The Paper Sword by Robert Priest Page B

Saheli, but instead she did something she didn’t quite understand. She turned the handle on the door to the cabin and softly opened it. The first flickers of morning had just then entered the opposite window, allowing her to see the interior, though only barely.
    The place was very dusty and in one spot long strands of some kind of stringy grey lichen hung down from the ceiling. Barely visible behind a thick veil of cobwebs that draped the walls were numerous shelves upon which sat all manner of upside-down glass tubes, bottles, and various metal crucibles. Against one wall there was some kind of device made out of wire mesh or wicker. There was a crank handle on one end and it looked a bit like a butter churn, except the container where the butter would have been was conically shaped, its narrow end at the bottom. Above it a framed picture affixed to the wall was also buried in cobwebs. Intrigued, Tharfen trod across the dusty room and pulled the webbing away. Quietly and absentmindedly she began to turn the crank handle on the device as she peered closer at the picture. At first she’d thought it was a silhouette or a portrait of someone entirely in shadow but now she realized that what she’d taken for shadow was actually a full head of long black hair. It was a portrait of the back of someone’s head. Tharfen shook her head and wrinkled her nose in distaste as the crank handle squeaked and an eerie feeling came over her.
    â€œStrange.”
    â€œTharfen, what are you doing in there?” Xemion stood at the door, and behind him Saheli peered over his shoulder.
    â€œWhat’s strange?” she asked, a slight tone of horror in her voice.
    There was one more squeak from the crank handle as Xemion walked over to Tharfen. She pointed at the portrait with amusement. “I thought a painter was supposed to paint the front of someone’s head —”
    Tharfen never finished her sentence. All the fear Saheli felt in her nightmare last night sprang up out of her and, clutching Chiricoru so tightly the bird began to squawk, she screamed, “Tharfen, stop! Stop! Stop turning the handle and get out of there!”
    Disobediently, Tharfen gave the handle one more squeaking turn. Saheli screamed again, “Get out of there! Get out of there now!” She backed away from the door and stood off a ways in the clearing trying to control her rising sense of panic.
    Torgee, who had only just awoken but was already diligently spreading the last of the red pepper and fishhooks around the porch, took Saheli’s place at the threshold and gazed into the room. Xemion was just then looking up at what he’d thought was grey lichen hanging from the ceiling. Tharfen’s eyes followed his up and the two of them spied at the lichen’s epicentre the face of a very old man looking down at them with half-dead, half-living eyes. But it wasn’t lichen; it was his ancient beard extending almost to the floor. Tharfen’s heart almost jumped out of her chest. With a scream of terror she turned and fled. Hearing her bolt out of the house, Saheli’s panic took hold and she too began to run, and the two of them, with Saheli out in front, headed for the forest. Xemion was frightened, too, but he managed to back out of the house slowly, taking in the details of the scene as best he could.
    â€œWhat is it?” Torgee asked, not daring to venture farther into the house to look for himself.
    â€œThere’s some kind of old man up on the ceiling —” Xemion began, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, but before he finished his sentence that eerie cry from last night came from inside the cabin. It was so sudden and ghoulish that the two of them nearly scrambled over each other in their haste to get away. They were almost across the clearing by the time the cry began to taper, but the laughter it ended on was louder with the dawn and lingered on long after they had hurled