~5.19~

What she was really afraid of, Laurie decided, was finality… no. She shied from that word. It echoed much the same as “dead end”. Not finality, but certainty. She didn’t know what was happening to her, or how much of it was her overwrought imagination, but if she called out for help she would find out.

Once she made that decision, all of the possibilities… even the impossible ones… would come tumbling down and one of them would fall into place. While the chances were good she would suffer nothing worse than embarrassment, there was still a chance that it would be something horrible.

Laurie recalled having read a book by a famous horror writer about writing horror. In it the author had espoused a theory… one she’d heard in other places, too… that whenever a movie builds up to something horrible being hidden behind a door, and then the door opens and you see something like a giant bug standing there, the scream you scream in response is tinged with relief because however horrible the monster bug might be you had been afraid it was something bigger, scarier, something infinitely worse.

That was a fine theory for horror movies, but the thought that had Laurie paralyzed in her grip was the possibility that whatever she’d find inside the building would be bigger and scarier and infinitely worse than anything she could imagine.

What could she imagine? That was part of the problem. Adulthood had robbed her of a working vocabulary for articulating her fears. Witches? Ghosts? Werewolves? These words lacked the resonance they needed to explain what she was afraid of. Laurie had read up on paranormal books and websites about contemporary hauntings. She had friends… people she knew online… who were practicing witches. One of her chat buddies insisted that he was a werewolf in spirit and she tried to respect that.

The internet age had conquered all manner of ghouls, leaving her with nothing to fear… and terrified of nothing.