Eric

Molly had insisted he park inside town before they went and tried to find the anomaly.  She hadn’t said much to him in the car that day so he wasn’t inclined to argue over it in the hopes it would gloss over whatever was bothering her.  Getting into town hadn’t been so easy, but once there Eric had found a space near the outer edge ( Read more... )

            It had felt like they’d been walking for hours.  They likely had.  When they’d stumbled across a barricade manned by soldiers, Jack wasn’t sure he was okay with it.  Happy with it or not, it did mean they wouldn’t freeze in the snow and that was always good.  It was also good because his legs had given out on him after that and Sarah ( Read more... )

            It took his fucking arm.  The whole thing up to his elbow.  It was just gone.  Jack kept staring at the stump where his hand and forearm should have been and didn’t pay attention to where he was going.  Beyond getting away, he’d had no plans for running out into the woods.  And now here he was, alive and with no arm.

Fallen ( Read more... )

Randy,

I’m sorry to do this, but I need to leave.  I have to find someone and I’m not sure how long it’s going to take me.  Don’t come after me.  I know you’ll want to, but you can’t.  Find the Pinnacle, Randy.  Please.  Do it for me.  You deserve better than what you’ll find if you follow me.  With luck I’ll find you there.

I love ( Read more... )

Adrian

Adrian could see the anomaly even in the middle of the night.  Even in the few days he’d been studying it, it had grown tall enough to blot out a huge swath of the sky, and so there was a looming section that stood out stark against the city lights that remained.  To the right of the thing there was light, then as though cut clean, ( Read more... )

            This was just the story Ned needed to launch his career.  He’d been languishing in local television for years, but this, this could catapult him into the national eye, maybe get him his own spot on one of the news stations.  Every time he looked at the looming mass of darkness he felt a little giddy inside.

“Okay, Ned, let’ ( Read more... )

            Ellen had known they weren’t telling her everything when Randolph and Camilla left the night before, but she didn’t press it.  She knew there was something Harold was saving up to tell her when he was ready so she didn’t ask.  When she was washing up the breakfast dishes and she could see a black smudge over the trees in the rear of the ( Read more... )

            Before they could reach the field, the blob--whatever the hell it was--was visible above the trees lining the field.  Harold stopped and pulled his hat off his head so he could rub his short hair with one thick hand.

“I thought you said this thing was maybe five feet high, Randy.”  He turned his head and craned his neck to regard his ( Read more... )

The world had turned black.  Everything that had been was now simply gone, swallowed into the darkness Camilla had touched and been marked by.  There was no sound, no movement, only perfect emptiness where once there had been something, anything, everything.  There was the continuous black and her.

She drifted through the imposed ( Read more... )

The sun tossed fleeting shadows across the ground as the wind rattled the bare branches of a spreading oak.  It was Camilla’s favorite tree and dominated a segment of a disused field.  In better times horses had grazed on the dozen acres of springy grasses, the lush green speckled with occasional splashes of yellow, white and orange ( Read more... )