Strange is the Night Read Online Free Page B

phosphorescent smoke drifted from the place that seam had opened up and Robert blinked stupidly; the tree had just belched. After that, he wasn’t even sure it was a tree; only something that looked like one.
    The room they rented that night was in a roach motel with a neon sign that read _O_EL. On a lark they rented the honeymoon suite and William laughed when they saw there was a mirror over the bed. Robert did not because he had never slept with the world above him; he had never done anything with the world so close overhead. There was a genuine fear of the world breaking through and spilling all over them while they slept or talked or had sex. William saw the look on his face and asked if Robert was all right. Robert kissed him, muttered that his concerns were unfounded and William snickered at the phrasing as he ran his hands under Robert’s shirt.
    There in the bed that night they moved together and when William leaned forward to press his mouth to Robert’s shoulder as shivers of pleasure ran down his spine as Robert held him close. Then he opened his eyes and looked over William’s shoulder, into the mirror and through to a ledge of silverish rock.
    Perched there was a thing with a face like a wolf only more elongated at the snout and broader across the forehead. It had no mouth that Robert could see, but its eyes were huge and orange. Robert held tight to William’s hips, urging him on, chasing his pleasure as he watched the strange beast on the ledge watch them back as it touched itself with something Robert didn’t quite dare call a hand.
    It was horrific and it was fascinating; it was everything it shouldn’t have been and all the things it would always be. It made sense that this thing would see them and Robert would see it and they would both take something from each other, because in the mirror world that was how things were done. Robert found his pleasure inside of William and the wolfish beast found its own release in grunts and spurts that looked black in the alien moonlight.
    It licked its fingers clean while never looking away from Robert as he panted to catch his breath and William bit his shoulder and cried out into his skin. As the wolf monster licked its fingers, Robert saw the filament fine bodies of the worms caught in the fluid of its completion squirming against its tongue. He closed his eyes and held William tighter, rocking them lightly from side to side as a howl tore loose from the mirror world.
    He said the only prayer he knew, whispered it into William’s sweaty hair. Three words, three syllables and hoped they would be enough because it sounded like something was slapping the mirror from the other side and Robert was afraid to look.
     

V
    Robert found a job working full-time for a travel magazine that often gave him tickets to exotic locales so he could write articles about them. William finished law school and joined a practice where he made a good impression. He was busy, but he went with Robert on his work-related field trips as often as he could. They never again stayed in a hotel or motel with a mirror above or near the bed.
    William took care of almost everything because Robert did not drive—Robert could not drive because the reflections were unreliable at best and terrible road collisions waiting to happen at worst.
    The world got uglier and uglier to the point that the splashed paint colors of the sunset stopped being beautiful and began to look diseased. Robert took great pains to remove himself from the reflection world as best he could. They no longer kept mirrors in the house and at night when the windows became reflective they closed the curtains. William helped him block the sights away so he could sleep again at night. Robert never told him that sometimes he heard tapping coming from the shard of mirror he still kept in his nightstand drawer or from behind the closed curtains in the evening. He didn’t tell him about the scratching he heard coming from beyond the