The Chosen

narrow, tree-lined trail. His heart raced, and his eyes, even if he closed them, refused to release the image…

The bag he’d torn open had been full of steaming human body parts.

— | — | —

GOING… DOWN…

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE}

Reality check, Vera, she implored herself.

After reading the occult text, she stood in check.

What was she thinking now? What could she possibly be considering? Coincidence, she determined at first. What else could it be?

All the things mentioned in the book she just read, certainly, were seriously coincidental. But…

Consciously, at least, she didn’t think for a minute that any of it could be true.

Demons?

Satanic servitude?

Amethyst, the source of their power?

The only one that really bothered her was the reference to Magwyth, in ancient times, being executed upon a slab of—

Feldspar, she remembered.

Don’t be ridiculous, Vera!

But the dreams she was having, every night nearly, somehow beckoned her.

She could not describe the impulse just then, nor any motivation she could fathom.

Nevertheless, her mind still ticking against her will, she pulled on her robe, paused another stifled moment, then…

She walked out of her bedroom.

««—»»

Skinned skulls. Long arms and legbones clipped at the tendons of their muscle meat. Emptied ribcages and plundered abdominal vaults…

These were the steaming things Paul had glimpsed within the black-green plastic garbage bag.

Back up at the loading dock—or whatever it really was—he prepared to flee but then something flagged him. What? he thought. Initial impulse told him to get the fuck out of there, sprint back to the car, head on down the highway, and find the nearest state police barracks. After all, he knew what he saw.

Or did he?

Shock, sometimes, proved very elusive. He got to thinking. Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like, he suggested to himself. Come on—human body parts? That seemed a bit far-fetched. The eyes were known to play tricks sometimes. It must’ve been a trick, he thought. Suddenly he felt convinced of this.

Or…did he?

The round maw of the sewer pipe seemed to call to him. The shirtless bald man, he remembered, had disappeared into it.

Where’d he go? Paul wondered.

Then a more stolid thought flashed in his head.