Blind Panic by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

flared up, they died down again, and he found himself in total darkness. He lowered his hand, but he was still in total darkness. He blinked furiously and rubbed his eyes, but it made no difference. He couldn’t see anything except seamless black.
    It was Cayley who screamed out first. “I’m blind! Remo, I can’t see! Remo, I’m blind! Help me! ”
    But Remo was blundering around in circles, with his arms flailing, and he was shouting out, “ Ahh! Ahh! Shit! What have you done to me, you bastard? What have you done?”
    Charlie had sank to his knees on the ground, rotating his head around and around and tilting it from side to side as if his eyes had simply come loose and he could somehow shake them back into place and bring his sight back.
    “What have you done to me?” Remo screamed. “Where the fuck are you, and what have you done to me?” He fired off another shot, and Cayley screamed and stumbled against Mickey’s side. Mickey took hold of her arm and steadied her and said, “I’m here; it’s Mickey. I can’t see anything either. Don’t move. Charlie, where are you?”
    “I can’t see nothing,” moaned Charlie. “What’s happened to me, Mickey? I can’t see nothing!”
    Mickey reached out with his other hand and found Charlie’s shoulder. “Don’t move, Charlie. He’s blinded us. Those lights that came out of their eyes.”
    “Are you still here?” Remo yelled out. “Are you still here, Mr. Infernal Fricking John?”
    There was a long pause. Apart from Cayley’s persistent whimpering, the only sounds they could hear were the wind fluffing against their ears, the river gurgling, and the lurching of the logs on their campfire. But then they heard the cicada- whirr ing noise of the totemlike figures, and wooden footsteps clattering around behind them.
    “Don’t come any closer!” Remo shouted. “I’m warning you! Maybe I can’t see you, but I’m going to go on shooting till I blow your fricking head off!”
    Wodziwob said, “You are helpless, like nursing babies. You can do nothing to save yourselves. You are the same now as we once were. When you first appeared in our land, we, too, were blind. We were blind to your greed and blind to your cruelty and we were deaf, too—deaf to your lies,which buzzed like a thousand blowflies on the corpse of our happiness.”
    Mickey said, “We really don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. We’re sorry if we’ve done anything to upset you, but if we did we sure didn’t do it on purpose, and if there’s anything we can do to put it right…And this blindness. It’s only temporary, right? Like looking at the sun, right?”
    Wodziwob must have come right up close to him, because Mickey could actually smell him, some herbal smell like cilantro, and a dry spice, a little like nutmeg. He could smell buttery grease, too, and an underlying reek of tobacco.
    “What you did to our people— that was not temporary, was it?”
    “ We don’t understand you! ” Mickey screamed at him—and this was Mickey, who hardly ever lost his temper. “ We don’t know what you mean! I can’t stay blind forever! I can’t be a blind person! ”
    “You should not be fearful,” said Wodziwob. “You will not be blind for very long.”
    “What?” said Mickey, and now he was shaking. “What do you mean?”
    Wodziwob didn’t answer, but Mickey heard him step away and call out, “Tudatzewunu! Tubbohwa’e! Let us show our friends the way to join their forefathers!”
    Remo said, wildly, “You’re going to kill us? You think you can fucking kill us, and nobody’s going to come after you? Everybody knows where we are, Mr. Infernal John. Our parents know we’re here. Our friends know we’re here. The park rangers know we’re here. We have GPS, too.”
    He heard one of the totemlike figures creaking up behind him, and he wheeled around and lost his balance and fell heavily onto the rocks, dropping his rifle with a loud clatter. Mickey took two groping