Demon Child

would like to attack a person now. It is tired of rabbits. A person's blood would be different, taste different, smell better and cleaner and feel smoother-”
        “FREYA, WAKE UP!” he commanded.
        The child sat straight up on the couch, her eyes wide. She tried to say something but could not break the sudden block on her vocal cords.
        “Are you awake,” Hobarth asked, taking her small, trembling hands in his large, dry hands.
        She did not reply.
        “Are you awake, Freya?” he repeated.
        She nodded that she was. Then, without warning, she broke into a long wailing sob. Tears burst from her beautiful eyes and ran down her freckled cheeks.
        “I'm sc-scared,” she said.
        Walt pulled her onto his lap and cradled her as if she were his own child, murmuring to her, trying to allay the terrors that filled her. He held her trembling body to his chest, looked at Jenny. “Maybe you better go,” he said.
        Jenny nodded and got out of there. In the corridor, the door shut between her and the little girl, she nearly collapsed. Her legs trembled; the backs of her knees felt as if they had turned to jelly. She leaned against the wall to regain her strength.
        Distantly, Freya sobbed.
         Run, Jenny, run, run.. .
        Control yourself, she thought. Don't let panic take you, no matter how nice it might be to stop thinking rationally about all these irrational goings-on. If you panic, you're finished. You make mistakes when you panic, and then disaster gets you.
        But the voices of her dead loved ones still spoke to her with fierce urgency: run, run, run, get away…

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    9
        
        She lay on the bed in her room, staring at the ceiling as the leaden minutes passed and the antique clock beside her bed ticked and locked like a mallet slammed repeatedly against a slab of iron. It was twenty minutes past four o'clock. In the hours since she had fled the library, she had had an opportunity to consider Freya's cold, demonic visions. She had attempted to analyze them, to break them down with logic just as Walt might have done. She admired his rationalization of the world and the people around him. But she did not have the talent. Her fear remained. She continued to look at the ceiling, for it was white and neutral and could help her forget, to a degree, exactly where she was.
        Did other people find life so hard, so full of challenge and possible catastrophe? If so, how did they manage to go on with it? How did they face the world every day, knowing that the only certain thing was uncertainty?
        Weren't they aware of the danger?
        That had to be it. If they weren't aware of all the snares along the paths of day-to-day existence, then life wouldn't seem so difficult for them. They would go on living, happy, unaware of the things that might befall them at any moment.
        Did that mean they were more sensible than she? Was it better not to think about all that might happen? Maybe, if you were ignorant, you were better off. When disaster came, it would be hard, of course, but then you would have had all the enjoyment, before the disaster, to balance your present heartache.
        But she could not be like that. She had learned the truth of life the hard way, through grief and loneliness, and she was constantly alert for the unexpected. Her wariness was as second-nature to her as the process of digestion or drawing breath.
        Therefore, she could not remain in this house, pretending that the events in this great mansion were nothing out of the ordinary. Every unidentified sound, every set of footsteps in the corridor, every shadow which was too deep to let the eye penetrate it-each of these was a thing to be feared. Every minute was the minute before trouble, every hour the calm before the storm. If she remained here, her nerves would soon be worn down to their raw ends, until she would find it easier and more tolerable to flee reality and sanity than to remain.
        Wolves. Curses. Possessed children. She could not live with those things and carry on normally.
        And yet it would be more dangerous to run.
        Running from a problem never solved that problem. Grandmother Brighton had been a level-headed, courageous woman, and she had passed on some of her level-headedness to her granddaughter. One had to stay and face up to adversity if one were ever to conquer it.
        Too, Jenny remembered