HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels
Page 52
"There's a wise saying..." She placed a hand on his arm to make sure he would listen. "'There are no intruders or strangers in the world. A man at times is a shapeless pygmy that walks asleep in the mist.' That's what your kind does. I had to teach my sister to wake from her sleep, to dispel the mist so she could decide between right and wrong. So must you, my friend."
He saw the moon now kissed the edge of the horizon. It was sinking fast, taking with it the night, taking away his courage and replacing it with regret, taking his strength, and giving him back the weak limbs of a gangly boy. He raised an arm and saw his long delicate fingers emerging from the rounded paw. His fingers were small in comparison to the great claws that had been his only hours earlier. He felt his muscles shrinking in his arms, and the cover of fur vanishing even as he watched. He felt of his face and found it smooth, hairless, flat and small. Human again.
He hung his head in overwhelming grief. Not for the killing he had done. But for the freedom and animal thrill he had felt for so few scant moments of time.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know the sorrow morning brings. You see, my sister accidentally made me a beast the same as she. Would you come with me to meet my sister and the others? There's a group of us on the train. About every six months we migrate from the lower Americas northward. We're on our way to Alaska where it's sparsely populated. And there are still wild things to eat."
Joey looked at her, at Marta, and saw the faintest layer of dark down on her cheeks. It slowly disappeared as the light of dawn changed from dim yellow to rose in the sky.
"Will you come? Will you join us or go on living this way, taking down the innocent along with the guilty?"
He should go with her. Maybe it would be all right, after all. He had found another family, a better one. As the engine whistled a warning up ahead and the land blew past the train, Joey took Marta's arm and climbed over the safety rail into the cabin of the passenger car. In there he would find others escaping their pygmy selves lost in the mist and learn from them how to do it, how to control the rage, the destruction, the indiscriminate killing.
Also--and this thought buoyed him--he didn't think there would be farms in Alaska. And, moreover, there was night there that lasted for months on end.
He growled low, ran his tongue over his lips. When Marta patted his arm, he tried to smile in a way that hid the power lurking inside.
The train whistle screamed. The scream hung in the air like a promise.
And Joey shuffled behind Marta into the shadowy passenger car, feeling good again, feeling free, his smile as predatory as an animal's. He would make Marta sorry she had brought him along, he knew that deep down inside where truth lives. He would make her and the others sorry.
He would make them scream.
THE END
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