Terror Incognita Read Online Free Page A

the stool suddenly; he almost fell but righted himself, leaned away from the pull to fight it a moment longer, caught hold of the counter. No one but Chani was looking at his struggles.
    “Next year,” he promised her.
    “Next year,” she smiled.
    He slid toward the door. Through it. Out. The bells jingled. The door closed. Warm yellow light came through the windows, but he couldn’t see anything other than that through them. Otherwise he might stay here and watch Chani through the glass until next year. Mouth conversations to her. Maybe they knew he would want that, and kept the glass one-way.
    “Hey, buddy,” a voice addressed him. Two hooded Angels came sauntering toward him, their robes splashed red, one with an UZI and one with a chainsaw. “Agnostic, huh?” Good guess. It was branded across his forehead.
    “Nice coat, clown,” the other one mocked him. It was full of bullet holes already, slashed by swords. “Need some new holes?”
    Fleming turned slowly and grinned. “How about you?” From inside his coat came the stolen automatic, and he fired. The UZI went off, but he got them good first. Both went down. It might not hurt, and they might regenerate ten times as quickly as he, but he still felt better for it as he bolted away. The air froze the insides of his lungs to crystal. But he laughed. Angry laughter. Sad laughter.
    Yeah, those little pleasures. You could still thumb your nose in Hell...in between the Angels cutting it off.
    Don’t feel so bad, he cheered himself while he ran. It wasn’t his fault that the breaks were so short, and he’d worked enough years of his life that he should be used to that by now. Bosses were bosses, people were people...as above, so below.
    Next year, he’d promised her. Next year, he promised himself.
    He had all the time in the netherworld.

THE BOARDED WINDOW

    Alan used his trowel to poke at the thing in the rain gutter.
    It resembled a dead baby bird; translucent, purple-pink flesh devoid of feathers, crooked limbs like rudimentary wings and legs. But it was as large as a full grown pigeon, or larger. A group of pigeons favored the roof of his mother’s tall old house, sleeping in the cornices and in gaping holes in the eaves. He guessed it was one of those birds, dead and decomposing. Still, it didn’t look long dead. And the mouth...he prodded the small limp carcass once more. The mouth looked more like it possessed lips than a beak.
    Disgusted, Alan used the trowel to flip the animal over the side of the gutter to drop into the large trash barrel below.
    He had decided to clean out his mother’s rain gutters himself, since neither she nor he could afford hiring someone at the present. The gutters had become more like flower pots in the past few years since his father had passed away; lush green plants filled this one stretch of gutter, no doubt seeded there by the tall tree which grew along the side of the sorrowful-looking Victorian. Alan had borrowed a ladder from a friend, and brought up with him a number of small trash bags to be filled with the plants and the layer of debris they grew in. When each bag was full he meant to drop them down into the bucket.
    But the discovery of the bird or flayed squirrel or whatever it might be had distracted him from his project. That, and the broken attic window.
    The window was visible from the ground; it ran diagonally, filling a space between a higher and shorter level of the roof where the attic rose above the second story. It consisted of three square panes, none of which seemed able to slide or swing open. However, one of the panes was broken at the corner. From the ground Alan hadn’t been able to see this, the plants in their trough helping to obscure the damage.
    Another project. Alan sighed. Well, who else could help his mother tend to these things? For now, he would simply go up into the attic and tape a piece of cardboard over the hole so that no pigeons or squirrels would get in there to make it their