Page 11 (1/2)

“Ah!”

She had crushed the cup Hot coffee all over her arm

Lana eating Her breathing was labored She took a deep breath and it was as if she’d forgotten how until that very moment

It was in her head still, that monster in the mine shaft It had its hook in her Sometimes she was sure she heard its voice A hallucination, surely Surely not the Darkness itself It was round It couldn’t…

Come to me

“I can’t forget it,” she whispered to Patrick “I can’t get away from it”

In the early days after she had coe community of children, Lana had felt almost at peace Ale done, an invisible wound with no specific location except that it was inside her

That unseen, unreal, unhealed wound had reopened She told herself at first that it would go away It would heal A psychic scab would for, why did it hurt rown from faint, distant whisper to insistent murmur?

Come to me I need you

It had words now, that urgent, de voice

“I’ “It’s insidecrazy”

Mary Terrafino woke up She rolled out of bed Morning She should go back to sleep: she was exhausted But she would not fall back to sleep, she knew that She had things to do

First things first, she stumbled to her bathroom and used her bare foot to pull the scale across the tile floor There was a special spot for the scale: aligned with the center of the ht corner of the scale precisely in line with the tile

She removed her sleep shirt and stepped onto the scale

First reading Step off