Penelope Fairchild and the Phantom Blade
Little Penelope Fairchild lived with her father in an old town house on the edge of the city. Her father, who was a pensive, rather serious man, had once been a very successful businessman and social figure, however, the tragic death of his beloved wife, Penny’s mother, changed everything for him, and he retreated from the outside world. He tried and tried to overcome his sorrow and loneliness, but all these efforts came to nothing, and the poor man continued to be tortured by his sudden loss. Years passed and nothing Penny could do would bring her dear father out of his dark state. He seemed to be unwilling to let go of his mourning, for fear of some terrible fate.
On Penny’s fifteenth birthday, her father came to her and vowed that he would let go of his loss, and allow the family to move on from tragedy. The hope, and the plans! They were going to take a holiday to the south, and everything would be well, thought Penny. However, the night before they were to leave, her father fell ill, and none of the servants knew what it was that ailed him. They tried all the remedies they could think of, but nothing worked. His fever seemed to be more than bodily, as if his very soul was struggling against a foe. As the best doctors had done all they could, Penny and the rest of the household prayed and hoped that their master’s illness would simply pass.
In her desperation and sadness, and as she couldn’t sit in the house any longer, Penny ran outside, through the back gate, and toward the wood that lay just behind the edge of town. When she reached the treeline, where she always felt oddly at home, she began to weep, and as the tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto the damp grass, disappearing, she wished for the power to help her father. Suddenly, Penny heard a great whooshing sound. She looked up, and saw perched atop a nearby shrub was a beautiful horned owl.
The owl, to the amazement of the child, spoke.
“I have come with a message. Only you can save your father from what clutches at his very being, and only you can cut the bonds that imprisons your father.”
The owl flew off into the night sky, and on the grass at Penny’s feet lay a simple knife with a silver blade with an ebony handle.
Penny believed she was dreaming. She picked up the knife, turned into the forest, and began to walk along the narrow road. After walking for what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, she reached an old, twisted pine. The knife in her hand, it seemed to Penny, was trying to pull her off the path. Perhaps out of curiosity, or maybe sheer indifference, she gave in to the sensation and, gazing into the darkness, she stepped off the path and into the dense wild of the woods.
Again time became hazy, and although it felt as though she walked for hours, it was only a few minutes before they came to a small clearing surrounded by giant, gnarled oaks. In the middle of this clearing, she saw a house that looked exactly like hers, and yet it was different. In fact, it seemed to flicker and fade in the moonlight, a shadow of itself.
She entered the house and, just as eerily, it was just like her own, but everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, as though it had been abandoned. The floors creaked as she walked down the narrow hall, and then she heard something else. A spluttering cough, and a rattling breath. And then a stifled voice gurgling the words “Help me, Help me!”
And as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Penny saw in front of her the most horrible of sights. The dark form of a man lay on the bed, and over him crouched the most hideous creature Penny had ever seen. The two beings were struggling, but the monster was winning. Suddenly, the man’s features were visible in the moonlight, and Penny recognized her father. But it was as if he was not completely solid, but rather just an essence of himself.
“Papa!” she cried, but he seemed not to hear her.
The demon that tortured him, however, looked sharply around at the sound of Penny’s cry. When it’s burning red eyes found Penny, she saw that it was the emaciated form of a woman, in ghostly, tattered robes. The phantom’s gaunt face contorted into a chilling, sinister smile that reached from cheekbone to the other, and Penny stood frozen with fear as she realized the monster was familiar to her somehow. It crept toward her, the menacing grin still fixed to its horrible face, and as it drew nearer its eyes, its two burning coals for eyes, sank back into their sockets and where there had once been a face, there was now a swirling, sucking blackness. All Penny’s willpower dissipated and was replaced by a sense of complete and utter desolation. She stood helpless and numb, her knife loose in her limp hand. Just as she began to give in to the darkness, something whooshed down in between her face and the black abyss.
Immediately, she snapped out of her stupor, and she was amazed to see the horned owl in a fierce struggle with the demon, whose face had once again acquired its terrible features. The owl scratched and pecked at the demon with its wings, and Penny knew that this was her chance to rid her father of his torturer. She picked her knife up from the floor and, as the creature snatched at the air to catch the owl, Penny drove the blade into its chest, where its heart should have been.
The air filled with a screeching sound, the most terrible, tortured scream, and suddenly the walls began to shake, the ground shifted, and Penny was lurched by the waist again into that swirling storm of light and sound until she was thrown face first onto the hardwood floor of her very own townhouse. She ran upstairs and into her father’s bedroom and saw her him, surrounded by his most loyal servants, alive and well on the bed by the front window.
[Word count 1073]