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Daniel Arenson
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« Reply #35 on: July 02, 2011, 04:52:43 AM » |
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Enjoy an excerpt from Eye of the Wizard....
Nobody else saw the grobbler.
At first Scruff thought he imagined it. His family didn't seem to notice the creature. Father and Mother dozed in armchairs by the fireplace. His brother Neev was reading a dusty, leather-bound tome about chess. His sister Jamie, the youngest in the family, was playing with toy knights under the table. Had nobody felt the chill in the air, heard the grunting, glimpsed the twisted figure outside the window?
When he looked out the window again, Scruff saw nothing but an empty street, the wet cobblestones glistening beneath lanterns. The windowpanes were opened wide, and the night wafted into the house: its cool breezes, scents of crackling hearths, the distant sound of chanting monks. No grobblers. No lurking shadows. You just imagined it, Scruff, he told himself. You listen to too many fairytales.
Scruff was thirteen and already six feet tall--the tallest kid in town--but when he was smaller, his mother would tell him stories of grobblers. "If you don't behave," she'd say, "they'll get you. Grobblers eat misbehaving children."
But of course, those were just stories. Pagan gods cursing beautiful, vain women, twisting and wilting their left halves? The women wandering the world as grobblers, left halves rotting, right halves never aging, a reminder of their corrupted beauty? It was ridiculous. Even their name, grobblers, sounded silly, a name some rambling storyteller would invent after his tales of Arthur, Robin Hood, and William Tell were already told. Scruff shook his head. Just stories, just stupid stories told to--
A shadow moved outside, severing his thoughts.
Scruff straightened, goosebumps rising across him. There was something out there, something strange. Scruff could not see the creature itself, but its shadow made his heart race. At first he thought it the shadow of a young woman, but when it turned, Scruff saw a hunchback and a knobby, twisted arm. Half beauty, half beast. Hands sweaty, Scruff grabbed his brother's arm.
Twelve years old and wiry, Neev looked up with a grunt, eyes flashing. "What do you want, Scruff? I'm trying to read."
Scruff pointed outside. "Look! What's that?"
Neev sighed. "Really, Scruff, I don't like being bothered when reading, and...."
Neev's breath died, and he gaped out the window. The grobbler had stepped into view. Scruff saw it only in profile, and he gasped. He had never seen a woman so beautiful, with hair so golden, skin so silky, lips so plump and red. Then the grobbler turned to face him. Its left half was rotted and warty, scraggly hair swarming with maggots, red eye blazing.
The grobbler turned that red eye upon him, and Scruff grimaced. Its stare burned like a ray of hellfire. The grobbler's mouth opened--a mouth half perfect, half shriveled--and it hissed in a voice like flames.
"You will die, Scruff."
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