Read Online Experiment in Terror 09 Dust to Dust by Karina Halle - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Karina Halle
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man’s voice said, though in my panic and confusion I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
I’ll ward them off if you take me with you
.
“Get off of me!” I screamed and the roach only dug its claws in deeper, filling my chest with shards of pain. Grimacing, I had no choice but to put my hand around the jagged, hard-backed shell, my fingers sliding along the pulsing veins of the optic nerve.
I yanked it off and threw it far away just as his other eye came crawling toward me. Without thinking I raised my foot and smashed the creature beneath my Chucks. The eyeball was resistant for a second before the pressure caused it to splatter into slimy goo beneath my sole. Somewhere, the man was screaming.
I went back to running, slipping slightly on the eyeball residue. Whether he could stop the oversized spiders, with their hundreds of one-inch eyes and forearm sized legs, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to chance it. The dead were known to lie.
Finally I found myself at Bryant Park and whipped past the bench that Maximus and Ada would have been sitting at. I knew they weren’t there though, I knew they had moved on. The question was, where?
The toilets didn’t exist in the Veil side of the world, for one reason or another, so I had to kind of guess where they would be. I looked around, up and down, for any signs of weakness in the air, any shimmers or wavers, but couldn’t see anything.
Don’t panic
, I told myself, though the reminder was ridiculous. Of course I was panicking. I used to have panic attacks over making phone calls to Pizza Hut.
And, I wasn’t alone. The man was still screaming over his loss of eyes and was out there – sightless but angry. And the spiders, well it seemed I had lost them for the moment but I knew it was a matter of time before they’d catch up. They too wished to come out to the other side. Or to eat me. I had a feeling they wouldn’t be too fussy about it.
“Ada!” I yelled, knowing that I’d already attracted enough attention already. “Ada I’m here, I’m going to come through.”
But try as I did, I could not get the air to shift. I closed my eyes, concentrating until my head felt like it was going to explode. I focused off and on, pretending I was looking at one of those Magic Eye painting that were everywhere in the nineties, but even that didn’t work.
Shit, shit, shit. Why wasn’t it working? Was I just not trying hard enough?
I took in a deep breath and attempted to count backward from ten. When I came through from the other side earlier, I felt I had time on my side. Here I didn’t. I needed to relax and trust that it would happen. I needed to calm the fuck down.
I only got as far as four though when I heard the scratching sound of overgrown spider legs, a sound I hoped I’d never hear again. I looked over my shoulder to see five of them coming around the corner, heading straight for me, all their eyes on their prize, their pincers clicking against each other as if they were imagining eating me already.
Fuck this shit. I let out a small cry, knowing that it would be impossible now for me to escape. I swatted at the air, tears threatening to spill down my face. I was so close to Dex, so close to my world, our life, and I was going to get stuck here.
The spiders began to give off a low, guttural growl, like a drooling dog on the attack. I looked behind at them again. At their pace, they’d be at me in ten seconds. I glanced around for plan B – did I even have enough time to find a weapon to fight them off? – when I saw yet another problem.
A creature emerged from the side of one of the buildings. She might have been a woman in another life, but here she could barely be called that. She pulled herself along the sidewalk, the lower part of her severed off, guts trailing behind her like a flowing tail.
Her head was on backward. I could see bald patches through her ratty, dark hair, as she crawled toward me, skeletal arms and fingers reaching my way,
I’ll ward them off if you take me with you
.
“Get off of me!” I screamed and the roach only dug its claws in deeper, filling my chest with shards of pain. Grimacing, I had no choice but to put my hand around the jagged, hard-backed shell, my fingers sliding along the pulsing veins of the optic nerve.
I yanked it off and threw it far away just as his other eye came crawling toward me. Without thinking I raised my foot and smashed the creature beneath my Chucks. The eyeball was resistant for a second before the pressure caused it to splatter into slimy goo beneath my sole. Somewhere, the man was screaming.
I went back to running, slipping slightly on the eyeball residue. Whether he could stop the oversized spiders, with their hundreds of one-inch eyes and forearm sized legs, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to chance it. The dead were known to lie.
Finally I found myself at Bryant Park and whipped past the bench that Maximus and Ada would have been sitting at. I knew they weren’t there though, I knew they had moved on. The question was, where?
The toilets didn’t exist in the Veil side of the world, for one reason or another, so I had to kind of guess where they would be. I looked around, up and down, for any signs of weakness in the air, any shimmers or wavers, but couldn’t see anything.
Don’t panic
, I told myself, though the reminder was ridiculous. Of course I was panicking. I used to have panic attacks over making phone calls to Pizza Hut.
And, I wasn’t alone. The man was still screaming over his loss of eyes and was out there – sightless but angry. And the spiders, well it seemed I had lost them for the moment but I knew it was a matter of time before they’d catch up. They too wished to come out to the other side. Or to eat me. I had a feeling they wouldn’t be too fussy about it.
“Ada!” I yelled, knowing that I’d already attracted enough attention already. “Ada I’m here, I’m going to come through.”
But try as I did, I could not get the air to shift. I closed my eyes, concentrating until my head felt like it was going to explode. I focused off and on, pretending I was looking at one of those Magic Eye painting that were everywhere in the nineties, but even that didn’t work.
Shit, shit, shit. Why wasn’t it working? Was I just not trying hard enough?
I took in a deep breath and attempted to count backward from ten. When I came through from the other side earlier, I felt I had time on my side. Here I didn’t. I needed to relax and trust that it would happen. I needed to calm the fuck down.
I only got as far as four though when I heard the scratching sound of overgrown spider legs, a sound I hoped I’d never hear again. I looked over my shoulder to see five of them coming around the corner, heading straight for me, all their eyes on their prize, their pincers clicking against each other as if they were imagining eating me already.
Fuck this shit. I let out a small cry, knowing that it would be impossible now for me to escape. I swatted at the air, tears threatening to spill down my face. I was so close to Dex, so close to my world, our life, and I was going to get stuck here.
The spiders began to give off a low, guttural growl, like a drooling dog on the attack. I looked behind at them again. At their pace, they’d be at me in ten seconds. I glanced around for plan B – did I even have enough time to find a weapon to fight them off? – when I saw yet another problem.
A creature emerged from the side of one of the buildings. She might have been a woman in another life, but here she could barely be called that. She pulled herself along the sidewalk, the lower part of her severed off, guts trailing behind her like a flowing tail.
Her head was on backward. I could see bald patches through her ratty, dark hair, as she crawled toward me, skeletal arms and fingers reaching my way,
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