The wind chime outside began to ring again. The ring was exponentially louder this time, and she covered her ears with her hands and bowed her head toward the floor, trying not to scream, waiting for it to end. She needed those books. She lifted her right shoulder to her ear in place of her hand as she reached it out again to the book on top of the stack. Ignoring the shock this time, she grabbed on tightly and lifted it out of the box and onto the floor. It fell open upon hitting the concrete, the pages glowing slightly in the darkness. Once the book was opened, the wind chime ceased again.

The book had opened itself to the pages that listed the plagues in order. The woman touched her hand softly to the page, following the words with her fingers.

The Ten Plagues That Will Cover the Earth After the Division has Come to Pass

The cursive writing was fading, and the pages were rough beneath her fingers, but she kept reading.

1.    Arachnids will crawl abundantly

The woman snatched her hand back. It trembled slightly. Oh, no.

She had once tried to tell the villagers below about the plagues a decade ago, but her grandfather had rebuked her later. “Some secrets need not be revealed too early,” he had told her. Even then, she had disagreed, despite the backlash she had received from the villagers. She had been ridiculed, spat on, cursed at as her grandfather had all but dragged her from where she had stood on the fountain at village center.

           I must go back there, she thought to herself. I must warn them. The doom of the village could no longer be kept a secret. The wind chime had spoken.

           Her grandfather, unsurprisingly, had never told her the origin of the wind chime. He had simply told her it would not ring except for the day when doom was approaching. She had asked many times where it had come from, how it knew about the doom, and when it would ring. But her grandfather had taken those secrets to his grave. She only knew now for certain that the soft, quiet days in the village below were coming to an end.

           She wasn’t sure how long she had until the first plague began, and in her haste, she did not read on to see what the other plagues were. Instead, she stood quickly to her feet and rushed up the stairs. The book, forgotten on the cold, hard floor, continued to glow after she had gone.

           Out into the slow evening air and down the dirt path the woman ran. She wasn’t far from the village, and she sprinted the whole way, her mind consumed with the plagues. Her eyes darted to each side of the path as she wondered when the spiders would appear. She had forgotten her shoes, and the small stones on the path stabbed at her soft feet. Small spots of blood slowly infused with the red dirt, and the dirt drank quickly.

            There were small twinkling lights hanging from the fountain, giving the village center a warm glow as the sun sank below the hills. She once again stood on the base of the fountain, her head sending the strings of lights swinging. She declared with a loud voice:

“They’re coming! The plagues that have been prophesied about are on their way!”

           The small number of people ambling about in the village stopped and stared at her. Those that were already winding down in their houses came out to see what all the noise was about. No one shared the woman’s urgency. Instead, everyone continued as before she appeared, muttering to each other that “the crazy woman from the hills is back” and “did you hear the old man died? She’s all alone up there now”.

           She continued to yell out, even louder, “The wind chime has sounded! They are coming!”

           “And what will you have us do?” A voice from the street answered her, soaked in sarcasm.

           The woman suddenly remembered the book on the basement floor. She had forgotten it. It surely would have helped her right now. Her silence to the question only furthered the unbelief of the villagers, and they scoffed as they moved along.

           “They’re coming,” she said again, this time quieter, more so to herself. She hung her head to her chest as she stepped down from the fountain. There was a small squishing sound under her foot as she landed. Looking down, she saw a small pile of red and yellow liquid, oozing from beneath her foot. One villager, walking near her, had heard the squish as well, and looked at the same time she lifted her foot to investigate. A large, black, dead spider was stuck to the bottom of her bare foot. The woman screamed and swatted at it with her hand. At the same time, the man who was nearest her looked down to find a large, similar looking spider crawling quickly up his leg. He also let out a scream and started swatting himself.

           At first, the two did not notice that the other villagers outside had started doing the same thing. It wasn’t until the woman looked up, after brushing off another spider, that she noticed the fountain walls were black with spiders of all sizes crawling around it. The ground past the fountain looked like a black sea, waving back and forth with the skittering of spiders. Screams from the villagers that were engulfed in spiders themselves filled the air. It seemed that the sounds of the screams were attracting even more spiders, as they appeared in multitudes.

           The woman began to run back up to her home in the hills. She cursed at herself out loud as she slipped on the spiders with her bare feet, her shoes still sitting in her foyer. The path to the house was no longer red dirt, but black as night, and swaying back and forth. Spiders dropped down on her from the trees, entangling her hair, grabbing at her face. She ran with her hands cupped around her face, trying to ward them off. She dared not scream, refusing to open her mouth and let them in.

           Inside the house on the hill was a bit better. The only spiders surrounding her were the ones she had accumulated on the run over. She shook like a dog, hearing them splat on the floor all around her. They took off running in all directions, but she didn’t have time to go after all of them.

           Down the basement stairs, she flew again to the book laying open and glowing. The first plague; spiders. What was the second?

2.    Darkness will roam freely

Darkness. But would the spiders cease first? How long until the darkness came? So many important questions for her grandfather, if he were still around.

Her eyes flickered down to the third plague, but a large, black and yellow spider fell from the top of her head onto the page, its body covering most of the words. As the spider raised one leg in the air toward her, she slammed the book closed. A sickening squish sounded, and blood oozed from the pages. She would not read any further.

The presence of the spiders in her house proved that she would not be spared simply because she had known about the prophecies. She would die along with the unbelieving villagers. She wondered desperately if there was in fact a way to survive the plagues, another secret that her grandfather had kept from her, but either way, she had not prepared. And it was too late now.

She lay down on the floor and curled herself in a ball as spiders continued to roam her body. She closed her eyes as darkness, deeper than any night, wrapped around the house and floated down the basement stairs toward her.