Free Nieve by Terry Griggs Page A

to edge along Main Street (she refused to think of it as Bonefyre), sliding along the storefronts and slipping into doorways. Here, a few antique street lamps – another recent addition to town – cast a weak, brownish light that helped her to see where she was going.
    Passing by Warlock’s store, she glanced in, recalling the display he’d been setting-up in the front window earlier that day. What she saw were books with lurid, blood-splattered covers that depicted ghouls and ghosts, vampires and werewolves. She found the images too cartoonish to be scary, too familiar to take seriously, and, oddly, she even felt some relief in looking at them. What alarmed her more was what she couldn’t see, what unsuspected horror might be lying in wait for her. She turned away from the window and surveyed the street. It seemed empty – not a single moth swirled around the street lamps. And yet . . . and yet . . . .
    Nieve hurried by the pharmacy, the Wormius & Ashe signboard creaking noisily as she passed beneath it. She noted that the bat was no longer hanging from it (which might explain the dearth of moths). Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she detected an unusual fragrance in the air, sickly sweet, that went straight to her sinuses and made her eyes water. The remaining summer flowers in the streets’ planters were slumped and blackened, and the Morning Glories that had twined vigorously up the parking signs now hung as limp as boiled spinach. Not them, then. She thought of the classy woman she’d passed earlier going in the pharmacy. Perhaps a perfume she’d been wearing had lingered. More likely, the woman herself was lingering in the pharmacy doorwell, about to nab her. But, no, that wasn’t likely, either. The woman was attending the wake at Mortimer Twisden’s. Why else was she in town?
    Right or wrong, Nieve expected to find out because that was where she was going. Her parents might have gone kind of funny, but they were her parents and they would protect her from weirdo truant officers and . . . other things .
    Stepping off Main Street and onto the road that led out of town toward Ferrets, Twisden’s grand house, she felt the darkness close around her like liquid. The few houses that were arrayed along the road had lights dimly aglow in their windows, which did help some. Nieve figured she knew this road pretty well, knew its dips and twists, its rocky spots and potholes. Yet, the farther along she got, the less familiar it appeared. Where the road should have curved, it went straight, and where she expected to tromp through a dusty patch, she splashed through a puddle and soaked her feet. Burly, man-shaped bushes fronting the houses, seemed to shake themselves awake and lurch toward her as she passed by. It’s only the dark , she told herself, the dark changes things. She knew they were only bushes. Although knowing it didn’t stop her from keeping a wary eye on them and picking up her pace to get beyond their reach.
    Once she’d left the last house behind, she began to hear an eerie rustling noise, as if someone were passing through dried grasses along the side of the road, someone walking exactly parallel with her and keeping pace step for step. Nieve stopped and the sound stopped; she started walking again and the rustling sound started up. She stopped and turned on the flashlight, playing the weakening beam over the place where the grasses had been – someone had scythed them down. Her light began to flicker again, about to die entirely, but still she could see that nothing was disturbed, nothing was moving . . . no one was there.
    She turned off the flashlight, conserving whatever power remained, and kept on. The rustling resumed, only now she began to hear a voice as well. An extremely soft voice, so faint as to be almost inaudible. Nieve , the voice sighed, Nieve, Nieve . . .
    This was too much. Unnerved, she took off, determined to outrun it