Your Turn to Suffer Tim Waggoner (online e book reading .TXT) 📖

At first there were only a few dozen, but more appeared, hundreds, thousands, maybe millions. They floated toward each other, packed tight together, and formed a single mass shaped roughly like a sphere. They rose into the air slowly, and their combined light illuminated the area around Lori in crimson. She was able to make out her surroundings, and she saw that her initial impression had been correct. She stood in a large open area like an auditorium, except instead of rows of seats surrounding her, there was an upward curving spiral ledge that circled around the chamber’s wall.

I’m within the horn’s inner core, she thought.

And she wasn’t alone.

The Driver was there with her, although he’d continued walking as the firebabies appeared. Now he stood next to the far wall opposite her. He had turned around and faced her, his red-washed features devoid of any emotion. He was far from the only robed figure in attendance, however. Others stood on the spiral ledge, shoulder to shoulder, all facing her. Their numbers began at floor level and continued upward, one after the other, around and around, going on so far that the mass of firebabies – which now hovered directly above Lori – couldn’t illuminate them all. The firebabies’ eyelight was more like that of smoldering red coals than a blazing inferno, and because of this, she couldn’t clearly make out the faces of the robed figures, even those close to ground level. But the shapes of their bodies varied widely, some looking perfectly human, others looking like…something else. Things whose limbs were too long, too short, too numerous, or more like animal or insect appendages. Their faces – what she could see of them in this light – were similarly twisted and alien. And while she couldn’t see it, she felt confident that all of the red-robed figures had one feature in common – a crimson-painted pinky nail on their left hand. She wondered if the goat-eyed woman was among those assembled here. The gill-necked police officer, too. She didn’t spot them, but she thought they might be here, watching her with the same cold, silent scrutiny as the others.

She heard a voice then, or rather a multitude of voices, speaking in unison.

“Confess.”

The word reverberated throughout the chamber, and Lori winced at the accusatory anger behind it.

They’re speaking through the firebabies, she thought. She knew what word was next.

“Atone.”

Louder this time, angrier. The sound hurt her ears, the pain like that of a seriously bad ear infection. She clapped her hands over her ears to protect them, but the sound of her doing so sent fresh bolts of pain shooting deep into her ear canals, and she moaned. She gritted her teeth then, and pressed her hands tighter against her ears, not giving a damn if it hurt. She knew another two words were coming.

“OR SUFFER!”

This time the chorus of infant voices seemed to come from inside her brain, and the resulting pain of their furious shout caused her to release a scream of agony. She fell to her knees, hands still pressed against her head, as if to keep it from exploding. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she could no longer see them – the members of the Cabal – but she could feel the weight of their scrutiny on her, as if they were waiting for her to give them the response they were seeking. The problem was, she had no idea what that response might be.

The firebabies’ combined voices seemed to echo forever in the auditorium, but eventually they faded. When they were finally gone, the pain in Lori’s head – far worse than any migraine she’d experienced – began to lessen. She lowered her hands and opened her eyes. She rose to her feet, weak and shaky. She spoke then, raising her voice so the assembled Cabal members could hear her, although she had a feeling that she could whisper or even merely think her words, and they would all be able to hear her just fine.

“What is it that you think I’ve done?”

The firebabies remained silent as the Cabal gazed at her, faces impassive. She felt tears of frustration building and as they began sliding down her cheeks, she cried out.

“How can I confess if I don’t know what I’ve fucking done?”

Still no response.

She looked to the Driver. He stood near the bottom of the spiral ledge, where it curved down to meet the floor. She went to him, trying to run but too weak and lightheaded to manage more than a fast shuffle. He said nothing as she drew near, but she saw that the patches of skin over where his eyes should’ve been were pulsating more rapidly than they had been earlier. She didn’t know what, if anything, this might mean.

When she reached the Driver, she almost reached out to grab his arms, intending to shake him, as she demanded to know what the other crimson-robed men and women wanted from her. But at the last instant, she restrained herself. She sensed that touching the Driver would not be safe. Why this should be, she didn’t know, and she preferred not to find out.

“Please, can you tell me what’s going on? Why am I here? What do these—” she hesitated a second before continuing, “—people want?”

She hoped he would answer her. He’d spoken to her in the car with his own voice, so she knew he didn’t need to speak through the mass of firebabies. Like the other members of the Cabal, his expression had been detached, almost clinical, up to this point. Then, without warning, the Driver slapped her. The strike was too swift for her to avoid, the impact so strong that it drove her to her knees. The pain hit her an instant later. It felt as if her jaw was aflame and she wondered if it was broken. She tried to look up at the Driver, but her vision had blurred out of focus, and she could