Rising Fears Read Online Free PDF

over to Jason as the mourners filed past, and Jason felt his gut clench. He didn't have anything against the pastor as a person, but he was damned if he could see why he would ever want to attend church again. Not after what had happened. The way Jason saw it, either there was no God, or if there was then the Devil was not only real, but also much stronger than any other deity. Neither was a particularly good reason to go to church in Jason's mind. But the pastor insisted on trying to get him there every time the two bumped into one another. It was too bad, because Jason had heard that Wells played a mean game of poker and was a genuinely fun person to spend time with. But, again, if that came at the cost of having to listen to repeated invitations to church, then it wasn't worth it in Jason's mind.
    "Good to see you here, Sheriff," said Wells, holding out his hand. Jason shook it. "We've missed you at church," he continued.
    Jason broke off the handshake at that. "Hard to see how you could miss me, considering I've never been to your church."
    "That's why we miss you, of course," said Wells with a grandfatherly grin. "Why don't you come down this week?"
    "Not much to believe in these days, Pastor," said Jason. Wells opened his mouth - no doubt to dole out some platitude about the importance of believing even when it appeared there was nothing to believe in - but the sheriff cut him off before he could speak. He pointed at Sean's parents, and said, "How's the family holding up?"
    Again the pastor opened his mouth to speak, and again he was interrupted. This time, however, it was by Sean Rand's mother, Amy-Lynn. The woman began shrieking. "Give him back! Bring back my baby!" She erupted from her wheelchair, throwing off her husband's restraining arm and rushing at the gravestone that marked Sean's empty grave. She began slamming the marker stone with her fists. "He's not there!" she shouted. "He's not down there! He's dead but not down there, he's down there but gone, now give him back! " The smack of her fists could be clearly heard in the calm air of the cemetery, and soon they were leaving bloody smears on the marker as her hysterical strength caused her to pound her fists to pieces against the gravestone.
    Ron rushed to his wife's side and tried to pry her away from the marker, but couldn't. Jason rushed through the confused and horror-struck crowd, adding his strength to Ron's, the two of them struggling vainly against Amy-Lynn. The woman only weighed perhaps one hundred fifteen pounds, and should have been easily overpowered by the two of them, but Jason felt like he was trying to pull a mother grizzly off a honey tree.
    One of the mourners, Doc Peabody, an older man who had grown up at a time when doctors still made house calls, rushed forward. "Hold her tight, Sheriff," said the doctor. He produced the black bag that he carried with him whenever he went out to visit a patient. That in itself told Jason volumes about how badly off Amy-Lynn was: the doctor had clearly come prepared for such an outbreak as this.
    Doc Peabody withdrew a syringe from his bag. "She's been doing this all week," he said to the sheriff, then injected Amy-Lynn as Jason and Ron held the woman tight while she shrieked. "I was worried this would happen," said the old man as he pushed down the plunger and injected Amy-Lynn. A moment later the woman's panicked screaming had become a muted sobbing. Then she closed her eyes.
    Jason felt himself - and everyone else - relax a bit as the medication took hold of the bereft mother. Then he jumped in fright as her eyes slapped suddenly open. The pupils were wide and unnaturally dark, and Jason was reminded of the buck that had charged him - had it been only a few hours ago? It already seemed like a lifetime had passed since The Dream and since the deer had attacked him.
    Amy-Lynn spoke, and the voice that emerged was not entirely her own. It was dark and guttural, as though she were herself speaking from