Chapters (41)
- Dexter in the Darkby Jeff Lindsay
- IN THE BEGINNING
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
Or was I really supposed to believe that an Old Testament bad guy was coming out of time to get me? Wouldn't it make more sense simply to reserve myself a rubber room right now?
I pushed at it from every side and still came up with nothing. Possibly my brain was starting to fall apart, too, along with the rest of my life. Maybe I was just tired. Whatever the case, none of it made sense. I needed to know more about Moloch. And because I was sitting in front of the computer, I wondered if Moloch had his own Web site.
It took only a moment to find out, so I typed it in, went down the list of self-important self-pitying blogs, online fantasy games, and arcane paranoid fantasies until I found one that looked likely. When I clicked on the link, a picture began to form very slowly, and as it did
The deep, powerful beat of the drum, insistent horns rising behind the pulsing rhythm to a point that swells until it can no longer hold back the voices which break out in anticipation of a gladness beyond knowing-it was the music I had heard in my sleep. Then the slow blossom of a smoldering bull's head, there in the middle of the page, with two upraised hands beside it and the same three Aramaic letters above.
And I sat and stared and blinked with the cursor, still feeling the music crash through me and lift me toward the hot glorious heights of an unknown ecstasy that promised me all the blinding delight ever possible in a world of hidden joy. For the first time in my memory, as these passionate strange sensations washed over and through me and finally out and away-for the first time ever I felt something new, different, and unwelcome.
I was afraid. I could not say why, or of what, which made it much worse, a lonely unknown fear that roiled through me and echoed off the empty places and drove away everything but the picture of that bull's head and the fear.
This is nothing, Dexter , I told myself. An animal picture and some random notes of not terribly good music. And I agreed with myself completely-but I could not make my hands listen to reason and move off my lap. Something about this crossover between the supposedly unconnected worlds of sleep and waking made telling them apart impossible, as if anything that could show up in my sleep and then appear on my screen at work was too powerful to resist and I had no chance of fighting it, had simply to watch as it dragged me down and under into the flames.