The Lonely Planet Claire - Chapter 2 - The Thing in the Dust

Brian didn’t go back inside. He couldn’t. The walls of the house felt wrong now—like something unseen was pressing against them from the inside, waiting for him to step through the door.

So he ran.

The moons lit the dusty plain with a pale glow, and the harvest towers in the distance blinked their red warning lights like slow, sleepy eyes. He ran until his legs trembled, until the soft dust turned to glassy shards that cut his feet.

When he finally stopped, the house was a faint silhouette behind him. The valley was silent.

Almost.

Something was moving through the dust—a low, dragging sound, like fabric being pulled across gravel. It came from the direction of the house.

“Mom?” His voice cracked. “Dad?”

No answer. Just that scraping, coming closer.

He crouched behind a ridge of quartz, his heart pounding. The light from the moons shimmered off the translucent surface, distorting everything beyond it like water. Through the blur, Brian saw it—a figure moving with jerking, unnatural motions. At first, he thought it was a person. Then it straightened, and he saw the arms.

There were too many.

The limbs unfurled slowly, reaching and twisting, each ending in thin fingers that scraped the dust as it walked. It had no face, only a smooth surface where features should have been, glinting faintly as if made of glass.

Brian pressed his hand over his mouth to keep from making a sound.

The thing stopped. It turned—if that smooth oval could turn—and faced his direction. The whispering wind rose again, but now it came from inside his head.

Brian… don’t hide from us.

We’re all that’s left.

He tried to crawl backward, but the ground gave way under his hand—an old drainage pit from the harvesters. He fell, tumbling into the dark. The air rushed from his lungs, and everything went black for a moment.

When he opened his eyes, he was underground. The dim blue light from the surface filtered through cracks above him.

He wasn’t alone.

Something small moved beside him—a faint, flickering figure, no taller than his knee. It looked like a child made of light, its shape fuzzy and shifting. It tilted its head, studying him with glowing eyes that didn’t blink.

Then it whispered—its voice soft and distant, like an echo through time:

“They found you too… didn’t they?”

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model