Dominion by Fred Saberhagen (spiritual books to read TXT) 📗

Then he slowly made his way along a dim hallway lined with doors, listening for an audible response that never came. It never came, yet he had the feeling that it had come… Simon couldn’t really explain it, even to himself. But he did feel sure, very sure, that this was the way to take to find Vivian.

   This was a part of the castle where Simon had never been before. He went down the hall looking into one bedroom after another, most of the rooms disused and unfurnished, with doors standing open. When he came to a closed door he tapped on it, not really trusting his sense that the room beyond it was unoccupied. He called Vivian’s name softly, and looked inside, and went on to the next room.

   Simon held his breath when he came at last to a room whose closed door held the feeling of something different shut up behind it. When after tapping and calling he opened this door, he discovered furniture, including a made bed. But there was no one in the room.

   He stepped in and looked around. To judge by the few items of clothing hanging in the closet, an adult couple was staying here, and logic said it must be Vivian’s and Saul’s parents. They hadn’t brought many things, so they weren’t staying long. So, if their important meeting was really in Blackhawk, why not a hotel there? It must have been important to them for some reason to establish a presence in the castle too.

   Out in the hall again, Simon looked back toward the stair he had come up. He saw nothing, heard nothing, but there was… something… back there now, somewhere just out of sight in that direction. The shadows would be deepening on that stairway now, as the sun lowered outside. He’d take some other route when the time came to go back downstairs. He’d already looked for Vivian in that direction, and in that direction maybe Gregory…

   Damn it, he wasn’t going to let himself be all that scared of Gregory. Sure, the man might yell at him angrily if he found Simon here. But he knew Simon and wasn’t going to shoot him for a burglar, so Simon wasn’t going to be scared… his hands were shaking slightly, and his knees. His mouth was dry, and he had to fight with himself to keep from running in the opposite direction from the stairs.

   Come on, he told himself fiercely. This is ridiculous. He was fifteen, not the age to start having hysterics over nothing, over one little odd experience, like some little kid who’d just watched his first horror movie. And what had he actually seen? Not a ghost, not a skeleton. A man, lying on a cot. What was so bad about that?

   He moved along the hall, walking normally, in the direction away from the stairs. The next room he came to also showed signs of habitation. Judging by the spare clothing visible, the occupant must be Saul.

   The door of the next room after Saul’s was also shut. The pulse in Simon’s head came back as he called softly, and tapped on the door, then opened it and went in. Vivian wasn’t here, though the clothes indicated it was her room. She wasn’t in the bathroom either. She wasn’t even (and here Simon felt silly bending down to look) hiding mischievously under the bed.

   What now? Having led him this far, his instinct seemed to have faltered. He could go out in the hall and search for her some more. He could wait in her room for her to come back. Neither of those courses felt right.

   He’d left the door to the hall open. Out there it appeared to have got darker rather suddenly. Or had it really? Looking that way, Simon blinked. One thing for sure, he suddenly didn’t want to go out into that hall again. He didn’t want to because… there was a presence out there now.

   Not Vivian. It could be Gregory, yeah, he thought it was Gregory, but… Gregory with something added, something taken away, something odd.

   It was not that Simon, looking out from Vivian’s bedroom, could see or hear anything physical out in the hall. Even the greater darkness was perhaps not physical. But it was there. Whatever shadowy presence he’d awakened in the scorched circular room had followed him up the stairs, and was out there, in some form, now. If Simon were to stick his head out into the hall he might well see it with his eyes, and what he saw might well be more than he could bear, though he didn’t know just what his eyes would see.

   Was it Gregory out there? Yes and no. Simon knew Gregory, to the limited extent he knew him at all, as a man, a human being, and this did not quite fit those categories. It felt like an it.

   The it/Gregory out in the hall hadn’t followed Simon right into Vivian’s room. It wouldn’t, or it couldn’t. Simon thought he could see how, in some half-conscious way, it had thought that it had better not. But if Simon went out there now, he’d have to confront it directly and rather closely. It might be no more than twenty feet down the hallway, listening, trying to think, struggling against whatever power kept it from thinking clearly right now and acting forcefully…

   Simon could, if he dared, if he hurried, rush right out into the hall this moment, without looking to his right, and then hurry along it to his left. If he hurried along, never looking back, then somewhere he’d find, he’d have to find, another way to get himself back downstairs. Although, as he thought about it, he got the distinct impression that in that direction there wasn’t a whole lot of hallway left.

   Simon stepped forward, teetered on one foot for an almost paralyzed moment. Then with a sound like