Of Saints and Shadows (1994) by Christopher Golden Page B

dog, for a moment Max was forgotten.
    Words backed up in his throat, building up pressure like water with the hose choked off, until they finally burst from him with no thought toward his own safety.
    “What the hell are you doing in my house!”
    The intruder didn’t flinch at the sound of his voice, had obviously known he was there. He turned slowly, allowing Dan to see beyond him in the illumination of the flashlight, see what he’d forgotten.
    Max.
    “I am telling your fortune, reading your future,” the trespasser said.
    The dog lay on his back, his belly slit wide open, his guts spread on the floor in the dark. The intruder ran his fingers through Max’s entrails with apparently clinical interest, yet when Dan turned the light on his face, a sickening smile told another tale. Only then did Dan see the clerical collar.
    “My God, Max.” Dan could feel the tears and the fear joining together within him to create something else entirely.
    “Come now, Mr. Benedict,” the priest said, wiping his hands on the carpet as he turned to face Dan. “The viscera of animals have often been used to divine one’s destiny.”
    Dan snapped.
    He dove toward the priest, flashlight held high as a weapon, ready to bring it crashing down on the maniac’s skull . . . but there was nothing there. Instead he fell, outstretched arms and cheek sliding in a warm, wet mess that he told himself was not what he knew it to be, knew it must be.
    Tears streamed down his face as he sat up, retching, cookies and the cold Kentucky Fried Chicken he’d eaten for dinner streaming onto the carpet in another mess. Seconds passed as he caught his breath, but the tears continued. His heartbeat was much too loud in his head and the taste of vomit and the smell of Max—oh, Max—overwhelming him. He’d always thought himself prepared for an intruder, a street mugging, any threat to himself, but he’d never anticipated such insanity, such terrible cruelty.
    “Where the fuck are you?” he growled as he peered into the darkness with his flashlight.
    Oh, I’m still here Daniel , the voice came, sounding slightly muffled but close by. Don’t you worry. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.
    “Miss what, you bastard. I’ll fucking kill you, you lunatic.”
    I think not.
    As Dan watched, the beam of the flashlight grew shorter, and shorter still, and more narrow, until it barely illuminated a foot in front of his face. It did not dim, however. If anything, the light grew stronger. It simply could not penetrate the blackness around.
    He blinked, and as he did so the claustrophobic, unnatural dark receded, and moonlight returned to the room. But that overwhelming blackness had not disappeared. In one corner, the maniac leaned against a wall. All about the room the darkness had solidified, coagulated really, into shapes which were only beginning to take on a distinct form. The intruder was forgotten.
    Dan’s eyes darted from shape to shadow as gelatinous, lifeless white eyes appeared and began to stare back at him. Gaping, toothless, useless mouths grinned widely. Easily a dozen of the creatures filled the room. The shadows undulated, their shapes constantly rearranging themselves. The head of the largest one brushed the ceiling. The darkness seemed to seethe within the creatures and tendrils of shadow snaked from one to the other, like an electrical current traversing a circuit.
    For a fraction of a moment they were simply, silently, and ominously there—and then they dissolved.
    The darkness flowed about him in a circle, creating a vacuum of which he was the center, a circuit he dared not attempt to disrupt. The whirlwind of blackness drew tighter and tighter around him with each passing moment. With the coiling shadow two feet from him on either side, it occurred to Dan through his blossoming madness that he had forgotten to scream. As he opened his mouth wide to do so, the darkness rushed in.
    Suffocating, he fell to the ground. He attempted to