Fear the Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

over three hours ago from the family's apartment in Billy Friedkin Block. Just an ordinary kid, but from the moment she'd first walked into the apartment, Anderson had known the case had "bad dream" written all over it - a feeling soon confirmed as a routine psi-scan of one of the Durand's neighbours established the kid had been abducted by a coven of would-be Satanists. Growing tired of the usual orgies, the coven had decided to sacrifice a child in the hope of summoning their dark lord to Earth. Following the coven's trail had led Anderson and Whitby down into the block basement, and from there through an underblock maintenance duct to a hole into the Undercity. Now, with the clock ticking down to midnight - the set time for the sacrifice - they had just fifteen minutes left to find Himmie Durand and save him.
    Fifteen minutes to find one little boy lost in all this darkness, she thought. Talk about banking on a miracle.
    If she was honest with herself, she knew it was not just the case itself that was giving her the heebies, it was the eerie similarities between this case and an old case she had worked on years ago. The way the abduction of Himmie Durand brought to mind another case involving a child that she only wished she could forget. A case that, even now, still haunted her nightmares.
    Hammy Blish.
    It had started as a case of demonic possession, a case that had gone bad in the worst possible way. Like Himmie Durand, Hammy Blish had been just a typical everyday kid, until a cult of warlocks and an other-dimensional demon had tried to use him to unlock a portal between Mega-City One and the demon's home dimension. From there, things had gone steadily downhill until, at last, Anderson was called upon to make one of the hardest decisions of her life. Unable to find any other way to prevent a demonic invasion of Earth that would have claimed millions of lives, she had been forced to kill Hammy Blish. There had been no other choice. Yet still, in her dreams almost every night, she relived the moment over and over again. She remembered Hammy, his expression so trusting, so sure she had come to save him. She remembered the look of confusion turning to disbelief as the bullet struck him. Most of all, she remembered the final look he gave her. The look as he sank dying to his knees, staring at her in mute accusation, his eyes asking a last despairing question. But you're a Judge, they said. You were supposed to protect me. How could you kill me?
    Even after all these years, she did not have an answer.
    I won't let it happen again, she promised herself. Not this time. I won't let another boy die.
    She only hoped it was within her power to keep the promise.
    "Anderson?" It was Whitby, the tremor in his voice growing more pronounced. "That headcount's getting up into triple figures. And I can hear the troggies muttering between themselves. Something about 'good eatins' and 'finger-lickin'."
    "Shut up," she whispered. "I'm getting closer. The boy's near, I can feel it. A few more seconds and I'll have a location-"
    Anderson paused, her concentration broken once and for all by a distant sound. Before she knew what she was doing, she had opened her eyes and started to run, her Lawgiver in her hand and Whitby trailing dutifully after her. They scrambled across rubble-littered streets, breathless and heedless of danger, drawn by a single shrill sound from somewhere ahead of her. A sound she heard sometimes in her dreams. A sound she had hoped in the real world she would never hear again.
    The sound of a boy's voice. Screaming.
     
    The screaming stopped. Guided by her instincts and refusing to consider what the silence might mean, Anderson knew which way she was heading. Running to the end of the street, she vaulted the fallen brickwork of a collapsed wall, turned east to cross a vacant lot, then turned north once more and saw her destination ahead of her. It was an old church, dwarfed in the menacing shadows of the buildings on