Wild Things by Christopher Golden

Author:Christopher Golden [Golden, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult / Teens, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780743403672
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 1178134
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2002-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

Courtney sat in her bedroom with the phone cradled against her ear and listened to the hollow ringing on the other end. All day long she had tried to occupy her mind with thoughts of anything other than Bill and yet the world had seemed unwilling to cooperate. Business was slow that day, and the staff was more than capable of handling the flow. The passing seconds, minutes, hours had seemed empty and endless to her without crisis to fill them. Each time the phone rang, her ears perked up, her eyes ticked toward the sound and she uttered a small, expectant noise no one else could hear.

Bill had never called. Time and again, as the day passed, she assured herself it was only that Bill was in the midst of his search, that some lead or another had distracted him from checking in. Excruciatingly, the lunch hour passed and the long afternoon dragged on and the dinner crowd appeared. Some of the regulars at the bar asked after Bill. With each tick of the clock her reassurances began to seem less and less plausible.

Panic had threatened so many times and she had beaten it back, denied it as childishness. Bill was more than capable of taking care of himself. Courtney was a grown woman, responsible and secure, and not given to indulging in mercurial emotion.

But Bill's words the day before had been "talk to you in the morning."

Talk to you in the morning.

And the dinner crowd was already thinning.

Talk to you in the morning.

So even though she did not want her brother to think she was overreacting, she had left the pub and come up to the apartment to sit at the desk in her bedroom and call Jack on his cell phone.

Talk to you in the morning.

It was ringing. The room was scented with a citrus aroma from Courtney's hand lotion, and beneath it a masculine odor that was Bill's smell. Hanging over the edge of the bed was a New England Patriots sweatshirt with a few paint stains on it that she had borrowed from him when she redecorated her room. It had been cleaned many times but she could still feel him in it.

Her gaze was roaming about the room, darting from one spot to another. The closet, the carefully made bed, the bulletin boards, the computer, the news stories taped to the walls. Mutilation murders, child disappearances, urban myths, and though for the most part they did not mention Prowlers, still to her eyes each piece of paper said Prowlers, Prowlers, Prowlers.

Lost in thought, she barely listened to the phone ring. And ring. And ring. It was several moments before it struck her how empty and hollow it sounded. Third ring. Fourth ring.

The dread that had spread out inside her throughout the day blossomed in full then. Normally that apartment was abuzz. Even empty, it echoed with the lives of the people she loved. Now the place felt enormous and hideous around her, far too

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