Gianfranco Mancini > Recent Status Updates

“Maybe it’s just made up.” The kid scratched his chin, barely missing a swollen zit. “But you know what they say about urban legends: all legends are based on at least a little bit of truth.” Jack felt his stomach twist.

Sprinting across that cracked parking lot, he nearly lost his footing on some loose gravel, the pebbles rolling beneath the soles of his boots like roller skate wheels. Regaining traction, he bounded toward the Olds, all the while hearing that laughter boom behind him—laughter that seemed to be less and less human with each passing second.

There was one option left—one that he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge. Calling an exorcist would not only mark his daughter as disturbed, but also mark his entire family as crazy, insane, out of their minds...the kind of backwoods hillbillies who believed in witchcraft and the end of the world. He hadn’t considered it before, but maybe exorcisms really worked.

“He says he knows you,” Charlie whispered. “He says you guys are friends.”

‘If he has no head, how does he yell like that?’ Dunk asked.
‘See that helmet under his arm?’ Dirk said. ‘It’s not empty.’
Dunk did a double-take. ‘You mean he carries his own head around in that thing? That’s insane.’
‘Strong words from a man who toted a black orc vampire’s head about on a chain around his neck for the past year.’
‘Good point.’

For a while, his mom did nothing but yell, insisting they were wrong, that they were all missing something that she could plainly see. Jack couldn’t help but to believe it, because normal kids didn’t hang cats by lengths of fishing line from the branches of a family tree.

“I’ll do what I want with you,” she hissed. “And I’ll take your family too.”

Copeland had prescribed antianxiety meds, assuring Gilda that as long as Jack took them he’d be fine. But Jack didn’t take them. He had wanted to, especially on nights when he knew he wasn’t alone, when he could feel the rats crawling over him only to disappear when he opened his eyes. But every time he reached for that pill bottle, somehow, by some unexplainable force, he failed.

“I’ve never seen any miracles,” Reagan said, “but I sure as hell have seen my share of darkness. Does God exist? I don’t know. But I kind of hope he does. Because if he doesn’t? We’re probably fucked.”

“I do,” she insisted. “Please? I won’t be scared, I swear.” Her expression gave her away. She was terrified. Anything was better than sleeping in a room with someone who held darkness in their eyes.

Even he knew that if demons could exist, it meant there was real evil in the world, and if you believed in the devil, somewhere in the deepest fibers of your being you had to believe in God. He knew, firsthand, that the devil was real; he’d seen it with his own two eyes. But he’d never seen God. He’d never felt God. He’d never been helped by God.

Jack returned to his seat, smoothed his napkin across his lap, and grabbed his fork. “Let’s all just keep quiet and eat,” he said. “We’ll trick him.” “Or he’ll trick us,” Aimee muttered. Less than a minute later the sound was back, but this time it was in the walls. “Great,” Aimee said with a huff. “We’re going to have rats making little rat families inside the house.”

Jack couldn't sleep again. He tried to stay still as he lay in bed, not wanting to wake Aimee and throw her into another fit of hysteria. It had taken hours to calm her down. Finally exhausted by her incessant tears, she had passed out while Jack stared up at the ceiling. It was the moment he had feared, the moment when Aimee started to realize that something wasn’t normal. That something was terribly wrong.

THE DAY JACK’S parents first suspected there was something wrong with him was the day they found a stray cat hanging from a tree.

“Charlie?” She got to her feet and swallowed against the lump in her throat, taking a few hesitant steps toward the bed. She was afraid to pull those sheets back, afraid of what she’d see. What if she was too late? What if she yanked the blanket away and Charlie was dead and blue and it was all her fault?

He looked to where she pointed, his own eyebrows knitting together as he tried to spot movement in the darkness. “Probably just an animal,” he assured her, taking Charlie’s hand into his own. “Come on, let’s get you back to your mom.” Charlie reluctantly gave up her position, craning her neck while her dad led her back to the overturned car. “It wasn’t an animal,” she murmured. “It walked on two legs, like us.”

Si infilò la mano in tasca ed estrasse le chiavi di casa, cercò quella del portone e la tenne stretta tra il pollice e l’indice. Doveva essere rapido, una volta nel sottopassaggio, sarebbe dovuto correre verso destra e infilare al primo colpo la chiave nella serratura. Solo una volta che il portone fosse stato richiuso sarebbe stato salvo. Ne era certo: una volta dentro casa, quell’incubo sarebbe finito.

Dirk glanced around. All sorts of tough and seedy types filled the tavern. At one table, a pair of minotaurs butted heads over a fresh steak that had just been brought to them, rare. At another, a flock of naked fairies frolicked in a bowl of mead large enough to serve them as a swimming pool. Over by the bar, a man in a cowled robe sold some eager young adventurers a map to a hidden dungeon.

Out in the night, the ambulance arrived, its siren blaring. Even though the gate was an inch above the ground, its material only a thin sheet of metal, help still sounded miles and hours away from those still alive in the arcade.

Being dead had been the best thing to ever happen to Robby Asaro. Not dying, that part had been terrible, was still terrible because he relived it every night after the lights were shut off and the games were unplugged and he had nothing with which to occupy himself.

Spinne sat there for a moment, no one saying anything. When she looked back up, her eyes were red and wet. ‘We’re talking about people who have as much gold as the Emperor. Who have Khorne – the bloody Blood God – backing them.
‘We’re just people. Sure, we play Blood Bowl in front of hundreds of thousands, and we make a good living at it, but it’s just a job. It’s not worth death and eternal damnation.’

Ginny osservava le luci di Londra passare sotto lo scafo del dirigibile in uno dei rari scorci che si aprivano tra le nubi. “Charon” lo aveva chiamato Doyle e non poteva esserci nome più azzeccato per la nave volante che trasportava anime dannate.

If Dunk hadn’t been so terrified, he might have been able to admire the inspiration and craftsmanship that had gone into torturing him so effectively. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to just to remove a player from a game, but Dunk had long ago learned never to underestimate the public’s hunger for its sports stars to find new ways to be destroyed. He could almost hear the audience cheering now.

‘Well, Bob, if you hadn’t made a pre-game snack of that young dwarf you found passed out on Bugman’s XXXXXX, you’d be conscious enough to remember that the ball’s hidden in one of the six chests scattered throughout the dungeon.’
‘Does that mean there are six balls?’
‘Just one ball, Bob; if the players open a chest that doesn’t have a ball in it, it explodes! What more fun could you ask for from a game?’

Aprì la porta e la scaletta si srotolò di un paio di gradini. Raccolse la lunga gonna scura ed entrò nella carrozza. Si sedette sulla panca imbottita e scostò appena le tendine per vedere il paesaggio della Bishop Road che scorreva lento fuori dalla finestra. La carrozza era partita placida e gli zoccoli dei cavalli risuonavano nella notte.

Aveva un solo modo per rosicchiare il tempo che le mancava ed era abbastanza disperata da metterlo in pratica. Il desiderio di affondare i denti nella carne morta la costringeva a pensarci dal primo giorno in cui si era risvegliata in quella condizione, poteva essere riuscita a soffocarlo ma era sempre lì che le sussurrava oscenità ed erodeva le sue difese.