Hide and Seek

I had a brief impression of a large empty room with high rugged

ceilings

Pillars in the soft rock from roof to floor, pulled thin in the

middle

I ike strands of taffy Gleaming, dripping.

And Casey.

Propped up against one of them fifteen feet away from us, her bloodied

legs spread wide apart, their angle enclosing us within. Her eyes

wide, unblinking, flickering like candles in a wind. Seeing her a

punch to the solar plexus, a blinding physical shock.

For a moment I simply reeled.

It crouched beside her, its long black bony back to us. I could see

its head rise and fall with the lunge of backbone and muzzle and hear

the snap of teeth as it worried her.

Her eyes stared through it- through us too- boring back through the

tunnel and cellar and house into the woods beyond. At some point she'd

put on the army shirt. Now it was torn off completely at the shoulder

and dark with blood. There was blood on the blue halter beneath it and

more on the cream shorts and across her legs and naked stomach. Her

face was very pale.

The huge black dog lunged out of its crouch and snapped at her, very

near her face. A sound like the clap of two heavy sticks of hardwood.

Her pale blue eyes skittered like trapped birds.

For a moment we froze there.