Read Online Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection by Charles De Lint, John Jude Palencar - Free Book Online Page A

were horse-drawn, rather than horse-powered.
    “You’ll wear a hole in the glass if you keep staring through it so intently.”
    Jilly started. She turned long enough to acknowledge her hostess’s presence, then her gaze was dragged back to the window, to the shadows cast by the oaks as twilight stretched them across the lawn, to the long low wall that bordered the lawn, to the street beyond.
    Still no skookin. Did that mean they didn’t exist, or that they hadn’t come out yet? Or maybe they just hadn’t tracked her here to the Kelledys’ house.
    She started again as Meran laid a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her from the window.
    “Who knows what you’ll call to us, staring so,” Meran said.
    Her voice held the same light tone as it had when she’d made her earlier comment, but this time a certain sense of caution lay behind the words.
    “If they come, I want to see them,” Jilly said.
    Meran nodded. “I understand. But remember this: the night’s a magical time. The moon rules her hours, not the sun.”

    “What does that mean?”
    “The moon likes secrets,” Meran said. “And secret things. She lets mysteries bleed into her shadows and leaves us to ask whether they originated from otherworlds, or from our own imaginations.”
    “You’re beginning to sound like Bramley,” Jilly said. “Or Christy.”
    “Remember your Shakespeare,” Meran said. “‘This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool.’ Did you ever think that perhaps their studied eccentricity protects them from sharper ridicule?”
    “You mean all those things Christy writes about are true?”
    “ I didn’t say that.”
    Jilly shook her head. “No. But you’re talking in riddles just like a wizard out of some fairy tale. I never understood why they couldn’t talk plainly.”
    “That’s because some things can only be approached from the side. Secretively. Peripherally.”
    Whatever Jilly was about to say next, died stillborn. She pointed out the window to where the lawn was almost swallowed by shad-ows.
    “Do ...” She swallowed thickly, then tried again. “Do you see them?”
    They were out there, flitting between the wall that bordered the Kelledys’ property and those tall oaks that stood closer to the house. Shadow shapes. Fat, pumpkin-bodied and twig-limbed. There were more of them than there’d been last night. And they were bolder. Creeping right up towards the house.
    Threats burning in their candle-flicker eyes. Wide mouths open in jack-o’-lantern grins, revealing rows of pointed teeth.
    One came sidling right up to the window, its face monstrous at such close proximity. Jilly couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. She remembered what Meran had said earlier they can’t abide the truth
    —but she couldn’t frame a sentence, never mind a word, and her mind was filled with only a wild unreasoning panic. The creature reached out a hand towards the glass, clawed fingers extended. Jilly could feel a scream building up, deep inside her. In a moment that hand would come crashing through the window, shattering glass, clawing at her throat. And she couldn’t move. All she could do was stare, stare as the claws reached for the glass, stare as it drew back to
    Something fell between the creature and the house—a swooping, shapeless thing. The creature danced back, saw that it was only the bough of one of the oak trees and was about to begin its approach once more, but the cries of its companions distracted it. Not until it turned its horrible gaze from her, did Jilly feel able to lift her own head.
    She stared at the oaks. A sudden wind had sprung up, lashing the boughs about so that the tall trees appeared to be giants, flailing about their many-limbed arms like monstrous, agitated octopi. The creatures in the yard scattered and in moments they were gone—each and every one of them. The wind died down; the animated giants became just oak trees once more.
    Jilly turned slowly from the window to find Meran