NEW: The presence.

 

It was bitterly cold. Nathaniel had lost the feeling in all fingers and toes. He was beginning to shiver uncontrollably as his icy breath filled the room. He could feel the inner core of his body, its innate dependable sense of warmth, slowly ebbing away. And yet the heavy curtains were drawn, the fire in the grate was banked and roaring, and the carpet he stood on, near swallowed his bare feet.

Although he tried not to, his mind wandered. It had been the fault of the medium - so-called. She hadn't been a fake, at least they had avoided that. She had talent, innate talent, but she was raw, undisciplined, a slip of a girl who had plenty of arrogance, but no humility. She didn't know what she was doing, didn't appreciate the gravity of what she was attempting, what she was bringing into the room. She had no psychic doors to bolt, no walls to build against what came, and it came fast.

He blamed himself as well of course. He knew better. He should have stopped her, should have broken up the circle. But a séance was so often harmless, where little happened but a few bangs and taps, perhaps even a ghostly stroke of someone's hair. An evening's breathless excitement, a means of informing others as to your adventures, and then back to the monotony of life. But this evening had been different. This evening, something slid from the void, something that had tried to attach itself to the girl who was medium, and failed. Then it broadened, and tried to attach itself to the circle, and failed again. Then it cast its net wider still, to attach itself to the room, and in that it had succeeded - Nathaniel had felt it, and could feel it now. Its presence was not the bitter ice cold in the room, that it had brought with it from the void. No, the presence was something else, something much more pervasive, personal. The presence, whatever form it had taken in the void, and whatever form it would decide to reveal to Nathaniel - knew him, knew him well.