Third Eye, The by Duncan Lois

Author:Duncan, Lois [Duncan, Lois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Juvenile, Thriller
ISBN: 9780316202930
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 1984-01-19T02:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

The awareness of the pain came as slowly as the fall itself had. At first it was dull and far, like a memory of something that had not really occurred. Numbed and safe in her padded prison of semiconsciousness, Karen heard the sound of it humming away in the distance like a huge bumblebee, unable to find its way out of the thickets and into the garden of her mind.

Lying motionless with her eyes squeezed closed, she waited for the inevitable moment at which sensation would come flooding in. The buzzing drew nearer, and the pain sharpened and began to find its focus in her left temple. Somewhere in her mind’s garden, a child was playing—the airy, spindrift, butterfly child whom she had met in dreams.

I must protect her! Karen told herself. I must keep the bee away!

She could hear the terrible flapping of the wide, sweeping wings now, as pain came closer, pounding the thick air with a sound like drumrolls. Then it was upon her! It exploded into her consciousness with a stinging siren shriek that seemed to shatter her brain.

She tried to scream, but she couldn’t. The unuttered cry backed up in her throat and threatened to strangle her. The pain’s force swept her to the brink of consciousness, and she teetered there precariously. Reluctant to face the realities that lay before her, she reached frantically behind her to clutch at the last slim hope of oblivion.

If you don’t wake up, the child will not live!

There was no one there to speak the words, and yet she heard them clearly. If she had not known better, she might even have thought that the voice was her mother’s. Whatever its source, she accepted the validity of the statement; if she gave way to the temptation to slide back into comforting darkness, the little girl would be lost.

There was no choice.

With a wrenching effort, Karen forced open her eyes. She was lying, as she had known she would be, on the floor of the kitchen of one of the units in the Tumbleweed Apartments. Her first impression was of a soot-streaked ceiling swaying uncertainly above her. An unadorned lightbulb was suspended at its center, and beyond that, positioned over the doorway, there was a smoke alarm. The ceiling kept dipping and rippling like a wind-tossed awning, and the bulb lurched drunkenly. The smoke alarm looked like a straining black eye that could not quite seem to get itself into focus.

Karen closed her own eyes and then reopened them, willing the world to stabilize around her. Her head was throbbing with pain. Mercifully, the light in the room was dim; the only source of illumination was a window above the sink, and over that someone had pulled a curtain. The daylight that did seep in was so diffused by the gauzy material that it was difficult to ascertain the color of the kitchen walls. Eventually, as her eyes became better adjusted, Karen decided that they must be yellow and that the slick, dark areas were grease.

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