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Show 401 When they came for you they weren't always pale with smooth eyeless foreheads and pulpy veins that branched like bean sprouts under the skin. Sometimes you found them on the floor by the refrigerator as you came around the corner from your room to put the empty yogurt carton back; their mouths were stretched wide and their tiny nostrils were pulled into tight slits, and they tipped back and forth with their wings spread out trying to pull back out of the light so you wouldn't see them. Sometimes they whirled out of the tall weeds as you walked past the rubble-filled lot where the fire station used to be, and you could feel their weight against your stomach as they clung to your shirt with their brittle little claws. Sometimes you were sitting at your table, your head in your hands, your eyes tracking the crumbs on the floor, and you gradually saw a pair of white feet with clean toes standing just behind the leg of your chair. You saw them just leaving a room you had walked into by another door, and when you ran to the doorway they had left through you saw their shadow bend into a corner and flit up the wall and vanish into the ivy that climbed down through the crack under the eave. You knew they were standing behind every tree in the back yard. * * * * * * The rouged, waxy figure in the casket didn't look like anyone he knew. White satin billowed around the wisps of brittle hair and had swallowed up the feet and legs. Lorin studied the eggshell forehead, unable to shake |
