Excerpt:
She and the ice
had an understanding.
And there’d
never been any interference with her—not out there. It was as though her
psychic centers were frozen. Recently, it had been the only place where
she’d actually found peace.
She didn’t fall
down very often any more, but then, she really wasn’t much of a stunter.
She’d been able to pick up some basic spins, and the rest was imagination.
Since her first ice skating experience, she’d watched every old movie ever
made about skating. Now, when she wove in and out, or spun in lazy circles,
she was Sonja Henje, dancing in graceful leaps and pirouettes. It was magic,
and her escape. It was the place she went whenever her life seemed to be
getting out of hand.
Like now.
She was right
in the middle of her dance number when she tripped over a fallen skater, and
slammed the ice. When her eyes refocused, she discovered she and the other
skater weren’t the only ones here.
There was a
face, lying beneath the frozen layers. Stiff, almost mummified; certainly
frozen. Dead, beyond a doubt. The skin was holed in places, with bone
leaching through suppurated flesh.
Beside her, her
not-so-agile ice saboteur screamed, a shrill shriek of terror. There was a
gasp, and thud, as the other woman clawed and scrambled to her wobbly feet,
knocking Emma down again in the process. Beneath the woman’s skate-clad
feet, the ice vibrated, shivering the corpse into a gruesome parody of
movement.
Emma reared
back, frantic, but the ice was just too slick. This time it was her chin
that hit bottom first.
Don’t look.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look—
Too late.
The
almost-mummy in the ice opened its eyes, to stare directly at her. |