Chapter 3 - Something Moved Inside His Ear
Three nights later, Elias collapsed during dinner.
His chair struck the floor.
The oil lamp shook on the table.
He clutched the side of his head with both hands, his face twisted in silent agony.
I pulled him toward the light.
“Elias, don’t move.”
His eyes were unfocused.
I pushed his dark hair away from his right ear.
The skin around it was swollen and red.
Then I saw movement.
Something dark shifted deep inside the ear canal.
I jerked backward.
For one instant, fear swallowed every thought.
It was not wax.
Not dried blood.
Not anything that belonged inside a human body.
It moved again.
Elias saw my expression and grabbed my wrist.
His grip was desperate.
He reached for the notebook and wrote unevenly:
Don’t. It’s inside me.
The words froze me.
Not There is something inside me.
He already knew.
“You knew?”
He shook his head, then nodded, unable to decide which lie might protect him.
I took the pencil.
How long?
He did not answer.
Instead, another spasm tore through him.
That decided it.
I heated water over the stove, cleaned fine sewing tweezers with alcohol, and brought the lamp closer.
Elias shook his head violently.
He wrote:
Dangerous.
I took the notebook from him.
It is more dangerous to leave it there. Do you trust me?
His eyes locked onto mine.
He had married me without expecting affection.
I had entered his house expecting cruelty.
Somewhere between the fireplace and the bloodstained pillows, we had both discovered the person beside us was not the monster the town described.
Very slowly, Elias nodded.
I steadied his jaw with one hand.
My other hand brought the tweezers toward his ear.
He gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles whitened.
The lamp flame flickered.
I slipped the metal inward.
For a moment, I felt nothing.
Then resistance.
Soft at first.
Then muscular.
Whatever was inside him pulled back.
I nearly dropped the tweezers.
Elias’s body went rigid.
I tightened my grip and pulled.
Something emerged slowly from the swollen canal.
Dark.
Wet.
Writhing between the metal tips.
I gasped.
Elias recoiled, tears streaming down his face.
“That was never deafness.”
The object curled around the tweezers.
It was too long to have lived where I found it.
And attached to one end was a tiny piece of tarnished silver.
Not natural.
Made.
Before I could examine it, Elias turned sharply toward the cabin door.
His expression changed.
Not pain.
Recognition.
May you like
Someone pounded once from outside.
Elias had heard it.
