Donation
Lance sat at the computer with his jaw dropped open.
“What?” asked Meg.
“Some person named Anock just donated thirty thousand dollars to the site.”
“Wow!”
She had to get up from the couch and see for herself. She looked at the e-mail and confirmed that someone had actually donated the massive amount of money to the site he’d set up as a resource for horror writers.
“I was going to have to close it, but with this, and with the other donations trickling in, my site will only be as mortal as I am.”
“Yeah,” Meg said. “It’s more than you even need.”
Lance was asleep when she snuck out of bed and went into the living room. She sat at the computer desk, fired up the ancient machine and went to Buy.com. She found the laptop she’d been looking at but unable to afford. She was about to start the ordering process, when she noticed the reflection in the monitor.She gasped. Her heart was fluttering.
“Lance.”
“No, not Lance. You can call us Anock. Lance is sleeping and having the wonderful dreams we’ve placed in his head. Shouldn’t you be sleeping too?”
She chanced a glance over her shoulder and then quickly looked back at the computer. In the short look, she’d seen several things in her living room. She thought one had a cape. Another had a pointed hat. One was big and hairy.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll just go to bed and go back to sleep.”
The reflection in the monitor grew. She wanted to scream. She wanted to alert Lance to the horror she was about to suffer, but the thing approaching her was in her head and wouldn’t let her move. She felt its icy hand touch her shoulder. It knelt down and whispered in her ear.
“Good, and when you wake up, thank him for providing support to those who feed belief and make us real. Thank him, because if he didn’t love you, we’d be fighting over which one of us got to feed on you.”
Its hand was suddenly gone from her shoulder. The reflection in the monitor was gone too. She looked behind her and saw no monsters had hung around. She shut the computer down and went back to bed, where she cuddled into his sleeping body.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
