Shining in the Dark by Hans-Åke Lilja

Author:Hans-Åke Lilja
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2019-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

At the words, Chip began to stir. Johnny’s voice found him again and he called out to his friend. “Chip, get up, you’ve gotta get outta there!”

“What?” Chip asked from behind the glass, pulling himself to a sitting position and rubbing the front of his head. His voice was muffled, sounding far-off and unreal.

“Get out of there!” Johnny said, breaking from the door and running over to the glass. Then, for a second, the room was in darkness again. Johnny stopped, and the light came back on. He stood for a second between door and glass, and it happened again, faster this time. The lights flicked off, then on. Faster: off, on, off on, off on, off on.

Strobe lights? Johnny thought, thinking back to the ones his school used when the fifth graders did Pirates of Penzance last year. What…?

He looked up at the lights, trying to focus. A small trapdoor opened in the ceiling, in between two of the lights. A pair of swift hands came into view holding a large canvas bag. The hands let the bag drop, and it landed next to Chip with a floomph sound.

Then, Johnny realized. He saw.

From the bag, a lone moth twittered out. Soon, a second followed, then a third, then a dozen. Chip, who seemed to still be coming back to himself, stared at the bag in horror. More moths flew up and out toward the strobe lights. Chip leapt up from the floor and began to scream. Johnny ran up to the glass and put his palms on the cool surface of one of the doors, trying to move it either way. It was impossible; the doors were too heavy.

Another canvas bag dropped from the ceiling, and more moths swarmed out. In the flickering, disorienting light, the moths seemed to be jerking back and forth instead of flying. Chip ran back and forth, screaming, seeming to be pantomiming in quick-flash statue-poses. Johnny banged on the glass. “Let him out! Please let him out!”

The haunting, disembodied voice of LaRue spoke up.

“My pets are hungry, can’t you see

it’s really very funny

’cause when they’re through with a Chip or two

they might make room for Johnny!”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.