The Faceless One Read Free Page B

to the effigy on his new bicycle, one he had largely paid for himself after emptying Daniel’s trash for six months.
    He looked at the fetish intently, then looked up at Daniel.
    Daniel calmed himself and gestured that the boy should bring the idol up to him.
    Smiling up at him innocently, Mitchell Price slowly rolled the front wheel of his bike over the effigy, crushing it.
    Daniel watched in horror as an ochre stain began to spread from the fetish.
    Mitchell looked down and made a disgusted face but rolled the front tire of his new bike over the protective effigy again and again. Its obsidian eyes fell away, and its fierce teeth cracked under the weight of the bike. With each pass, Mitchell would look up at Daniel to see his reaction.
    Daniel stood there, paralyzed, as a line of his defense was demolished by a child.
    The boy continued until the effigy was no more than a collection of rags and thread, gristle and pine needles. The ochre fluid was absorbed into the dirt surrounding the maple tree, which would be dead within a week.
    Then Mitchell looked up at him, smiled sweetly, and rode away.
    Daniel stepped back from the window, as if he expected something large and dark to crash through the glass. He stumbled against his chair and fell down hard, his teeth coming together with a loud crack.
    Nothing came through the window. Outside, the leaves of the maple tree nodded lazily in a summer breeze. The air conditioner and the computer continued their low purring.
    Daniel flopped down on the floor, his eyes filling with tears. Six months of this had worn him to a frazzle. All for nothing, it seemed. A protective device had been destroyed, and both he and his home were intact.
    Perhaps they couldn’t travel this far. Perhaps Duvall had been right. It wouldn’t do to be overconfident, though. Perhaps he would take an exploratory walk out onto the landing. He could always run back in at the slightest sign of trouble.
    The thought of breathing air that wasn’t recirculated was a heady one, indeed. He wanted great drafts of it, air chilled and filled with pine, or hot and redolent of sage and mesquite. Perhaps his days of captivity, of exile, were over.
    The archaeologist leaves his tomb at last.
    In answer to this small note of hope, he heard a slight scratching and the barest suggestion of a whisper.
    He got up, his heart hammering in his chest.
    The scratching became louder, as if his thundering heart had been construed as a welcome.
    Daniel crossed the living room toward the front door, that genial distance seeming to stretch out miles before him.
    There were small bits of mortar on the floor before the large oak door. As he watched, several more grains fell away from the strip sealing the door.
    Something was trying to dig its way in, using claws or teeth to reach him.
    I only touched it once
, he thought.
Just the tip of my finger. It was so beautiful, so terrible. I had to touch it just once before it was crated and shipped. Just once
.
    Daniel hurried to the computer and brought up his e-mail page. He had drafted a letter to Steven long ago, in case something like this ever happened. He tried to bring up the draft, but he was nervous, hitting icons for mail already sent and files on correspondence from his colleagues at the university.
    In his panic, he brought up the letter and promptly deleted it. Quickly, he composed a new letter, trying in a few sentences to explain what had happened and what Steven must do.
    A scent of cloves reached him, overlaid with smells of iron, copper, and pine.
    He looked behind him.
    From his vantage point, he could see the wall near his chair before the television but not the chair itself.
    There was a shadow on the wall.
    Something was sitting in his chair.
    With great effort, he turned to the computer and sent the message to Steven. The note winked out, and a smiling icon of an anthropomorphic envelope informed him his message had been sent.
    He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in