Billy smiled and mimed his hands into a book shape, snapping it open
and closed.
“Was I reading you a book earlier, Billy?”
Billy slapped his hands together again, his shadowed face now
solemn. “You let me stay in your egg. You promised another book.”
Her skin turned cold as she looked around, afraid but also eager
to see a familiar shape lingering in the darkening land, a figure to mirror
her every move. She thought of Star, her bead-black eyes, and shuddered.
“I had to kill it,” Old Edith urged whenever prompted, whenever
someone stooped low enough to ask. Her eyes widened, the whites of
them making miniature islands of her pale blue irises. “It wanted to take
over my life.”
Sylvie drove hard through the thick night, the highway flashing
underneath her. Taillights glowed in front of her like angry red eyes.
Behind her, in the closest reach of the tractor-trailer, she imagined the
body sliding gently from side to side with each curve of the road, the
sound rhythmic and good.
She licked her dry lips.
It was hiding in the stables, just like Edith’s, face pressed against a
stall corner. And like Edith, Sylvie crept toward it armed and rea G