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see her standing atop a distant flowered hill, surrounded by
fire and death. Her lips were glistening like wet sunsets,
and her eyes swallowed the sunlight into bottomless oceans
of blackest ink. Flower petals, burning and delicate, blew
across my view of her. The rest of my family was there,
standing at the top of the killing hill, the sun burning behind
them all, turning their silhouettes into the blackest shadows
light can conjure.
The Wolf had proven his reach, and it extended all the
way into my past—there was nowhere I could hide from
him. Or at least, that’s what he’d have me believe. In truth,
I was grateful for the artistic recreation of my memory. And
the method of its execution did high honors to my family,
as I was certain they were as impressed by the feat as I was.
In addition to stealing a glimpse at my memories, the
killer had also deprived me of a clear view of my own prey—
though it was strange to think of a mythological figure as
prey. I could see that the mechanics of the Game were ever
changing, tightening, better enabling the separation of wheat
from chaff. However, the dream that I had presumably taken
from Tom Hush had not been entirely stolen, as I had awoken
with a small portion of it still intact. The dream seemed less
like the nocturnal art of a legendary horned demon and more
like a dream merely inclusive of its imagery. So I returned
to my original thesis—the Tom Hush on my list was merely
a pretender to the otherworld, not the supernatural entity
itself. If true, then I was seeking out a man, which of course
was a tremendously disappointing hypothesis.
Despite my analysis, the partial dream did contain
something pleasing—and importantly, it was beyond the
simple imagination of the killer, regardless of his pedigree.
There was something terribly vital about the thing that drew
near the edge of the forest, and I couldn’t deny the possibility
that the actual daemon had indeed tread the fleeting soils
of the wooded dream. Where exactly that thought left me,
I didn’t know. I would need a more complete view of my
158 | Mark Anzalone