Free Arachnodactyl by Danny Knestaut Page A

dark and its reprieve from the squalid surroundings. He matched his breathing with his dad’s until he could imagine the deep, gasping breaths as his own, and he lay alone on the floor, the only one left in the whole world; safe in solitude.
    But now the dark overwhelmed. It coursed around him, thick and heavy and wide and deep. Boundless.
    A pan clattered in the kitchen.
    Ikey swung toward the sound. It left him feeling like he caught a glimpse of a pulsing lighthouse on a distant shore. He sucked in a deep breath and pictured the room to the best of his ability. He extended his left arm out from his side. Rose had passed through this space. There had to be a width of at least one person between himself and the table.
    Ikey turned 90 degrees to his left. He took a slight step forward. His outstretched hand drifted through emptiness. He redrew the map in his head, then took another step forward. His hand passed through more nothingness. He swept his arm in a slow arc and groped for anything that might tell him where he stood.
    Nothing.
    The stairs creaked again.
    Ikey wished to be seated when Rose reached the top of the stairs. As he took another step forward, the top of his thigh caught the hard edge of the table. The table legs yelped with the force of his stumble.
    “Ikey?” Rose asked.
    Ikey placed his palms on the table and hung his head. “I’m all right.”
    At the top of the stairs, Rose asked why he hadn’t lit a lantern.
    Ikey looked in her direction. “I didn’t have a match.”
    The backdoor opened. Footsteps entered the scullery. Their muffled thumps stopped, and the hissing of pipes permeated the room.
    “You should have waited for Cross.” Rose’s steps crossed the room. “You’ll break your neck stumbling about in the dark.”
    The hissing stopped. Footsteps approached the door as Rose strolled past. The scent of bread filled her wake.
    Ikey opened his mouth to ask why she didn’t light a lantern, but then the scullery door opened and spread gray-gold lantern light across the table beneath his hands. A dinner setting waited at the head and foot. A third sat across the table from himself.
    “What the bloody hell, man?” Cross asked from the doorway. “You too thick to light a lantern?” The shadows of the furniture shifted back and forth as Cross wavered slightly on his feet.
    Ikey turned around.
    Rose passed between them as she walked away from a sideboard where she had set a basket of bread. “Dinner will be served in a few moments. Sit down.”
    “I didn’t have a match,” Ikey said to Cross.
    Cross smirked and shook his head. “There are matches in the cupboard over the sink. You best keep a few on yourself while staying in this morgue.”
    He strolled to the table and placed the lantern in the middle of it, next to Ikey. Cross’s fingers traced the wooden surface as he passed around to the head of the table and drew out his chair.
    Ikey circled the other direction and sat at the side setting. For future reference, he noted the locations of the table, the six chairs around it, and the sideboard tucked into a corner of the room. Next to the sideboard stood a glass-fronted hutch filled with china. Beside the scullery door sat a serving cart with a tea set. He twisted around and took in the rest of the room. A dark set of double doors interrupted the red diamond wallpaper and the shelf that encircled the room and brimmed with music boxes. An iron candelabra hung above with many long, curved arms and flourishes like leaves. Stubs of pale and dust-laden wax poked up from bundles of cast iron leaves. Alone in the dark, the room crowded around Ikey, strange and alien. Buried in that drifting dark had been a spark of excitement. Discovery. By what way did Rose navigate the darkness? But with Cross and his lantern in the room, everything felt broken. The dark candles. The closed doors. The room choked off from the outside as if light was a vaporous poison.
    “Should I light the candles?”