Cory

Chapter.6

It was the seventeenth. May seventeenth. Cory crossed the, day off the calendar in his room as soon as she slipped into her long white nightgown. He crossed off each day as it passed with a heavy black felt pen, and she supposed it expressed a very bad attitude toward life. He didn't really care. The only thing he really cared about was knowing that Momma was going to make him go back to school tomorrow and he would have to face all of Them.

He sat down in the small Boston rocker (bought and paid for with his own money) beside the window, closed his eyes, and swept Them and all the clutter of his conscious thoughts from his mind. It was like sweeping a floor. Lift the rug of your subconscious mind and sweep all the dirt under. Good-bye.

He opened his eyes. He looked at the hairbrush on his bureau.

Flex.

He was lifting the hairbrush. It was heavy. It was like lifting a barbell with very weak arms. Oh. Grunt.

The hairbrush slid to the edge of the bureau, slid out past the point where gravity should have toppled it, and then dangled, as if on an invisible string. Cory's eyes had closed to slits. Veins pulsed in his temples. A doctor might have been interested in what his body was doing at that instant; it made no rational sence. Respiration had fallen to sixteen breaths per minute. Blood pressure up to 190/100. Heartbeat up to 140 - higher than astronauts under the heavy g-load of lift-off. Temperature down to 94.3. His body was burning energy that seemed to be coming from nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. An electroencephalogram would have shown alpha waves that were no longer waves at all, but great, jagged spikes.

He let the hairbrush down carefully. Good. Last night he had dropped it. Lose all your points, go to jail.

He closed his eyes again and rocked. Physical functions began to revert to the norm; his respiration speeded until he was nearly panting. The rocker had a slight squeak. Wasn't annoying, though. Was soothing. Rock, rock. Clear your mind.

"Cory?" His mother's voice, slightly disturbed, floated up.

'Have you said your prayers, Cory?'

"I'm saying them," he called back.

Yes. He was saying them, all right.

He looked at her small studio bed.

Flex.

Tremendous weight. Huge. Unbearable.

The bed trembled and then the end came up perhaps three inches.

It dropped with a crash. he waited, a small smile playing about his lips, for Momma to call upstairs angrily. He didn't. So Cory got up, went to his bed. and slid between the cool sheets. His head ached and he felt giddy, as he always did after these exercise sessions. His heart was pounding in a fierce, scary way.

He reached over, turned off the light, and lay back. No pillow. Momma didn't allow him a pillow.

He thought of imps and families and witches.

(am i a witch momma the devil's whore)

riding through the night, souring milk, overturning butter chums, blighting crops while They huddled inside their houses with hex signs scrawled on Their doors.

He closed his eyes, slept, and dreamed of huge, living stones crashing through the night, seeking out Momma, seeking out Them. They were trying to run, trying to hide. But the rock would not hide them; the dead tree gave no shelter.