Free Better Off Dead by H. P. Mallory

appeared between the trees directly in front of me. The lights strobed and flittered, pausing for a few seconds, before disappearing right before my eyes. “Oh my gosh,” I started, my jaw dropping.
    “Spirits,” Bill said in explanation.
    I jerked my head toward him and gasped. Bill was completely bathed in white light. His skin was glowing like an ember. And it wasn’t a light from without—as in shining a beam on him. This luminosity emanated from Bill; it glowed from somewhere deep within him, becoming so bright, I had to avert my eyes , eventually covering them with my hand.
    “ You’re glowing,” I said in awe.
    “ Control your girl wood,” he said and shrugged. “I told you, I’m an angel. You’re just seeing me in my natural state.”
    “ Your natural state is blinding,” I grumbled, finding it impossible to look directly at him.
    “ Yeah, I call it my bling. I can turn it down.” Within a second, he no longer burned like the sun, but more like an eager nightlight.
    “ That’s better.” I dropped my hand and unshielded my eyes.
    “ Shit,” he said and frowned, glancing around himself. “I just got that funny feelin’ again.”
    “ That what?” My heart lurched into my throat because his tone made it sound like it wasn’t a good funny feeling.
    “That something ’s not right,” he said very slowly, turning to examine his surroundings as if whatever wasn’t quite right was about to pop out of the shrubbery and ambush us.
    I glanced around, noticing nothing beyond the tall pines that loomed as far as the eye could see over the powdery shrubs. But one thing did strike me. I couldn’t hear the sounds of birds any longer. In fact, the entire forest had gone utterly, eerily quiet.
    “ It’s too quiet,” I whispered.
    “ Yep, no bueno.”
    He turned away and again, surveyed his surroundings. “Can ’t say that I see anything out of the ordinary, but you ain’t sposed to ignore them bad feelings, ya know?”
    “ What kind of bad feeling was it? Like something might hurt us?” I asked with trepidation.
    He just nodded and suddenly was off, moving much faster than he looked capable of. I chased him up a steep bank of snow-carpeted grass, huffing and puffing all the way. Guess my new body had adopted my previous body’s lack of athleticism.
    “Holy shit,” Bill said as he dropped to the ground, peering into the shallow valley below us. He glanced up at me before grabbing my arm and pulling me down beside him. Before I could complain about the pain he’d just caused in my arm, my attention was diverted to his outstretched finger, which was pointing directly ahead of us.
    There, maybe twenty feet away, were glowing orbs of red lights that circled one another. Little by little, the balls of light began to morph into the shapes of animals, well not exactly animals, more like … monsters. I couldn’t think of anything else to call them.
    They were smallish, probably standing as high as my mid-thighs. But, though they weren ’t enormous, they were the most frightening things I’d ever seen. Each one, and there must have been at least six, radiated a bright scarlet light. They were all hunched over and misshapen. Shiny, rust-colored scales covered most of their bodies, while their limbs terminated into cloven hooves, making it look like someone had glued a goat’s legs to an iguana. But their faces frightened me most—rows and rows of miniature razor teeth filled their snarling canine mouths. Steam blew from their muzzles as their eyes blazed with an unnatural red light.
    They appeared to be taunting one another, circling and growling at each other. “Oh. My. God, ” I whispered. “What are they?”
    “Grevels from the lower Underground,” Bill answered, shaking his head in amazement. “I’ve only seen ’em in books.”
    “Then what are they doing here?” I started before something terrible occurred to me. “Oh no ... Does this mean we’re already ... in the Underground