Ghouljaw and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

shouting was still echoeing out there in the woods behind him, but seemed disorganized and eventually began to fade. He waited, caught his breath and, again, struggled to his feet.
    For over an hour Max stayed close to the back alleys, weaving through poorly lit sidestreets as he headed north toward the city—the twinkling skyline visible from time to time between rows of outdated houses in these outlying neighborhoods. Max guided himself toward the beacon of big buildings, knowing that if he could get close, he could make it to Amy’s apartment. The rain was light and constant, helping to rinse some of the muck from his clothes. He only stopped once, overtaken by a savage wave of nausea. Max steered into an alley, vomiting intermittently for nearly a minute before absently wiping his mouth. His eyes—which had been blurred by retch-induced tears—quickly widened as he concentrated on the inky strands of bile on his hand and wrist. His eyes flicked to the ground, trying to comprehend what had spilled out of him—a great glistening pool of black, viscous liquid. Repelled, Max wiped his hand on his jeans, and through rain and pain and panic, he hurried on.
    Max Kidwell stumbles off the dimly lit street and into an alley—a crooked, accustomed shortcut which leads to Amy’s apartment. Max feels his skull softening, elongating. He looses his footing and falls, slamming down, palm-first, into gravel and broken glass. As he stands a large chunk of lacerated flesh tears away from his wrist and forearm. But there is no pain—Max is both detached and savoring the new sensation, prepared now to give himself over to it.
    Reaching the apartment’s lobby doors, Max searches his mind for the apartment number. He punches the call-button and, as he presses, the skin covering his finger splits open. After several seconds, he hears the voice of a girl. Amy says something, a gurgle sound. Then there’s a buzz. Max is moving again—moving by some distant, rote memory—through the lobby, into the stairwell. Here he falls again, landing shin-first against the edge of a concrete step, causing a jagged, fleshy fissure to open up along his back. Most of the skin is violently sloughed off during the fall, but his clothes and ripped jeans hold most of him together. Max reaches to touch his face, pressing his arms against the sides of his head, where he feels his large, bulbous eyes—his new eyes—are now. He has an ephemeral sting of regret about not hugging his mother goodbye earlier this evening. Even so, with cephalopedic ease he slinks up and out of the discarded tissue and sinew—out of his old body.
    The second floor hallway appears concave through his new globular eyes. The bronze number on Amy’s apartment door is the one clear, remaining memory in Max’s mind, like a nursery rhyme one learns as a child and can faithfully recite. He thumps the door. Amy answers immediately, and at once her sleepy face freezes, registers horror, inevitability, resignation, and— somehow —recognition.
    Amy begins to cry, silently, and takes several mincing steps backward, disappearing into the darkness of her apartment. The thing that was Max Kidwell edges into the room, raises several writhing, coiling appendages, and smears the threshold with gore as the ink-slick tentacles reach back and close the door.

Ghouljaw

    There came a time, he realized, when the strangeness of everything made it increasingly difficult to realize the strangeness of anything.
    —James Hilton, Lost Horizon (1933)

1

    I was drowning in the ocean under a bone-toned moon.
    Those were the first words I had hastily scrawled on a legal pad, sitting at my kitchen table in the middle of the night. It was my first attempt to capture the details of my dream. Not just a recurring dream, but the only dream that now exists.
    I remember that first night, clinging to the dream, lingering in that amniotic place between lucidity and oblivion. I remember being distantly aware of my