The Welcome

Page 8 of 8

After several moments of silence, Rachel found the strength to stand up.  "Who are you?  What do you want from me?"  She asked in a voice on the edge of sanity, racked with barely contained emotion and fear.  

"I only wish to welcome you home to Laurie Falls, Rachel," the voices answered.  "To your new home, to your last home.  I know you will come to love it here.  Everyone I invite always does.  Eventually.  Goodbye Rachel.  I will be seeing you."  

Without ever having felt it settle on her, Rachel could feel a presence, like a heavy down blanket soaked with kerosene, rise from her shoulders.  The house was empty again, she knew that.  She had no idea how she knew it, but she felt alone again without ever having felt as though she weren't.  She knew she had to leave.  She could never spend another night in this house, she could never open her laptop again or sit with her pink coffee mug in her office.  She raced for the door, expecting it to somehow be sealed shut by some mysterious force.  She reached it, unlocked the deadbolt and the thumb lock on the doorknob, and tried the handle.

The door opened, without a hint of resistance, on beautiful, golden sunshine, so bright and gorgeous she almost forgot everything that had happened to her.  The morning drear had turned to an almost warm day in the past few...hours?...minutes?  She didn't know how long it had been since she first walked into her office this morning, but the beauty of the day made it seem unimportant, irrelevant, like a thread in a subplot of a soap opera she never watched.  

The pine trees across from her house seemed greener, vibrant.  The grass and dandelions in her yard seemed to bounce with life.  Unseen birds sang alto and soprano lines in harmony with the bass drone of distant automobiles.  Her first thought was that this was an illusion, designed to sway her into staying in such a beautiful scene, but she felt that this was more, that this was a reality, in some way.  Still, she needed to leave, had to get out of this city now.  She ran down the path from her house toward the street, and...

...was standing in front of her door with her hand on the knob.  Startled, she tried again, turning and running to the sidewalk, only to find herself back on her porch as quickly and surely as if it had been a cut between scenes in a movie.  Again she tried, and again she could feel her foot cross into the air above the sidewalk and then the cold brass in her hand, gripped as loosely and casually as though coming home from the store with an armful of groceries.

She would never be able to leave, she realized.  This city, the presence in her house, whatever it was, would never let her past the city limits, if it even let her leave her house now.  She didn't understand why, in spite of the images and scenes it had displayed to her, but deep in her heart, she knew.  She was a resident of Laurie Falls now, and, in time she figured, she would learn to love it.  She went back inside and, with nothing else to do, opened up her laptop (now seemingly thoroughly exorcised, although she knew otherwise; the presence was just allowing her to use it.)  She started Photoshop and Outlook again, grabbed her coffee mug, and tucked her legs underneath herself.

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