June Weymouth was laying in the small box bed that the Nuns had placed her in, staring at the ceiling. Her brain was running around like a jackrabbit in heat. As hard as she tried her mind was blank, even closing her eyes as tight as she could and feeling the veins on the side of her head bulging out there was no memory before the dusty road she had been on that morning. It was the strangest thing, to not know. The Nuns told her that as soon as she had stopped on their doorstep she collapsed, when she woke up she was in the box bed. They were very attentive, June thought, they had brought her water and warm broth which both felt like heaven. Her body ached and her lungs hurt every time she took a deep breath. The Mother Superior had told June that they were going to get her a doctor and that until he arrived she needed to stay in bed. Something about that woman intimidated June so she stayed in bed, trying to remember anything.
There was a knot in the wooden ceiling of the small room that she was in that had latched her gaze, her mind still trying but her eyes glued to this necrotic gouge in the otherwise pristine wood, was it looking at her? With her gaze locked on the knot she did not even hear the door open up and the small man walk in. In her brain she kept replaying everything hoping for some glimpse of before and her eyes stared a hole into the knot. Her attention was only brought back to reality when she felt a hand grab her shoulder causing her whole body to jolt off the bed, that sudden movement sending new signals of pain down her arms and legs.
"Hello Miss, you must be June? My name is Doctor Huckle." Hugo asked as he pulled a three legged wooden stool up to the side of the bed. His doughy face was red from the sun. June had hoped that if she saw someone as noticeable as the local doctor she may have been able to remember something, sadly this man brought forth no memories.
"Yes Doctor, My name is June Weymouth and I am fourteen years old." That was all she knew.
"The Mother Superior asked me to come and check to make sure you don't have anything wrong that could be serious. Is there anything you feel like I should know?" For as coarse as his bedside manner had been earlier that day during the tooth extraction, sitting next to June was a completely different person. As he waited for an answer he reached down into his bag and pulled out his stethoscope and a thermometer.
"I hurt, all over and it hurts when I breathe." June felt apprehensive about saying anything about her memory.
"Let's take a listen first." Hugo placed the stethoscope to June's back and listened closely. "Go ahead and take a deep breath for me dear." As she took in a great wave of oxygen and her lungs expanded he could hear the immediate sound of rales. The popping sounds like the first footsteps on unbroken snow. What Hugo could not see was the pain that spread across June's face. What he heard as popping felt to her like a knife gashing her lungs. Hugo had heard lungs like this once before and he had not expected at all to hear them in the lungs of a fourteen year old girl in a Convent. "Lay back down for me." Hugo said as he helped her lay down, finally able to see the grimace of pain on her face. "Can you tell me a little bit about how you got here?" He asked as he began to feel about her neck for any swelling.
"I don't know. All I can remember is walking the road and coming here." The more June spoke the rougher her voice began and she began to feel the back of her throat scratching again.
Hugo's eyebrows tightened together as he concentrated, "Do you know what day it is?" He was beginning to reach a conclusion as to what had happened to her but he did not like the answer he was forming.
June closed her eyes to think, deep within her mind she ran hoping for some knowledge of a date, a time, hell she would even take a season. There it was! In the corner of her brain, shimming in the pearlescent ooze of brain matter, a glimmer of memory. "JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH!" She tried to shout but it came in a broken wheeze that caused her to break into a coughing fit. She turned her head slightly to the left as the coughing subsided and she watched as Dr. Hugo Huckle's face fell, which filled her with terror. "It's not June twenty-fourth is it?"
"No child, today is the first of July."
Burning hot tears began running down her face, how had she lost a week? Had she been walking all that time? Well that would explain why she ached so much. June had hoped seeing the Doctor she would somehow begin to remember everything but all the meeting had done was make things worse. She began to just stare at the knot in the ceiling again as Hugo gathered up his things. She was so transfixed on the dark, necrotic eye that she did not even hear the Doctor say, "I need to go speak with the Mother Superior, I recommend bedrest for the time being. Do not exert yourself June." The door opened and closed with no reaction from June Weymouth, all her attention still on the ceiling as the tears streamed down her red cheeks. Her own voice rattled in her head, a thousand words mixed with a thousand more overlapping into incoherencies.
A deep voice broke through the muddle of her mind. "I feel you, I sense you. I know you are out there and I will find you. June Abigail Weymouth. Missing for so long. I have found you and I see you. We will be meeting very soon, Junie." When the voice said Junie it transformed into a soft and delicate female voice, one that stirred a memory inside of her. Looking up at the knot in the ceiling it began to move. The necrotic spot of death slowly formed into an eye looking directly down at her. Its wooden lid blinked as another eye formed next to it, followed by a nose and a crooked mouth. A full face now pressed its way out of the ceiling, the wooden slates of its lips open as a putrid odor of decay filled the room. "I am coming, June. There is no way to prevent Me." June's pulse began to race as she tried to scramble out from the blankets. No matter how hard she squirmed and lifted the blankets would not move. It was as if some invisible chains held her down. No sound escaped her mouth as hard as she tried. The wooden face began to be birthed from the ceiling, reaching closer and closer to her. Its mouth was opening wide as if to swallow her whole. She felt the hot stagnant air from the invisible demon's lungs as it began to close around her. All of the sunlight that spilled into the room was disappearing as the wooden jaws swallowed June and her box bed. The jaws closed with a hard snap.