The Satanists

Chapter Ten: Strange Dreams and Disappearing Children

Chapter Ten: Strange Dreams and Disappearing Children

Young Jimmy Sonders is asleep in his bedroom.

The dream sequence of Jimmy Sonders:---

From his point of view, he steps over some railroad tracks, during a bright noontime hour.

The gleaming tracks rise high off the ground as he looks down, watching his feet, as he must step high over them.---He crosses them safely, looks up, catches the blazing noonday sunlight bouncing off the smoothened surface of the iron tracks, and his view is dazzled and blinded.---There is an effect of red hue seen through shut eyelids for several seconds.

And then he watches something like a motion picture, of himself and two of his playmates, Abe and Sam, riding smaller, juvenile bicycles down a street. The playmates ride out a bit ahead of Jimmy, with him in the middle, and he glances down at the front wheel and handlebars of his bicycle from time to time.---Now it is afternoon.

The three boys are pedaling at a leisurely speed, along a minor street.

They pass some smaller children playing in their yards, here and there.

Gradually the street loses its accompanying sidewalks and then sinks into a shallow gully.---They ride onward at leisurely speed.---At first the gully is marked with sharp earthen slopes, and thick bushes on the tops of the slopes.

Later the earthen slopes vanish, and the gravel-filled gully is flanked by grassy mounds.---Over these mounds, on both sides of the gully, there extends a single-file sequence of old trees, their branches weirdly twisted, some even in loops.---The three boys keep moving past these files of trees, the street curving gently before them.

They talk a little as they ride.

Abe says, "It's gettin' dark. We better stop. Our parents are gonna call us. They'll be cross if we don't come right away."

Then Jimmy answers, "Aw, no way. Let's keep going, this is just getting to be fun!"

"Okay, Jimmy," Sam agrees.

A setting sun peers from behind the trees on the sides, and it still shines brightly with its yellowish-orange light.---Jimmy glances at the sun for an instant: the bright yellow suddenly darkens to a flashing ruby red.---He turns away, blinking his eyes, stopping his bicycle.

The others pull ahead.

Abe calls out.---"C'mon!"

The three boys resume riding their bicycles along the street.---The gully spills into level ground, and the street stops, cut off, as though someone has sheared it.---The mounds and the twisted trees are left behind.---Ahead lies an unobstructed horizon. Railroad tracks are extending and merging into the horizon in the far distance, reflecting the final ochre hue of the sunset.---The tracks extend from a bridge, and the sun shines through the underlying boards of the bridge, silhouetting them like very broad thick bars with spaces in between.

Just in front of the bridge, to the left in Jimmy's view, there is a small ravine descending into a darker lowland, where an additional, solitary pair of tracks is visible.---Some bushes and the flat rooftop of some sort of broad grey warehouse building are seen from above.

Sam calls out, "Ey, over here! Let's go down!"

He stops his bicycle and lays it on the ground.

Abe shouts, "Me first!"

He stops and drops his bicycle in a hurry.

Jimmy calls out, "Careful!"

Jimmy also stops and gets off his bicycle, parks it on gravel. His playmates are starting to descend the ravine. He scrambles, catches up, overtakes and passes Sam but stays behind Abe. The boys grasp for stems and grass where possible for support while descending.