another one bites the dust rard

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.“Cool,” I whispered.“I don’t know,” said Cassandra.“I’m thinking more along the lines of stomach churning.” She stared at Bergman, who’d dug out another pen and used it to roll the spiked tongue out of the monster’s mouth.“What does the Enkyklios say about that?” he asked, his eyes shifting to the multileveled collection of bluish gold orbs in Cassandra’s hand.“Nothing yet,” she answered defensively, “but it will.Propheneum,” she said sharply.A single orb rolled to the top of the marble plateau.She began reciting the battle as she’d witnessed it, asking me for details here and there.When she’d finished, Cassandra said, “Daya ango le che le, Enkyklios occsallio terat.” The marbles rearranged themselves, always touching, never falling, until a new globe sat on top of the plateau with the one we’d just recorded my story into.“What did you just do?” Bergman asked, his eyes darting from the Enkyklios to Cassandra as if one or both of them might suddenly explode.“Cross-referencing,” she said shortly.“Now we will see what is already on record.” She touched the new orb, pressing hard enough to make a temporary indent, and said, “Dayavatem.” Then she held the magical library at arm’s length while the home movies began.At first, all we saw was a blinking light, as if the orb’s eyelids were just fluttering open.Then, voila, full color and sound poured from it, the images so detailed it didn’t seem like she should be able to hold them in her hands.Dark gray clouds scudded across the sky.A wild wind tossed the green-leafed trees, making them look as grim as the elderly couple who bumped along the rutted road in their fancy carriage.Had they just come from a funeral? Their black clothing led me to think so, though for all I knew they’d dressed for the opera.Suddenly the gentleman reigned in the horses and both he and the wife looked to their left, a dawning horror stretching their faces.As if sensing my frustration, the cause of their consternation came into view.A mounted bandit wearing a black tricorn.His dirty brown jacket covered a stained white shirt and even more blemished brown breeches, and his battered riding boots were falling apart at the seams.He brandished a rusted gun that seemed more likely to blow his own hand off than injure the person it threatened.A dirty red kerchief hid the lower third of his face.“Gimme yer valuables!” he snarled.The couple snapped to, laying a load of jewelry and cash into the hat he held out to them.He had to lean over to collect his loot, and when he sat back up in the saddle the kerchief slipped off his face.“Randy,” gasped the woman, “how could you?”“Goddammit!” swore the bandit.“Now I have ter kill ye!”The old man stood up.“No, wait!”Randy leveled his gun, but before he could fire, another rider came into view, pulling up so hard that clods of dirt flew and a cloud of dust lifted at his arrival.He’d run his horse so fast its sweat-soaked flanks heaved as it panted for air.The man himself looked harmless enough.If you had to pick him out of a lineup you’d say, “No, he couldn’t have beaten that poor woman over the head with a tire iron.He must be the desk sergeant you slipped in there to fool the witness.” He did have the broad-shouldered, straight-faced, lean-on-me look of the dependable cop.But when he turned his head to wink at the old folks, it blurred, as if another face hid behind the one he showed the world.“Who er you?” Randy demanded.The man grinned, exposing crooked yellow teeth and a hint of something horrid lurking behind them.“My name is Frederick Wyatt, and I am a great admirer of yours.Ah, Randy”—he rolled the R around his mouth as if it tasted like chocolate—“someday you will provide me with such pleasures.But just now, I have a job to do.So off with you.Shoo!” He smiled as a third eye opened in the middle of his forehead, making Randy scream like a kid in a haunted house.The bandit wheeled his horse around and galloped away.When Wyatt turned to the couple, that extra sphere rolling gleefully in its socket as it beheld their terrified faces, I thought the old guy was going to have a heart attack.He slapped his right hand to his chest and fell back in his seat, his hat flying out the rear of the carriage as his wife screamed and screamed.“Shut up, you old bat!” Wyatt kicked his horse forward so he could slap her across the face, leaving a thin line of blood on her cheekbone.It didn’t work.She just shrieked louder.“Run, Joshua, run! It is Satan made flesh!” They rolled out of their seats onto the floor of the carriage.From there they dropped to the ground.But Wyatt hemmed them in with his horse, edging those sharpened steel hooves close enough to keep them pinned beside the back wheel.“I feel I must correct you,” he said.“I am, in fact, only a servant of the Great Taker.Though we reavers are his favorites.” He chuckled fondly as he dismounted.I expected the horse to wander off, but it stayed close, dripping globs of sweat and stringy bits of spit all over Joshua’s bald head.The reaver went to the old gal and lifted her by the scruff of the neck.“Now, you stop flailing and shut it tight, or I’ll rip your lungs out and call it self-defense,” he said, throwing her back into the carriage and returning for her husband.The picture froze just as Wyatt sunk his hands/claws into Joshua’s chest.“I fainted then,” said the tired, hopeless voice of Joshua’s widow.“The next thing I knew.”Wyatt had remounted.Joshua’s body lay across his legs, his chest torn open, his soul struggling for freedom as the reaver bent to run his spiked tongue over it.As I’d just witnessed, the soul slowly drained of color even as the reaver’s third eye filled.In the end, the husk of Joshua’s soul disintegrated, falling back into his body, which jerked eerily at the impact.Another fade to black, this time with no accompanying narration.Poor woman.My mind would supply no other thought.Poor, poor woman.When she came to again, the woman had been moved, along with her carriage, to the site of an old, abandoned cemetery.Tombstones peered through long tufts of grass.Most of them leaned hard to the left, as if a gigantic pissed-off chess player had tried to clear the board before stomping off into the hills beyond.Wyatt spurred his horse to the middle of the stones, reached into the corpse’s chest, yanked out the heart, and fastballed it at a vine-covered tree stump.When the vines blackened and crumbled, I realized the stump was actually a tall, spire-shaped monument.The woman hadn’t made a sound since the reaver’s threat to her life.In fact, I figured she was nearly catatonic by now.But when the heart hit that stone and shattered, and the etchings began to ooze thick gobbets of blood down the white marble, she moaned like a dying animal.I reluctantly acknowledged a growing feeling of we’re-so-screwed as my hands itched for my playing cards.I’d left them in the RV.For the last time, I vowed.This is some sick shit we’ve stepped into.As soon as the blood touched the ground it solidified, growing, building into a fence, a wall, an arched doorway that pulsed like a gigantic aorta.The reaver rode up to it, tossing Joshua’s body aside as he went [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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