At first there is nothing, just the sound of the bushes rustling the light breeze, the chirp of some type of many-legged nocturnal creature. Then they hear it, as distant as a long-faced memory and as clear as the light of day. It's sounds like angels, singing softly in the night at first. Listen harder, listen carefully for me. Try to concentrate, try to hear every level of that wonderful, wonderful sound, and... and... and the sound should shift. It should shift, like a person taking off a beautiful mask to reveal the terrifying visage underneath. The song of the angels... no, not angels, sirens... slips sideways, and becomes something else. Something exactly the same but completely different; the beat of broken wings and the grip of bloodstained hands, and the ceaseless echo of cracked stone and twisted metal, churning and roaring and devouring in the darkness.
It should sound like devastation, destruction, like Hell. Do you remember the doors? The doors that change when you catch sight of them out of the corner of your eye?
This is like that. If you just hear it, it sounds... alluring. Wonderful. Soothing, bright and beautiful. But if you turn your head, if you ignore what the world wants you to perceive and instead try to find what's really there you see things as they actually are
What were you just listening to? You ask? That, that was The Dark Canyon, that's what it sounds like, all the time.
You always hear it your mind just blocks out the sound. But when you've lived there, you heard it. We all did. We... they... all do. To start off with... you might have processed it as something else. People who weren't born there tend to hear it as a low hum at first, gradually becoming more and more distinct, the longer they stay.
And you begin to remember. You remember the humming, in the background, like the rapid beating of a thousand hearts. You remember the way it sounded, that night several weeks ago when you saw The Dark Canyon again, during the escape from the Strexcorp facility. The way that hum had echoed in your head; the way it had left you briefly transfixed against all reason or common sense... a ceaseless thrum and a red glow in the darkness...
What is it, though?
Even when blissful ignorance might be preferable.
It's The Dark Canyon, it does that. It... calls to people. Calls them in. Soothes them. Welcomes them. Wraps them up in warmth and happiness and love. And then... It devours them.
Comments (0)
See all