The Spectral Link by Thomas Ligotti Read Free Book Online

cross-legged on the floor of the lavatory hut, it became increasingly apparent that neither of us was entirely dedicated to our plan of stealing our way into the presently secluded region of small country and capturing one of its residents. And the longer we waited, the more our project deteriorated into something ill-conceived and probably unfeasible. Ultimately, though, our doubts were overcome by our hatred.
    “The small people,” my friend said. That was all—just three words spoken in a tense, quiet voice. Yet those words gave vent to a rage at something that had seized his life. I looked at him and saw all second thoughts written on his face transform into a spirit of determination. No doubt he saw my own features overtaken by the same spirit.
     
    ***
     
    We entered the secluded small country by way of a little road that was in the process of construction. Some small children were loitering in the area. Construction sites are always a temptation for children, though these small children weren’t behaving in the usually rambunctious manner one might expect if they had been real children. They didn’t see us, or so we assumed. But it wasn’t long before they started to walk away from the hidden spot where my friend and I were observing them. It was probably time for them to be somewhere, I thought—time to do whatever the smalls did at that hour, for by then it was almost full evening. They moved with rigid, mechanical motions, and we shadowed them easily. We could have caught up to them and grabbed one, pulled it back over into big country—normal country, I mean, the real world where real people live. But I don’t think I could have brought myself to do that, as much as my friend and I had talked about it. I looked at him, and he shook his head, so I knew he felt the same. At that point, I’m not sure that either of us knew what we wanted to do. Again, our plans were coming apart.
    We kept following the smalls, though. I noticed that even if they weren’t moving very fast, they did seem to be moving as fast as they could, as if they were hurrying to get somewhere. Their arms and legs shifted around in the manner of prosthetic limbs, making them look almost crippled, though not crippled so that you felt sorry for them, I should say, but maimed in a way that made you want to keep your distance, as if they could infect you with some dreadful condition. Eventually, we saw lights ahead. With an artificial radiance, they flooded the darkness on the other side of a hill that the small children were approaching. And when they got to the top of the hill, they paused for a moment, their silhouettes outlined against the sky by the lights shining on them from below. For a moment, it was a rather picturesque tableau. But soon the small children did something with their heads, raising them up with a slow mechanical motion by elongating their necks, like a telescope sliding open a little. Then they swiveled those heads around without moving their bodies—turning them just enough so that it seemed they were looking at me and my friend. Both of us dropped to the ground as if we had been shot. In the darkness, I heard my friend whisper, “Those rotten, horrible smalls. You can never know what they’re going to do. I hate them so much.”
    “Yeah,” I murmured in soft response.
    When we looked up from the ground, the small children were gone, no doubt having moved down the other side of the hill. It couldn’t have been a very steep incline there, or so I calculated. Otherwise, the smalls—with their awkward, practically disabled bodies—wouldn’t have been able to negotiate the descent. But when my friend and I ran up to the hilltop, moving in a crouched position, we saw that it was almost a straight drop over the edge. And the small children were now walking like broken robots down below us. Their destination looked like a little toy town that was evidently under construction. “See,” my friend said. “My dad