The Twilight Time by Campbell Karen

Author:Campbell, Karen [Campbell, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

Force (of Order)

be with you

A long, pointed fang. Sharp.

Sharp as steel, dripping with blood and mucus.

He was there again. She was running, running, with that nauseating breath on the back of her neck. Panting, she closed her hands over her bare breasts just before they tore from her lungs. Beside her, in front of her, the black mass swelled, stretched and cracked like a whip, before falling on her to tear her apart.

A huge, gaping mouth, bristling with stinking fangs ...

Caught between sleep and wakefulness, Anna saw the face of the specter in all the bottles around her. It was at first a shadow which all his efforts to ignore it only gave substance. Half-man (a man paralyzed with terror), half-monster - a scaly-skinned demon whose scabs spread their network of scales down to her own forehead, in an impatient, wicked wing notched with a black streak , only one, which was spreading on his cheek. That face that refused to disappear was embedded behind her eyes when she blinked, superimposed on the body kicking her in the dark. He persisted on her to the point of throwing her into unconsciousness, with razors for hands, razors for feet, so many salty blades that sent her their bitter kiss.

All this, she saw it without feeling it. As in an autopsy performed by silent pathologists surrounded by sanitized steel, when you see the cold pressure of the blade increasing on the skin which creases under the edge of the scalpel, just before hearing the tiny screeching of the blade. 'incision. But what poor Linda had felt, no one could feel. This astonishing sensation of the draft on the skin which splits, while the tissues roll up, exposing their depths, and overflow in thick, stringy layers, dissociated from the martyred flesh.

Anna's pain was duller. It was that of the bones that come together, of the scattered, bruised areas where the blood stagnates, unable to flow. Pockets where it coagulates before being absorbed. Ezra must have endured a cocktail of both: the muffled shock of the blows, followed by the sharp pain of the broken bone puncturing the tissue. Had they canceled each other out, in a kind of shock? Wasn't that what his own body was doing now, surrounding itself in a protective cocoon of bubble wrap?

She let out a roar and, in a desperate effort, ducked her head into the cushions, once, twice, in an attempt to break through those strata of lethargy. The second time around, she stiffened, suddenly aware of the presence of a very real face watching her through the rain-spotted living room window. With a mouth that articulated inaudible words.

It was Cath Worth, waving her hand like a foolish old woman. How long had she been there? Anna closed her eyes as tightly as she should have done for her curtains.

A call, shouted through the mailbox:

- Anna! It's me, Cath ... Did you have a relapse?

Hell, couldn't she bawl louder? The whole neighborhood was going to know… Anna dragged herself down the hall.

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