Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,68
fell down hard enough to jolt some of my toys off the shelves. Others—plastic ThunderCats and a stuffed Scooby Doo—turned their heads to watch as I scrambled up again. I could feel that they were laughing at me. That they wanted the skull to get me.
I tore open my bedroom door. A lightless hallway stretched away in front of me with doorways like black mouths yawning on either side. Though this was nothing like the layout of the real house where I’d been a little kid, in the dream, it was my home. But for some reason, I’d forgotten my way around, which meant I didn’t know how to find my mom and dad.
So I ran and looked in one dark room after another. The house stretched on endlessly, space after space, hall after hall, without ever showing me a window or a door to the outside world. The skull floated along right behind me. I couldn’t look around to see it. That would slow me down. But I heard its teeth go click-click-click, like it was practicing its bite, or nipping and falling short by inches.
There were still moments when grown-up me bobbed to the surface, and I knew what was happening was a nightmare. Then Shadow roared for me to turn him loose.
And God, did I want to. I wanted it even worse than when the interrogator had me hooked up to the battery. But I held evil me back until the fear sucked us both back down, and I forgot I was anything but a child.
Where were Mommy and Daddy? From time to time, I tried to scream for them. But it’s hard to run and yell at the same time, especially when you’re mostly out of breath. Each time, the call came out as a tiny wheeze.
I started to think they’d gone away. Given me to the skull. And while it hardly seemed possible for me to get any more scared, that idea did the trick.
Then I spotted Daddy’s oxygen tank covered in cobwebs in a shadowy corner.
It didn’t make sense. The tank belonged years in the future. But the terrified kid I’d become didn’t think about that. He just took the tank as a signpost to point the way to his father. He staggered into the room where it stood and on through the doorway in the far wall.
There were more doorways after that, until I wondered if I’d gotten lost, or maybe never really seen the tank at all. Then, at the far end of the darkest room yet, I spotted two murky grown-up figures, one woman and one man.
They didn’t see me. They couldn’t have, because they turned and headed for a different doorway. I somehow knew that if they went through, I’d lose them forever.
I tried to call to them. Even through they were now just a few feet away, they still couldn’t hear my strangled little cry.
I ran toward them, but they only got farther away, like the room was getting longer. The skull’s teeth clicked louder as it narrowed the gap between us.
I dredged up the energy for one last burst of speed. I sprinted until I smacked right into my father’s legs and threw my arms around them. And was sure I’d done what I needed to do to make everything all right.
Fingers tousled my sweaty hair. But they were rougher than they’d ever been before, so rough that it almost hurt. Surprised, I looked up, and that was when I finally managed to get off a real scream.
Because Daddy and Mommy weren’t Daddy and Mommy anymore. They were the skull, too, and their fleshless, glowing faces leered down at me.
I tried to break away, but I was too slow. They grabbed me, shoved me to the floor, and bent over me. The first skull floated down to join them. Then they all opened their jaws wide and started biting me. They ripped away chunks and strips of me and gobbled them up.
It went on and on, while I shrieked and thrashed, straining uselessly to break free. I didn’t have to strain anymore to hold Shadow back. He was gone now, along with any flashes of understanding that what was happening wasn’t real. The nightmare had finally crushed all that out of me.
Then, suddenly, the pain and all the rest of it stopped. I was soaring over Ybor again. Timon was maybe ten feet away. I couldn’t see him clearly. The tears in my eyes blurred everything.