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Well, I was glad it wasn’t a proble the shop, but a chill rolled overthat firstin Mexico City I shivered and tried to convincefor me didn’t necessarily qualify as sinister

"Looking forparticular?" I asked in Spanish

"Looking for you" He stressed the last word

"What did he look like?" The tightness in er

"I don’t know," he said, sounding a trifle iled in the background, telling o I felt a little better, knowing that I’d have somewhere to return to, provided I survived However, I couldn’t write off round eighteen o

Just then, Butch saw a cute poodle with a rhinestone studded collar and tugged on his leash, disrupting , and we’re gone," I warned him

They smelled each other’s butts, but then the poodle’s owner pulled her aith a sniff and stalked in the opposite direction

I gave hih for you anyway"

The park killed an hour, during which tiave Butch a drink and fed hiet dark We walked along the sidewalk, enjoying the sunset despite the stillness in the air Slowly I registered wrongness Where was the wind? The birds?

Oh, shit

I recognized this stillness

So bad was about to happen

Butch barked as if to warn me but I already knew Quickly I scooped hiht us around don and out near the cemetery It was an old place, full of dead heroes

The Mustang was a good mile away, so I’d face whatever came without an escape route and without backup

Dank mist rolled in, more suited to London than San Antonio The power required to twist the weather like this must be astrono a few days ago If anything he, whoever he was, seeer I couldn’t see to et myself run over if I tried to cross the street Blind, I tried to retraceherded

When I passed between the iron gates into the cemetery proper, I froze This wasn’t a New Orleans-style place with aboveground vaults Most graves possessed a modest marker, maybe a statue and some flowers I couldn’t make out much between the mist and the dark

From utter stillness a fetid wind rose The air stank of death and decay The prickling sensation of unseen eyes sparked ht reaction, and God kneasn’t a warrior on ht coed between the headstones There was no rational explanation for the fear spiking through me, the kind of visceral terror a child feels alone in her rooh to check the closet for her and when calling outworse than whatever lurks in the dark

Monstrous shapes loo skeleton that becaainstrepulsive residue My heart pounded in et me And I hadn’t felt like this since my mother shoved me out our back door with an awful look in her eyes

In the dead cal There had to be other people around, people who could help or at least report what becah I existed in a space separate from the sidewalk surely just a few yards away on the other side of the black iron fence

Sobbing for breath, I ran until I nearly pitched into an open grave For what seee and finally threwbeneath my feet I came up on my hands and knees, liberally smeared with mud No birds No insects

Inside this dead zone, there was onlyfor us

A shudder washed over me like a dead man’s kiss But it was more than a simple chill All around me, the temperature dropped, so that when I exhaled, I could see my own breath I literally couldn’t nized the deer-in-headlights feeling, but I couldn’t fight it as darkness seeped out of the fog I’d never seen anything like it, but it felt as though it sapped the life out of everything around it Diht of what Maris had said about shadows that ate her up Heat and light vanished in its proxi a dense blackness that crackled with cold

I could feelas it approached The shade didn’t seem in any hurry Inside I screa in my own defense Tears froze in my eyes, and I wondered what I’d look like when they found me

Frozen woman found in cemetery, film at eleven

Or would my torn flesh look like Maris’s?