Grim Tuesday Read Online Free

agents. Or even human. They had to be Denizens of the House, or perhaps creatures summoned from Nothing.
    Agents of Grim Tuesday.
    Whatever was about to happen had already begun.
    Arthur ran back up the stairs, taking three at each jump. Before he got to the top he was wheezing and clutching his side. But he didn’t stop. He grabbed The Compleat Atlas of the House from his room and went up again, out onto the rooftop balcony.
    The two…whatever they were…had finished hammering in the SOLD sign and had gotten another sign out of their car and were hammering that in as well.Arthur couldn’t quite see what it said till they stepped out of the way. When he read the bold foot-high words it took a second for them to penetrate.
    DUE FOR DEMOLITION . THE NEW LEAFY GLADE SHOPPING MALL COMING SOON .
    A shopping mall! Across the street!
    Arthur put the Atlas on his knees and looked at the two real estate agents. Still staring at them, he placed his hands on the book and willed it open. He’d needed the Key before, but the Will had assured him that at least some pages would be accessible without it.
    Who are those people? Are they servants of Grim Tuesday? What does Grim Tuesday oversee in the House? Thoughts tumbled through Arthur’s head, though he tried to concentrate on the two “real estate agents.”
    He felt the book shiver under his hands, then it suddenly exploded open. Arthur almost toppled over backwards. It always shocked him, even when he was expecting it, that the book trebled in size.
    It was open at a blank page, but he’d expected that too. A small spot of ink appeared, then stretched into a stroke. Some unseen hand rapidly drew a portrait of the two real estate agents. But not with the illusory dark suits. The Atlas showed them as they had appeared once Arthur rubbed his eyes, wearing large leather apronsthat stretched from the neck to the ankle. Only in the illustration they both carried large hammers and had forked beards.
    After the illustration was done, the invisible pen started to write. As it had before, it started in some weird alphabet and language, but changed into English as Arthur watched, though the writing was still very old-fashioned.
    Immediately following the breaking of the Will, Grim Tuesday embarked upon a course that has wrought great damage to the Far Reaches of the House that were his assigned domain. In the vast room originally known as the Grand Cavern, there was a deep spring that brought a regular and controlled effervescence of Nothing to the surface. The Grim used this elegant provision of Nothing to prepare raw materials for lesser artisans, and to make and mold a miscellany of items himself, copying artifacts created by the Architect, or the work of lesser beings in the Secondary Realms. Yet the more the Grim made such items, the more he wished to make, in order to sell what he wrought to the other Days and even ordinary Denizens of the House.
    Limited by the amount of Nothing that rose to the surface of the spring, the Grim decided to sink a shaft to mine the source that supplied the spring. That single shaft has become many tunnels, deeps, and excavations, until almost all the Far Reaches become an enormous Pit, an horrific sore that threatens the very foundation of the House.
    To work his ever-expanding mine, Grim Tuesday sought Denizens from the other parts of the House, taking them from the other Days in lieu of payment for the things he sold. These Denizens have become little more than slaves, indentured without hope of release.
    As the number of these workers became legion, Grim Tuesday needed more officers to oversee them. Against all laws of the House, and by use of prodigious amounts of Nothing, the Grim melded his Dawn, Noon, and Dusk together and then recast them as seven individuals. In order of precedence they are Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pits, Sethera, Azer.
    Collectively they are known as Grim’s Grotesques, for the seven all are misshapen in different ways,