Amulet of Doom by Bruce Coville

Author:Bruce Coville
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781497668508
Publisher: Open Road Media

12

“HELP ME!”

Despite the horror of it, Marilyn couldn’t tear her own eyes from the gaze of the eye in the amulet. She had a feeling that the amulet had become a bridge of some kind, between her world and this other place, the place from which the eye was looking at her.

This other place filled her with dread. Something spoke to her through the fiery gaze, spoke without words, lashing into her soul with a message that told of thousands of years of waiting, of sorrow, and of anger.

Dimly she could hear the others calling her name. She tried to answer, but could not force her lips to form the words. Frustration began to boil within her, causing her chest to feel painfully full, as if there were a balloon swelling inside.

Once, when she was five or six, Kyle and Geoff had tied her up while they were playing some stupid game. Being unable to move her arms or legs terrified her, and after only a few seconds she had begun to scream.

She had the same sensation now, only it was worse because there was nothing binding her—nothing but the blazing eye of the amulet. She wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the amulet as far from her as possible. She wanted to grab Kyle by the hand and run from this place, fleeing the terror they had found here.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even move her lips to ask for help. Her breathing had become short and shallow, and her throat felt as though there were a Coke bottle wedged in it.

Then she heard the voice—the same rough voice she had heard before, first speaking through Brick, and then through Zenobia’s corpse.

Only now it was whispering.

And it was saying what she longed to say.

Help!

The word blossomed in her mind, where none of the others could hear it, and she thought her heart would break, for it sounded like nothing so much as the cry of a lost child.

A teardrop trickled down the amulet.

Help me, whispered the voice in her mind. Please, help me.

Marilyn had never heard such sorrow, such longing. It made her think of a warm night the previous summer, when she had been lying in the grass behind her house, staring at the stars, and had suddenly started to weep because she wanted so desperately to reach out and touch them. She had actually raised her hands toward the sky, stretching toward the stars. But they were too far, hopelessly far away. She had felt very small then—small, and trapped, and infinitely sad.

She had felt the way this voice sounded.

Help me, it pleaded again.

And for Marilyn, who was so softhearted she had been known to walk out of her way to avoid stepping on bugs, there was only one possible answer:

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll help you.”

A flood of elation seemed to envelop her body. A pleasant warmth surrounded her.

But somewhere in the distance she heard a horrible sound. After a moment she realized it was Kyle, screaming.

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