Savage Wonder by Cassie Edwards

Author:Cassie Edwards [Edwards, Cassie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-21T22:00:30+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The eyes glaze once, and that is death.

Impossible to feign

The beads upon the forehead

By homely anguish strung.

Emily Dickinson

Farris awakened to sounds in the house overhead. He heard the creaking of the floorboards and voices. He strained to hear the voices, not recognizing them. There seemed to be a child, a man, and a woman there.

"Maddy?" he whispered, his thoughts fuzzy. "Jaimie?"

But who would the man be?

When the voices grew closer, he knew they were those of people he didn't know. Strangers were in his house!

He flinched when he heard the pattering of a dog's feet just overhead.

He tried to get up, but fell back to the floor, hindered by a fever and an arm and hand swollen twice their size. Moaning, Farris lay on the floor of the cellar, trying to recollect just how he had gotten there, and why his arm was throbbing and hot.

He recalled being shut in the cellar by Maddy, and then something crawling up his shirt sleeve. Forgetting that he had killed it, he once again tried to get up, but again fell back to the floor in pain.

He was suddenly aware that the cellar door was no longer closed. Through a feverish haze he saw light from the kitchen spilling down the steps into the cellar, and then he felt panic seize him when he saw a dog coming down the steps, panting.

''No!" Farris said through clenched teeth when the dog stepped onto the earthen floor of the cellar and began sniffing around.

When the dog discovered Farris, it stopped and stared at him, growled threateningly, showing its sharp teeth. Then it began a loud, incessant barking.

A little girl, who looked to Farris no older than six, hurried down the steps and grabbed the black labrador around its neck. She screamed when she saw Farris lying there.

Farris felt utterly helpless as he lay there until the child's father hurried down to the cellar, a pistol in his right hand, a lantern in his left.

Farris looked blearily at the tall, lanky man as he knelt over him, his pistol laid aside.

"Lord, man, what happened to you?" the stranger gulped out, seeing Farris so helpless and writhing in pain. He gasped when he held the lantern lower and saw the swollen arm. "How did you get down here? What happened to you?"

"Help . . . me . . ." Farris managed in a whisper, his eyes imploring the stranger. "Something bit me. I . . . think . . . it was a spider. I . . . think . . . I'm dying." Then he scowled up at the man. "What . . . are . . . you doing in my house?"

"Me and my family were uprooted by the flood," the stranger said. "We came to ask for a night's lodging. Watching my child and wife sleeping out in the dampness was almost more than I could bear. I saw your house. I came. I knocked. When I didn't get any answer"

"You just let

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