The Store

1

 

Bill Davis quietly closed the front door of the house behind him as he stepped outside. He walked off the porch and stood for a moment at the head of the drive, doing knee bends and breathing deeply, the air exhaling from his lungs in bursts of visible steam. When he reached the count of fifty, he stopped. Standing straight, he bent to the left, bent to the right, then walked down the drive to the road, where he inhaled and exhaled one last time before beginning his morning jog.

 

The dirt changed to asphalt at the bottom of the hill, and he ran past Godwin's meadow and turned onto Main.

 

He liked running at this time of morning. He didn't like the running itself-that was a necessary evil-but he enjoyed being out and about at this hour. The streets were virtually empty. Len Madson was in the donut shop finishing up the morning's baking as the first few customers straggled in, Chris Schneider was loading up the newspaper racks, and here and there individual trucks were heading off to construction sites, but otherwise the town was quiet, the streets clear, and that was the way he liked it.

 

He ran through downtown Juniper and kept going until he hit the highway. The air was chill but heavy, weighted with the rich scent of moist vegetation, the smell of newly cut grass. He breathed deeply as he jogged. He could see his breath as he ran, and the brisk air felt invigorating, made him glad to be alive.

 

On the highway, the view opened up, the close-set trees that had been lining the road falling back, making visible the sloping landscape. Ahead, the sun was rising behind broken clouds that floated, unmoving, over the mountains, the clouds silhouetted against the pale sky, black in the center, pink-orange at the edges. In front of the sunrise, a flock of geese was flying south in a morphing V-formation, the shape of the flight pattern varying every few

An acknowledged master of horror, Bentley Little was born in Arizona a month after his mother attended the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. He is the author of ten previous novels, including The Revelation, The Mailman, The Summoning, Death Instinct (published under the name Phillip Emmons), University, Dominion, The Ignored, The Store, The House, and The Town.