Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

HAUNTING THE DEAD
STEFAN PETRUCHA
Dennison nodded. She gritted her teeth and shouted.
The sound was wet and pained this time, as though a
final death cry. Once it was let loose into the room,
Dennison all but crumpled into Shutty’s arms.
The thing was staggered and annoyed, but nowhere
near dissuaded or destroyed. It wavered between targets,
but must have decided it was having too much fun
with what was left of Jobe. Shutty scanned the room for
a weapon, but all she could see was Kleck, standing
there gawking like a moronic clown, his phallic rifle
held close.
“Shoot it, you idiot!” Shutty cried to him.
Kleck turned to her. “Are you kidding?” he objected.
“The gun’s not real. It’s a projection, same as the
bullets.”
“Then project some of your fucking bile in its
direction!”
“No way!” Kleck said. “Let it eat him. I’ve never
seen anything like that before.”
Fed up, Shutty raked Kleck in the face with her long
black nails, and made a grab for his gun. Surprisingly,
the scratch hurt him. He staggered backwards in pain.
She couldn’t be sure if she’d actually grabbed something
from him, or if the gun in her hands had somehow
formed from the air. In any case, the thing felt odd in
her hands, out of proportion, as if fashioned more from
her frantic thoughts than any sort of material. Having
little choice, she aimed and fired.
Bullets, or something like them, flew through the
air, crashing into the thick shadowy substance of the
thing Dennison had called an unfriendly, zipping out
the other side, carrying pieces of it in long silvery trails.
At first it didn’t seem to notice, but then, tossing Jobe
onto the bed, it turned toward Shutty and made a noise
that sounded more like stone grating on stone than any
grunt, howl or bark a living creature might make.
Shutty closed her eyes and kept firing. The rifle
chugged in her hand, spitting out a stream of short fast
projectiles. The grating sound grew in volume and
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