DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

the door with his left hand and gripped his gun firmly with his right.

He staggered back, gagging.

The floor of the cave was covered with blood, a thick red, viscous goo which looked like congealed Jello and smelled like rancid feces. Blood had splashed onto the sides of the wooden casks, and the odor of the blood mingled with the strong aroma of the fermenting vintage was almost overpowering. He pinched his nostrils together with his fingers so he could breathe, and held the door open with his foot. Flung randomly about the cave, on the floor, on top of the casks, against the limestone walls, were the rent and mutilated carcasses of dozens of small animals: squirrels, cats, rats, opossums. In the refracted light let in by the door, he could see peeled fur skin backed by white-veined flesh, discolored and deflated organs clustered about lifelines of arteries and intestines.

There was a quiet pop, the sound of falling liquid, an alcohol blast of scent. Heart racing, he reached around the side wall, feeling the stone with his fingers, searching in vain for a light switch. He peered into the gloom at the far end of the narrow cave, and cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight. “Who’s there?” he called.

There was no answer, but the liquid noise stopped. Now there was another sound.

Chewing.

“Come out now!” he ordered, but his voice was not as strong as it had been.

Monsters.

“Now!”

No answer. Only chewing. A low laugh.

He squinted into the gloom, and, to his horror, his eyes adjusted.

Dwarfish figures were crouched in the shadows against the far wall, low, hairy, misshapen forms clutching long, pointed spears. A tough, cynical part of his mind saw the entire scene in terms of a grocery tabloid headline—Night Watchman Attacked by Trolls—but the more instinctual portion of his brain was making him scream, had let loose the bladder muscle which held back his piss.

Now the shapes were moving, growing, becoming more human, evolving upward through the evolutionary scale until they stood erect. The smells of blood and wine were strong in the air, combined with a familiar underlying muskiness. One of the figures was eating something and threw it in front of him. A partially devoured chipmunk.

Turning, still screaming, trying to run, trying to escape, Ron slipped on the bloody floor. His right foot flew out from under him, twisting painfully, and the door which he’d been holding open with his left foot began to close. In the last few seconds of light, he saw with exaggerated clarity the wet red cement in front of his face, the segment of muscled animal bone beneath his nose.

Desperately in the sudden darkness, he tried to push himself to his feet, tried to pull himself along the floor, but he was not quick enough.

Behind him, the creatures were laughing, screaming, jabbering excitedly.

The first spear entered through his crotch.

12

From ten to twelve, between the crowded first hour and the noon rush, the bank was virtually dead, the only sounds in the light, air-conditioned lobby the relaxed, easy banter of the tellers, the muffled click of calculator keys, and the low drone of the soft rock Muzak which played incessantly over the bank’s ceiling speakers.

April hated this time of day. For most of her coworkers it was the high point of their shift, the time when they could drop the public mask of servile civility, when they could relax and catch up on the bookkeeping or other behind-the-scenes paperwork which kept the bank running smoothly and efficiently. But these two hours always left her feeling bored and restless. Whatever else she was, she was a good loan officer, and she seldom if ever had any extra paperwork or leftover duties to perform. As a result, she usually found herself desperately searching for something to do, some way to look busy. Once she was settled, she knew, things would be different, she would be able to hang a little looser, but for the first few weeks on the job it would not do to look idle in front of her supervisor.

As far as she could tell, her new supervisor was a nice, if rather boring, soul, a family man with framed photos of his overweight wife and two pre-teen daughters set up on his desk. He was dedicated to his job but not fanatic and not overly strict, someone with whom it would be easy to work.

Someone of whom Dion would definitely approve.

It was strange to think that way, to use her son as a behavioral guideline, to mentally consult his taste and beliefs while making simple day-to-day judgments and decisions, but she respected him, she trusted his opinions. Somehow, despite her best unintentional efforts to screw him up, Dion had turned out to be a boy she not only loved but admired, a person with both feet firmly planted on the ground, who knew who he was and where he was going. She was aware of the fact that in many ways their relationship was the inverse of what it was supposed to be. She often looked to him for guidance and support, for strength she did not possess, and though this was something she felt comfortable with, she knew her son did not feel the same way. He would have been happier with a more traditional mother, the kind who offered heartwarming advice while making brownies, the kind who had all the answers all the time and could not only run her own life perfectly but could make sure that the lives of her family ran the same way.

Not the kind of mother she was.

And definitely not the kind she’d had.

All these years later, it was difficult to remember her childhood without seeing it through the socially conscious filter provided by endless TV movies. Her real mother, her biological mother, she could not even remember. She’d been abandoned at birth, and had been passed from foster home to foster home, from uncaring foster mother to uncaring foster mother, suffering