The Scribbly Man

13

Richard moved in close to Kahlan as she stared at Nolo. He didn’t know what was behind it, but he was done with her fit of temper and by his tone made it clear he wasn’t going to put up with it down here with a man who had already proven to be dangerous. He gripped her upper arm as he leaned in close.

“You have a job to do—a job you were born to do. You can yell at me all you want later, but right now you need to do your job. Our people are depending on us.”

Her heated expression relented a little. She seemed to get a grip on her emotions as she nodded.

“Tell me what happened,” he said to her as he pulled her back away from Nolo toward the sorceress. “You still haven’t told me what happened when you used your power on him.”

She looked up into the resolve in his eyes, then glanced at Shale. Her expression finally softened, returning to the Kahlan he knew.

“When I begin to release my power, it’s as if time stops. In that otherworldly moment everyone else seems to me like nothing more than a stone statue. There is nothing they can do to stop me, least of all the one I have unleashed my power on. Right then as that connection is made, I guess the easiest way to explain it is that it’s like a discharge of lightning. Pure power. Pure, heady power. The release of it is ecstasy.

“Right then, in that singular instant as the power has been released from deep inside me, the person is already beyond redemption, their mind is already gone, but that is also when I am at my weakest. I had been furious at the trouble Nolo was bringing us after the terrible war had finally ended. That anger added strength to the power I released. It sent the tables and chairs crashing against the walls. I heard the stone of the walls crack as the discharge of power buckled them. The lights were blown out.”

Her brow bunched together as she was remembering it. “But right then, in that frozen blink of time as the power was still exploding from me, as the flames in the lamps were still floating above the wicks, those flames were stopped dead in midair like everything else for that instant before they were about to be blown out. In an infinitesimal speck of time, all that would soon change and it would be pitch black. But right then there was still light.

“That’s when it happened.”

Goose bumps tingled on Richard’s arms. “When what happened?”

She looked up into his eyes, haunted by what she had seen.

“That was when I saw the scribbly man.”

The sorceress stepped closer and leaned in. “The what?”

“The scribbly man,” Kahlan said. She put the fingers of her good hand to her forehead, obviously in distress at the memory. “That’s the only way I can think to explain it.”

“I don’t understand,” Richard said. “What do you mean by a ‘scribbly’ man?”

Kahlan heaved a sigh of frustration, letting the arm flop to her side. “You know the hard charcoal sticks that artists use to sketch with?”

Richard was frowning. “Sure.”

“Well,” she said, searching for words to explain it, “imagine if the artist were to scribble as fast as he could in the form of a figure, a man. No outlines, no shading or features, simply hundreds of scribbles, back and forth, up and down, round and round, fast as possible, filling in the arms, the body, the legs, and the head to make the dark shape of a man.”

When they only stared at her, she used her hand to demonstrate, as if scribbling in midair. “Like this. Just scribbles over and over and over—fast as you can—so that after a moment on the paper all those scribbles combine into the rough, dark shape of a man. An impression of a man made entirely of scribbles. No outline, no details, just… scribbles.”

Richard was beginning to get the image in his head. “You mean this figure you saw just before the light went out looked kind of fuzzy or something? Sort of dark and shadowy?”

Kahlan was shaking her head. “No, no. Not dark. Not fuzzy. Not shadowy. He was made up of scribbles in midair. Lines. Hundreds of lines. All kinds of loopy scribbles like you would make when holding that charcoal against the paper and scribbling to fill in a shape as fast as you could.

“As he came toward me, every tiny movement he made as his arms moved, as his legs moved to take a step, he was redrawn with new scribbles. He just kept being redrawn over and over, time after time, over and over every fraction of a second. Those scribbles he was made of came anew so fast it made him sort of blur as he moved.”

Richard suddenly looked over at Shale. “What does that remind you of?”

The blood had drained from her face. “The marks I told you about left in the snow that looked like thousands of strikes from a switch.”

“Or scribbles made in the snow.”

Shale nodded.

Kahlan looked from one to the other. “What are you two talking about? I know it sounds crazy, but do you mean you believe me?”

“We believe you,” Shale said. “I have seen people murdered—likely by this same creature, this scribbly man as you call him. Some were clawed to death.”

“He had claws,” Kahlan confirmed, nodding, the haunted fear returning to her eyes. “He stood upright, like a man, but he had claws. Three on each hand. They weren’t black like the rest of him, like the scribbles. They were more defined, thick, solid.”

“What color were they?” Richard asked.

Kahlan rubbed her injured arm hanging at her side as if suddenly chilled. “I don’t know. A lighter color. Sort of a tan or yellowish color.”

“Or sort of golden?” Richard asked.

Her gaze came up to meet his. “I guess so. I only just saw him, saw the claws… and then he was on me… tearing at me, ripping into me. It was terrifying.”

“What do you think it could have been?” Shale asked her, breaking Kahlan’s sudden transfixed daze at the memory. “Do you have any idea at all?”

Kahlan nodded. “I’m afraid I do.” She stared off into the shadows for a time before going on.

“They are the monsters under the bed when you are little, the shape just caught out of the corner of your eye when you thought you were alone, the shadow of something in a dark corner that surprises you and then isn’t there. They stop you dead with a knot of unexpected terror in the pit of your stomach. We have all seen glimpses of them. Never long enough to see them as I saw them, but it was them. I recognized it the instant I saw it.

“We’ve all seen fleeting flashes of them, the dark shadow just out of sight. They could briefly terrify us before but never hurt us because they came from so far distant. They were never able to fully materialize in our world so we saw only transient glimpses of them, the shape of them if the light was just right, if the shadows were deep enough… if you were afraid enough.

“I think that the star shift has brought us closer to their realm so that they now have the power to step into our world and hurt us.”