Dead Echo Page 117
by C.G. Banks
*
The phantom of the land had grown large. Never had its power been so immense. It pulsed like blood and its effect, enthralling. A new birth. Its masquerades done, it came to full flower. Its time a tolling bell across the land.
Not everyone still alive in the neighborhood had been drawn to the bonfire. Only the simple or the easily-led had regressed that far. The others, many, had simply holed up in their homes, cringing at the sounds and escapades their minds could only dimly imagine. But they were by no means out of the fire.