AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He watched the creatures emerge from the train, their forms loosening into miasmic coils of black. They spilled forth from the doorway, curling with the steam before re-forming once more into wholeness.
Tall, gaunt, and rakish, the demons convened for only a moment, then dispersed in search.
Edgar merged with the assembly of fellow travelers. He made his way through the sea of the oblivious, his sights narrowed on the train that could return him to Richmond. To the singular hope that waited for him there.
Reaching the second platform, he lingered, hesitated, his back turned to the crowd. Then, with the conductor’s cry of “All aboard!” Edgar grabbed the railing and hoisted himself up.
“There!” he heard one of them growl.
He hurried into the compartment, glancing behind him once—once only, peering through the darkened windows. Yes, they followed, dogged him like hellhounds!
Not until the first chug of the steam engine fell upon his ears did he fling open the closest door and leap from the moving train back onto the platform. Staggering to his feet, he rushed headlong into the crowd while behind him the train, puffing hard, picked up speed, his pursuers still aboard.
He knew that they would not be fooled for long.
No matter. There were other means of reaching Richmond.
Edgar pushed through the throng and found his way to the busy street, where he hailed a carriage.
“To the harbor,” he called, and rapped the cane upon the rear wall as he shut the door behind him.
The carriage jerked, tottered, then rolled into action.
Edgar fell back within the coach, allowing himself a deep breath. He braced a quavering hand at his heated brow, where, behind his right eye, a dull ache began to throb.
The carriage swayed as it ambled through the narrow streets, and soon the pain in his head was replaced by a queer yet familiar tingling. It crept upon him, pervading his senses like the dull, faint prickle of a limb gone numb.
Slowly Edgar lowered his hand.
He turned his gaze to the shifting shadows at his right.
She sat beside him, her slight form draped in luminous white gossamer.
“No,” he murmured.
But the enveloping blackness had already begun to take its hold.
It wrapped him like a sheet, and as her hand, cold as marble, grasped his, he felt the pitch overtake him as it never had before.
In an instant, the blackness devoured him, leaving the coach vacant.
1
Assigned
By the end of fourth period, Isobel’s espresso buzz from that morning’s venti latte had long since worn off. She yawned, fast approaching crash-and-burn territory and shifted in her seat as Mr. Swanson droned on and on about the green-eyed monster, Desdemona, thus, thou, and yea verily. She traced and retraced the looping spiral design she’d all but ground into the front of her blue notebook.
“And with that,” Mr. Swanson said, finally snapping closed his ultrathick teacher’s copy of their text, cueing the rest of the class to follow suit with a unanimous thunk, “we’ll leap into further discussion about Iago and his supposed honesty on Monday.”
Isobel straightened in her seat, brushed her sheet of blond hair behind one shoulder, and shut her own book with relish.
“But hold on, hold on,” he said above the rustling and scraping of chairs. He raised both hands and lowered them through the air, as if such a motion somehow held the power to still the room and reinstate the Elizabethan-literature-inspired stupor he’d managed to cast over all.
Kids jonesing for lunch and already halfway out of their seats sank back down again, their butts reconnecting with their chairs like magnets snapping together. All around, backpacks slipped from shoulders and chins returned to hands.
They should have known better, Isobel thought wryly. Swanson never let them out early. Never. Especially not as early as a quarter till.
“Don’t go and get antsy on me yet, folks,” he warned, now brandishing a stack of what looked suspiciously to Isobel like fresh-from-the-copier pages.
