Was there a voice in the cave now? A wind? A smell?
He couldn't smell anything. He couldn't hear anything. Benny propped
himself up against the cave wall with a blanket around his shoulders and
the baseball bat held loose and ready between his knees.
A smell then, on the wind. Sewage and sulfur. A stink of fear.
Alan looked to his brothers, then he got up and left the cave without a
look back. He wasn't going to wait for Davey to come to him.
The night had come up warm, and the highway sounds down at the bottom of
the hill mingled with the spring breeze in the new buds on the trees and
the new needles on the pines, the small sounds of birds and bugs
foraging in the new year. Alan slipped out the cave mouth and looked
around into the twilight, hoping for a glimpse of something out of the
ordinary, but apart from an early owl and a handful of fireflies
sparking off like distant stars, he saw nothing amiss.
He padded around the mountainside, stooped down low, stopping every few
steps to listen for footfalls. At the high, small entrance to the
golems' cave, he paused, lay on his belly, and slowly peered around the
fissure.
It had been years since Alvin had come up to the golems' cave, years
since one had appeared in their father's cave. They had long ago ceased
bringing their kills to the threshold of the boys' cave, ceased leaving
pelts in neat piles on the eve of the waning moon.
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