Hellhound (18 page)

She let her mind wander to her planned outing that afternoon with Principal Drucker. They were going to a ballet studio that Becca had selected almost randomly from the list of activities the eager-to-please woman had offered up in an attempt to “make inroads.”

Becca didn’t particularly like ballet, but it was geographically the farthest from both the Carver Academy and the Drucker apartment. If Becca signed up, there’d be all kinds of leeway with the time spent getting down to it and getting back home.

Time for herself.

More than anything else, this was what Becca wanted right now. She sank back into the seat as the car crossed the RFK Bridge back to Harlem. She felt the river on either side of her in a way she never had before. This time, she refused to look. A shiver traveled up her spine and made her scalp tingle. Her level of fear rose and rose until it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

She closed her eyes tight and waited until for the sound of the car bumping along the bridge to even out to the smooth of the road on the other side of the water. The sound seemed to go on forever, getting louder with every beat. She pressed her hands over her ears, tears now forming in her eyes as she felt herself beginning to hyperventilate.

Only a few more feet
, a tiny voice in the back of her head whispered.
Only a few more feet…

But soon even that voice was blotted out by the piercing wail rushing through Becca’s body like a banshee. She screamed and screamed, the social worker almost slamming into a truck in the adjacent lane.

“What is it?! What happened?” she cried, pulling the car over to the shoulder of the bridge, right under a sign that read:
No Stopping On Bridge
.

The social worker threw on the hazard lights and ran around to the backseat of the car. She opened the door and tried to pull Becca’s hands from her ears.

“What’s the matter, Becca? Talk to me.”

But even as she tried to sound calm, the sight of the little girl in complete hysterics terrified her.

The cars behind them began to slow, a couple of drivers hitting their horns. The ones who could see what was going on silenced theirs, waiting for the disturbing spectacle to ebb. Drivers in the opposite lane braked to better rubber-neck and, inevitably, shake their heads. Even those with their windows up and radios on couldn’t help but hear the terror in the little girl’s screams.

They eventually drove on, but Becca’s voice hung heavy in their eardrums and, for some, would continue to do for days to come. A couple would even check the news or try to look it up online.

But the little girl who couldn’t stop screaming was never to be found.

Called a “quite gifted storyteller” by
Fangoria
magazine and “an exciting new voice in the speculative, dark fantasy genre” by author Michael (
Enter, Night
) Rowe, Mark Wheaton is the author of the internationally bestselling
Bones
stories as well as several other novels and novellas including
Flood Plains, Ascension
,
Adversary, Last Tuesday, Night of the Scorpions, Stuttering Hunter,
and short story collection
Disembodied Spider Meat.
Print editions of these stories are available as
Four Nails in the Coffin
,
Unnatural Selection
and
Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Trilogy
. He is also a horror screenwriter (
Friday the 13th
,
The Messengers
,
Infected
), graphic novelist (Dark Horse’s
The Cleaners
), and children’s playwright (
Evita Sassy and the Black Mask’s Last Gasp
).

Cover art by Carlton Stevens aka cmonies (
http://dontdrinkanddraw.tumblr.com
)

Cover layout by Rob Hinckley (
http://www.eyecatchingcovers.com
)

Editing by Indie Author Services (
http://www.indieauthorservices.com
)

Formatting by Dellaster Design (
http://www.dellasterdesign.com
)