Bone Key Read Online Free

raising the barrel slowly into position—the sonofabitch was dying at the same time he was going to kill him, Ainsley thought—when there came an awful screaming from above. Nails wrenching free of wood, thick shards of wood shattering, and a stab of pain at Ainsley’s ears that suggested all the air around them had been sucked away in an instant.
    Tornado, he thought. A whirlwind spawned in the midst of the storm that had lifted up the roof of the building and all the air beneath it. Then there was a mighty crash from above that made the dropping of the steel grate seem like the blow of a feather in comparison. Great chunks of the cellar ceiling rained down, one crashing down on Ben’s lifeless body, knocking the flashlight askew, another boulder narrowly missing Ainsley’s skull.
    He rolled over in the water and thrashed madly toward the shelter of the crates, fully expecting a gunshot to drop him at any instant. But there was nothing.
    He was past the place where the steps came down to the room now, one of Ben’s outflung hands stretching barely a yard away, the flashlight half-in, half-out of the water nearby. Ainsley’s breath had come back in ragged gasps, his heart pounding so loudly he couldn’t hear the storm. He struggled to calm himself, listened for a few more moments, but heard nothing but the unearthly rumble of the storm and the cascading of water down the steps.
    Finally, he ducked down and reached quickly to snatch the tumbled flashlight. In the instant that he jerked himself back out of sight, he saw something odd…what had seemed like a pair of arms dangling down from the grate above. He inched one eye out past the corner of the roughly chiseled wall and stole another glance.
    The man’s hand dangled down, the pistol no longer held there. And what he had taken for a second arm was not that at all, he realized, as he stepped out into the open, sloshing shin-deep toward the sight.
    The man’s eyes were still open but frozen now, his cheek flattened against one cross member, his tongue squeezed out like a tiny pink flag of surrender. A section of the roof had broken loose and toppled down on him, Ainsley realized.
    Had crushed him against the grate like the roach he was. A splintered shard of planking had plunged through his back and burst out of his chest where his heart would have been, if he’d had one. But there had been no such organ there, could not have been, as far as Ainsley was concerned. And whatever was that dark stuff dripping from the end of the shattered plank, you wouldn’t even call it blood.
    ***
    The old man awakened then, spared the reliving of what had happened next; and for that much, he was grateful. Ainsley knew that he had been dreaming, but he woke with a shudder nonetheless, for it was as much a memory as a dream, every bit of it being true. Though he had survived, it brought him no great pleasure to recall just how, as it brought him little cheer to recall the events at all.
    The dream, or living memory, had come upon him before, at certain times in his life when great change loomed ahead. He had relived the events the night before the first of his sons had been born, and again the night before his son’s son had been born, and also the night that his great-grandson, Dequarius, had come into this world.
    The old man might have been relieved if he could assume that the dream was an omen of good things to come, but he had also relived those events the night that his own June Anna had died, which put the lie to good-omen foolishness, yes indeed.
    What struck him when he awoke this morning, breathing hard, sweat soaking his nightshirt as briny as those nightmare waves, was how few possibilities there were, when it came to portents at least. If the dream was a harbinger of his own death, it hardly seemed worth the trouble. He was old and worn and expected to die, himself not least among those who did the expecting. His wife was gone, his two sons likewise, his grandson