Hello all! I'd like to thank Cindy for the opportunity to provide you this inside look at my upcoming novel Caught, scheduled for release Jan. 28. Cindy's an amazing friend, and I hope I do well by here providing this preview of my book.

If you want to read Chapter 1 first, just click here.

If you enjoy those preview chapters, please feel free to preorder the book here for only $0.99.

Now, without further delay, please enjoy Chapter 2 of Caught.

Chapter 2

The Faceless Boy

The rough texture of the mud wall scratched Sal’s hand as he unsuccessfully groped for a light switch. The feeling of the wall tickled a memory in the back of his mind, but an odd surge of fear caused Sal to push the recollection away.c

As he ran his hand along the misshapen wall, the texture changed from rough and gritty, to cold and smooth. A tingling sensation flowed through him, as if the world had changed and not for the better. A door opened, revealing a flight of stairs and sending a shaft of light into the room.

Sal blinked until his eyes adjusted to the light and then looked down at the camouflage military uniform he wore. He didn’t belong in a uniform. He knew that much, but that didn’t remove his last name, Veltri, from above the right breast pocket. The sound of footsteps drew his eyes from his uniform to a small silhouette at the top of the stairs. Sal thought it might be a child. Before the kid could get too far away, Sal rushed up the stairs.

Sal was fit, but it felt as if he’d run halfway up a skyscraper instead of just one set of wooden stairs. Taking a deep breath, he finally reached the top and noticed a small boy with dark-brown skin and black hair approaching another door at the end of a narrow hallway. The boy opened the door, which led into another dark room. The hall seemed to stretch and shrink at the same time.

Sal called out to the child, but the boy entered the dark room without responding. Sal only had a moment to examine the kid before the door shut between them. Short and skinny, with a dirt covered t-shirt, a torn pair of shorts, and no shoes, the boy looked homeless.

“I won’t hurt you!” Sal’s boots clanged off the metal floor as he sprinted down the hall. He was relieved to reach the other side in only a few seconds. The impossibly long run up the stairs had frayed his nerves and drained his energy. He flung the door open. The hall seemed dim when Sal turned back, but it somehow managed to cast enough light to spill into the room, at least enough to reach the boy’s bare legs.

Sal took a few steps into the room. The door slammed shut behind him. He spun around to open it, but his hand came up against a gritty mud wall. A terrifying memory clawed out at Sal. He stuffed it down.

Without thinking, as if he’d done it so often his muscles responded on impulse, Sal reached up and flicked on a small flashlight on his left shoulder. It has to be on my left shoulder. I need to keep my right arm free to bring up my rifle. The thought was almost as shocking to Sal as the light on his shoulder. It wasn’t there until I thought it was.

“Hello?” Sal called out hoping to draw the boy’s attention. A part of Sal thought he’d somehow, impossibly, ended up right back in the same room in which he’d started. How’d I get there? How’d I get here?

A shuffling sound drew Sal’s attention. He glimpsed the boy walking away. The slapping of the boy’s bare feet had a steady rhythm. Sal stepped up to him slowly.

“My name’s Sal,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Sal gently put a large, square hand on the boy’s shoulder. Sal was always careful with his grip, and he was all the more careful with the boy. The child turned, and Sal backed away in shock. He nearly stumbled down a previously unnoticed flight of stairs. Sal looked down the stairs if only to avoid looking at the boy for a moment. Sal tried to tell himself he was imagining things. Like flights of stairs appearing out of thin air.

But when Sal turned back to look at the boy, nothing had changed. The kid had messy black hair that fell in locks around a face that wasn’t a face at all. Where eyes, a nose and a mouth should have been was only smooth, dark-brown skin. His featureless face lacked any evidence that eyes, or anything else, even belonged on that rounded surface.

The boy, somehow moving at ease despite his lack of eyes, stepped past Sal and began descending the stairs at that same measured pace. His bare feet thumped against the wood, but each step also struck at Sal’s heart. Whatever was down there, it wasn’t safe. Face or no, it was only a boy.

“We should leave,” Sal said. The boy didn’t stop, and Sal felt a surge of panic. The kid was heading into danger, and Sal was the only person in this mad-house able to do anything about it.

He leapt down the stairs. As soon as his boots bounced off the first step, everything changed. Even as Sal descended from one step to another, the stairs faded, replaced by an uneven mud floor. Sal landed off balance and stumbled. He looked up from the ground just in time to see the boy walk to the corner of the room. The boy fit himself into the corner so tightly, if he had a nose, it would have touched the intersection of the walls.

Sal stood, desperate to reach the boy. He was only a step away when the back of the boy’s head exploded, spraying blood and bits of bone onto Sal’s face. Screaming, Sal lifted his hands to try and wipe the splatter off. He pulled his hands away to see the blood, but there was none. What was I doing? He dropped his hands and saw a slender boy with no face.

The sight of the boy startled him, sending him back a few steps. Sal nearly stumbled down a flight of stairs. He gazed down this newly-appeared stairwell, if only to again keep from looking at the egg-smooth surface where the boy’s face should be. After a moment, Sal found the courage to look back at the boy, who walked past him and started down the stairs.

Sal scrambled down the stairs behind the boy. He felt certain he could catch the child, but just as he reached out, the youth seemed to shift away. The kid’s shift took him to the corner of a room. Sal kept the narrow cone of his flashlight on the boy in the corner, making it hard to see much of anything else. He was desperate to get to the child, if he didn’t get there in time. What? What will happen?

Sal was just a step away when he saw the back of the boy’s head explode. Sal stopped and held his arm up in front of him to keep the gore from hitting his face, and then let his arm fall back to his side when he reappeared at the top of a flight of stairs. He quickly patted at himself. How bad is the blood? Where’s the blood? What blood? What?

Sal wasn’t sure why, or how, but he was sure he’d been in that exact same spot just a moment ago. Only before there was a— Before he could finish the thought, a small boy appeared in front of him. Despite the lack of a face or ears, Sal was more concerned for the child then the boy’s impossible appearance. Something inside Sal screamed at him to wake up. Am I dreaming? I suppose it’d have to be a dream. The boy walked past him and started down the stairs, where Sal knew the kid would die.

Sal closed his eyes. “It’s only a dream,” he told himself. “It’s only a dream.” He repeated the phrase like a prayer to ward against evil. Sal heard the sound of marching and opened his eyes in confusion. Twelve faceless boys in two lines of six marched from the end of a long, narrow hallway.

“You can’t go down there!” Sal shouted. He rushed up to stop the lines of marchers and stumbled as he shifted to the other end of the hall. He whipped his head around and saw the marchers descend the stairs. Sal dashed after them, hoping to chase the boys down. He didn’t care if it was a dream or not. He didn’t care what they looked like. He had to save those boys. If he could save just one of them, he knew he’d find something, some part of himself he’d lost.

Even as he focused on catching up to the children, his gut wrenched, and the world morphed around him. He had somehow entered the room before the boys. He didn’t care how. He turned. The sound of bare feet slapping the ground seemed louder than possible. “Stop!” Sal shouted. The boys marched on obliviously. Sal knew they couldn’t hear him; they had no ears.

Sal caught one boy, and he felt the splatter of blood and bone strike his army combat uniform. One by one, the boys lined up. Sal held one and tackled another. Screaming, he shoved a third out of the way only to end on his knees, covered in blood as nine more heads seemed to explode from within.

Sal wept.

“Please,” he cried. “Just let me wake up. Someone help me!”

Something flickered at the top of the stairs. Sal looked up and noticed a man standing in the doorway. The man wore a flowing white robe and a pointed hat that reminded Sal of the Pope. The long, wooden staff in the man’s hand made him an abbott, but if the man was a religious leader, he was unhappy. Sal could see the rage in the man’s eyes.

The abbott raised his staff, thrusting it down in Sal’s direction. He opened his mouth to speak, and Sal knew the abbott’s words would break him somehow. Sal saw the abbott in two ways. In one, the abbott was at the top of the stairs, about to proclaim Sal’s doom. In the other, Sal could see the man’s face as large as if the abbott were right in front of him. The abbott started to speak, but Sal covered his ears and shut his eyes.

***

Sal jolted against a set of chains that held him to a bed. He flailed around wearing nothing but a paper-thin hospital gown with a set of IVs driven into each arm. He noticed a group of machines that made their own flurry of noises. Immediate panic set in, and Sal began shouting while yanking at his bonds. The bonds clanked each time he jerked at them. Pain shot down his arms, but he kept fighting to escape. His hysteria was so complete that he was barely aware of a group of men in lab coats just a few feet away, nor did he care that they were all looking at him in stunned silence.

“What the fuck is he doing awake!” one of the men shouted. Almost all of the other men appeared as shocked as the first, but none looked half as panicked as Sal felt.

“Let me out,” Sal shouted at the cluster of men.

“Shut up!” someone said in a voice as sharp as a razor. Sal couldn’t see the man. “Hold him down.”

The group of men in lab coats seemed afraid of whoever had spoken, but they surged to obey the order. Sal struggled more desperately against his bonds, but he was already chained to the bed. He could do little to prevent the men from grabbing him with smooth hands that had clearly never seen a day of real, honest work in their lives. The bedsprings groaned in protest as Sal struggled. The mattress was so thin Sal could feel each part of the frame underneath. None of Sal’s attackers weighed more than two-thirds as much as Sal, and they all looked more likely to win a debate match than a wrestling match, but they buckled thick leather straps across his body, and Sal was powerless to stop it.

“You’re a monster,” the unseen man said. “You’re nothing like me. You’ll never be good enough.”

Sal felt something, maybe a needle, bite the side of his neck. One of the men picked something up that looked like some sort of small motorized saw. Everything seemed to get fuzzy, but Sal could see the tool with eerie clarity. It vibrated back and forth with blurring speed.

“What are you doing?” Sal shouted. “You can’t do this to me!”

Sal tried to pull his hands free or force the hospital bed over. Neither attempt worked. Sal could do nothing as one of the men slowly brought the saw down. Just as it came inches away form Sal’s inner elbow, he passed out. A single thought crept along his subconscious. Could this be a dream, too? Can a man die in his dreams?

END PREVIEW

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Fantasy Author

C. L. Schneider

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