5
April 4, 1987
Cup held Teddy's hand as they walked together through the burnt foundations of the Marlowe-Houston House. They did not speak as they observed the vines tangling across the old stone and brick. The indentation that had once been the cellar was now covered with thick, caked earth and wild grass that had sprouted in the early spring.
Finally, Cup broke the silence. "You're going to enjoy Virginia Beach," he said.
Teddy nodded, but her eyes watched the ground carefully. When she saw a dragonfly alight on a brick, she smashed her foot down on it, but the insect flew away.
"You saved my life, Teddy, I want to—"
"You saved my life, too," she interrupted him.
"Do you still have nightmares? About the Eater of Souls?"
She nodded. "But they can't hurt me. Your scars are all healed."
He shrugged and laughed. "Same old Cup."
"Can we go?" She shivered as if from cold, and for a moment he was afraid she would go into a fit. She hadn't had a seizure in two months.
"You all right?" For a moment he thought he smelled a light jasmine perfume brought up by the cool slap of a breeze.
"Mmm," she murmured, and pulled his hand so they were stepping over the rubble, toward the yellow field, high with grass. Into the Goat Dance. "Will you wait for me to grow up?"
"Anything for you, Teddy."
"No you won't. You're gonna marry Clare."
Cup raised his eyebrows. "But maybe you won't marry me when you grow up."
Teddy let go of his hand and punched him playfully in the arm. She didn't answer him. Then she grew very serious. "We should've burned all of this," and the little girl who had recently turned ten raised her hand to indicate the entire field. "Just to be sure."
Cup nodded. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising slightly. He squeezed Teddy Amory's hand.
"We will," he said. Time to mow this old field down the only way I know how.
Cup reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of matches. He flipped the book open and plucked a match out. He struck it. He set the match down on the ground.
The man and the girl watched the grass curl and wither beneath the touch of the flame.
* * *
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CONTACT DOUGLAS CLEGG
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BOOKS BY DOUGLAS CLEGG
Click here to discover more fiction by Douglas Clegg.
STAND-ALONE NOVELS
Afterlife
Breeder
The Children’s Hour
Dark of the Eye
Goat Dance
The Halloween Man
The Hour Before Dark
Mordred, Bastard Son
Naomi
Neverland
You Come When I Call You
SHORT NOVELS & NOVELLAS
The Attraction
Dinner with the Cannibal Sisters
Isis
Purity
The Chateau of Devils
The Words
SERIES
THE HARROW SERIES
Nightmare House, Book 1
Mischief, Book 2
The Infinite, Book 3
The Abandoned, Book 4
The Necromancer (Prequel Novella)
Isis (Prequel Novella)
THE CRIMINALLY INSANE SERIES
Bad Karma, Book 1
Red Angel, Book 2
Night Cage, Book 3
THE VAMPYRICON TRILOGY
The Priest of Blood, Book 1
The Lady of Serpents, Book 2
The Queen of Wolves, Book 3
COLLECTIONS
Lights Out: Collected Stories
Night Asylum
The Nightmare Chronicles
Wild Things
BUNDLES & BOX SETS
Coming of Age
Criminally Insane: The Series
Halloween Chillers
Harrow: Three Novels (Books 1-3)
The Vampyricon Trilogy
With more new novels, novellas and stories to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Douglas Clegg is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Neverland, The Priest of Blood, Afterlife, and The Hour Before Dark, among many other novels, novellas and stories. His short story collection, The Machinery of Night, won a Shocker Award, and his first collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. His work has been published by Simon & Schuster, Penguin/Berkley, Signet, Dorchester, Bantam Dell Doubleday, Cemetery Dance Publications, Subterranean Press, Alkemara Press and others.
A pioneer in the ebook world, his novel Naomi made international news when it was launched as the world’s first ebook serial in early 1999 and was called “the first major work of fiction to originate in cyberspace” by Publisher’s Weekly, covered in Time magazine, Business Week, Business 2.0, BBC Radio, NPR, USA Today and more; his book Purity was the first to go onto a mobile phone in the U.S. in early 2001.
He is married, and lives and writes in New England in a house called Villa Diodati.
DISCLAIMER
Goat Dance is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PUBLICATION CREDITS
Copyright 1989, 2014 Douglas Clegg
Published by Alkemara Press in the United States.
Cover art provided by:
Damonza.com
Proofreading services provided by:
Diana Cox
Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set Page 112