Earthly Worlds by Billy Wright
Author:Billy Wright [Wright, Billy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781734777000
Published: 2020-04-06T22:00:00+00:00
Chapter Twenty-One
Stewart froze, blinking in confusion.
The orange glow of the fire’s coals glimmered in the doll’s polished eyes, eyes that were at once cold blue glass but somehow full of intelligence.
“Stewart, what’s happening?” Liz’s voice, close to panic, was nearby but the doll’s blank face filled his vision.
The point of the needle hovered, just out of focus, an inch from his eye.
The hot, pulsating rage of his dream began to fade, but slowly. He wanted to seize the doll and smash it against a boulder, but he didn’t dare. The thing was too fast.
“What do you want?” he said, holding stock still.
But the doll didn’t speak, its face a porcelain mask.
“Daddy, you were scaring us,” Cassie said.
“Yeah, you sounded like a monster,” Hunter said.
“Stewart, I think the doll is protecting us. From you.”
He gasped as his stomach filled with lead, steel cables cinching around his chest, cutting off his breath. “Oh, no.” It came out as whispering wheeze. “What did I do?”
Liz’s voice quavered. “Uh, you were yelling, and grabbing handfuls of grass like you were tearing something to shreds, waving your arms and...”
“Daddy, you almost knocked me into the fire,” Cassie peeped, on the verge of crying.
His mouth fell open as the nausea of self-loathing washed over him. The fury of the dream, the vividness of it, the fun of it, slashed an open wound in his psyche. He had enjoyed destroying his tormentors. He had reveled in the freedom of letting the shackles of propriety and civilization fall away to release the ferocity of righteous retribution for all the wrongs he had suffered. In his childhood, there had been so many. Liz and the kids had soothed those, let him bury those old hurts, but it was as if something had shaken up a soda bottle, disturbing all the sediment of long-buried wrongs, and uncorked it. But it released acid and fire.
The uncertainty in Liz’s voiced cinched his chest tighter. If she ever for a second thought he would hurt the children, it would kill him.
His voice cracked, “I’m so sorry, Cassie baby, I was having a terrible dream. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Even as he said the words, he clenched his teeth at the tears of guilt. He hated violence against women or children, hated anyone who committed such acts, so the mere thought of hurting her, even accidentally, filled him with such shame and guilt he wanted to die. “I would never hurt you! Any of you!”
“Please don’t hurt my daddy!” Cassie said. “He didn’t mean it!”
But the doll did not move. The needle’s point did not waver.
Then an unfamiliar voice spoke, a small voice. “That’ll be quite enough now, lassies.”
The doll on Stewart’s face eased back. Its expression had not changed, could not change, but it released him and did a back flip onto the ground between his knees. Quick as a blink, the needle disappeared somewhere within its dress.
But then he saw the second doll, poised behind his back to thrust a needle into his kidney.
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