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nounced, stronger, and lasting longer than the first. Her eyes began darting nervously from one dark spot to the next, her brain frantically searching for a plausible explanation. "Teddy," she cooed, her voice suddenly free of stridency, "Teddy . . . what was that?" |
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Theodore had seen it all before. She was acquiescing. If she couldn't be in complete control, she didn't want any part of it. Now she was looking to him for answers, even willing to settle for one of his dumb, monotonous explanations. |
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But Theodore was pressing for his own sense of order, for any fragment of reality he could hold onto. He was still computing, still mulling it over when they heard the grating soundthe coarse, grinding, shifting sound of a great mass. |
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Betty Elizabeth screamed. It was the shrillest scream he had ever heard. It echoed through the old cemetery and seemed to hang in the nearly naked trees. |
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Theodore stumbled backward. |
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Betty Elizabeth was frozen where she stood. |
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The monument had shifted, moved to the right. There was now a space between the great stone itself and the cast concrete base. |
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Almost imperceptibly at first, something appeared. A thing, tiny and inconspicuous, curled its way up and over the coarse edge of |
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