away chalk, but not very well. They hadn’t yet discovered the composition of acids that would dissolve the chalklings with a single splash.
There were five persons eaten in one house; the father, and the mother and a sucking child, they stripped of skin, then ate out the eyes. The other two they herded out the doorway. There were two others, who being out of their garrison upon some occasion were set upon; one was stripped of all skin, the other escaped.
Another, seeing many of the wild chalklings about his barn, ventured and went out, but was quickly set upon. They ate at his feet until he screamed, falling to the ground, then swarmed above him. There were three others belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the wild chalklings climbing up the sides of the walls, attacking from all sides, knocking over lanterns and beginning fires. Thus these murderous creatures went on, burning and destroying before them.
Joel shivered in the silence of his room. The matter-of-fact narrative was disturbing, but oddly transfixing. How would you react, if you’d never seen a chalkling before? What would your response be to a living picture that climbed up walls and slid beneath doors, attacking without mercy, eating the flesh off bodies?
His lantern continued to whir.
At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw. They slid beneath the door and quickly they ate one man among us, then another, and then a third.
Now is the dreadful hour come, that I have often heard of (in time of war, as it was the case of others), but now mine eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads. Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves, and one another, “Master, what shall we do?”
Then I took my children (and one of my sisters’, hers) to go forth and leave the house: but as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the creatures outside swarmed up the hill toward us.
My brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, his legs bleeding) was set upon from behind, and fell down screaming with a bucket of water in his hands. Whereat the wild chalklings did dance scornfully, silently, around him. Demons of the Depths they most certainly are, many made in the form of man, but created as if from the shape of sticks and lines.
I stood in fright as we were surrounded. Thus was my family butchered by those merciless creatures, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels. The children were taken as I ran for the bucket to use in our defense, but it was emptied, and I felt a cold feeling of something on my leg, followed by a sharp pain.
It was at that point that I saw it. Something in the darkness, illuminated just barely by the fire of our burning house. A shape that did seem to absorb the light, created completely of dark, shifting blackness: like charcoal scraped and scratched on the ground, only but standing upright in the shadows beside the house.
It did watch. That deep, terrible blackness. Something from the Depths themselves. The shape wiggling, shaking, like a pitch-black fire sketched in charcoal.
Watching.
Something cracked against the window of Joel’s room.
He jumped and saw a shadow moving away from the small pane of glass. The window stood at the very top of the wall, in the small space between where the ground stopped and the ceiling began.
Vandals! Joel thought, remembering the curse that had been painted on the humanities building. He jumped from the bed and rushed for the door, throwing on a coat. He was up the stairs and out the door a few moments later.
He rounded the building to see what the vandals had written. He found the side of the building clean. Had he been wrong?
That was when he saw it. A symbol, written in chalk on the brick wall. A looping swirl. The Rithmatic line they still hadn’t been able to identify.
The night was strangely quiet.
Oh no … Joel thought, feeling a horrible chill. He backed away from the wall, then opened his mouth to call for help.
His scream came out unnaturally soft. He felt the sound almost get torn away from his throat, sucked toward that symbol, dampened.
The kidnappings … Joel thought, stunned. Nobody heard the Rithmatists call for help.