Free Malice by Robert Cote

like hungry mouths waiting to be fed. Blood! It’s shooting out from the holes in a violent stream. Covering everyone. Oh the smell is awful.”
    The piercing scream sent a jolt of electricity up Avery’s spine. The sound had come from Lysander, there was no doubting that, but whether his vocal cords had the range to make such a shriek was uncertain.
    Lysander came awake with a violent shudder, gasping for air, his hands clutched tightly about his throat. He fought to control his breathing. A thick layer of mucus rattled around in his chest.
    Avery sat in silence while Lysander continued reeling.
    “What the hell was that?” Lysander asked.
    “Your imagination,” Avery said coolly. “A fantasy. Nothing more. Hey, if we spent time on every flight of fancy the human brain was capable of conjuring up, we’d never get anywhere, would we?” Avery looked at his watch. “Listen, that’s it for today. We’re making progress, though.” He stood up, walked briskly to the office door and held it open. “Next week?”
    Lysander stood on wobbly legs, feeling like a guest ushered out before dessert. He stepped through the door and headed up the stairs, alone. When Avery remained in his office, the door closed firmly behind him, Lysander knew for sure that something was wrong. His sense of smell had been the one to register it more than anything. That acrid odor on Avery as he whisked him out of the office so abruptly, the same smell of fear that had emanated from his father that time that Sandy had kept him at bay, growling from little Lysander’s side. Plain old fear, though, didn’t explain it all. Avery was hiding something.
    Back at home, Lysander sat in bed with the lights out. He still didn’t feel completely whole yet. A residue from his deep hypnotic state remained. Visions of that woman’s flesh as it turned black and peeled away seemed to be on a looped reel inside his brain.
    The idea of a past life had occurred to him, that he couldn’t deny, but he had squashed it mercilessly before it had a chance to germinate. The mind was a complex place that spoke in symbols buried from deep within. You couldn’t take these things at face value. Shirley MacLaine had past lives, not Lysander Shore.
    Avery’s strange behavior after the session still bothered him, however. Why did he whisk Lysander out without so much as a good-bye? “Hey kid, you just had a fantasy so vivid you thought you were about to be burned at the stake, but if you don’t mind, pull up your socks and get out.”
    Outside, Lysander heard the muffled sound of a car door slamming. He raised himself up on one elbow and gazed out the bay window that framed his bed, happy for the opportunity to shake off that jittery feeling in the pit of his belly. Across a vacant lot was Reverend Small’s house, a two-story job that looked more expensive than he could afford on a monk’s salary. Through a screen of trees and brush was the good ol’ reverend. He had a dog with him, German shepherd. The animal was down on its haunches, its paws dug into the manicured lawn, and the reverend was wrenching at the leash, struggling to get the animal in the house. He let out a length at the tail end of the leash and struck the dog with it. The animal yelped and Lysander flinched, wishing at that moment he had a video camera with him. The reverend turned and started walking, the leash over his shoulder, looking like an ancient Egyptian slave, tasked with moving an enormous slab of limestone. Skid marks began to appear in the grass as the shepherd was dragged along. A minute later, the animal was inside. Bit late for a trip to the SPCA, Lysander thought, settling back into bed. Millingham was the strangest place he’d ever been, and for a moment he debated telling someone. But who would believe him? Back in Hayward he had seen other pillars of the community do a lot worse than smack a dog, and he had certainly learned his lesson about what truths adults were willing to