A Hole in Time

Teddy was frozen into place, couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t look away. All he could do was stare wide-eyed and paralyzed. If it was going to harm him---or kill him---it would do it now. Any minute now. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried hard to mimic a turtle and pull his head down against his shoulders as though into a protective shell. Teddy never knew, never felt a thing, but suddenly he was there, inside the tavern, his face within a few inches of the smokey apparition. His eyes wide with shock, his mouth open with a silent scream, jaw working up and down, saliva leaking from the corner of his mouth making his brain go to a vision of the handicap kid he once knew in school. He was straining to move his body back away from the thing, while his body with a conviction of its own, pressed itself closer and closer to the hideous creature. Read more