Terror Incognita Read Online Free Page B

home.
    He’d do that first. He hated heights, and now found he welcomed the chance to come down from the high ladder.
    Before descending, however, he dared to lean closer to the window, near enough to touch it with his fingers if he had cared to stretch, which he didn’t. He tried to see into the attic from here. He had played in it as a boy, despite his father forbidding him from going up there. It had been years since he’d really looked around in there.
    He was trying to imagine this diagonal window from the other side, in relation to his memories of the attic rooms. He found he couldn’t picture it from the inside.
    He couldn’t see into the attic through it, either. The panes might have been painted black inside, for all he could tell. The most he could make out was his own curious face reflected in the dirty glass, staring back at him.
    *     *     *
    When Alan stepped up into the attic a small creature hopped behind a box of books, thrashing its upper limbs. He gasped, became a frozen pose framed in the threshold. Then he heard the cooing, and saw the white droppings on the floor boards. Damn pigeons; how had they got up in here? Why did his mother have to throw bread out for them and encourage them to congregate? When he came further into the attic he saw that a window in this end had been propped open with a board. Mother. She must have done that to let some air in while she was up here one time, and had forgotten to close it again. Alan sighed. He’d have to close it and catch each pigeon individually and carry them outside. Yet another project. Maybe he should just go home, he thought.
    For now he left the window as it was, and moved into the darker end of the attic, where the walls angled closer together...
    It was no wonder he couldn’t see through the window from the outside. It was thoroughly boarded up on the inside. This also explained why he hadn’t been able to recall the window from the inside from his boyhood; it had apparently been covered like this for many years.
    Leaving the attic to borrow his father’s old toolbox from his mother, Alan first gave her hell about the pigeons up there, and then asked, “Why did Dad board up that slanted attic window? On this end of the house, up over the back door?”
    “Oh, my father was the one who did that. Your father started to take the boards off once so the attic would get more light, but then he changed his mind and boarded it back up again.”
    “Well, why did Granddad board it up in the first place?”
    “When your grandparents owned the house there was a big thunderstorm one time, and I guess a lightning bolt struck that window. I remember that night...I was about eight, I think. It was terrible. The whole house shook. I don’t know what the lightning did to the window, though. Maybe it scorched the glass black or just cracked it all.” She shrugged.
    “It isn’t cracked. One piece is broken off, is all. Recently, too; I saw the broken pieces in the gutter.”
    “I don’t know.” She shrugged again.
    “Well, I’m gonna pull the boards off. The attic is real dark down in that end and there’s no electric lights. It could use a little sunlight.”
    His deceased father’s toolbox in hand, Alan returned to the back hall, climbed up past the second floor, up into the attic.
    *     *     *
    Alan pulled the uppermost board off first, using the back of a claw hammer. The first thought that struck him as he looked out through the glass was how quickly it had become dark. It was only five thirty in the afternoon, and here it was summer. Maybe a thunderstorm was brewing.
    He glanced over his shoulder, into the opposite, roomier end of the attic. That end of the attic was awash in golden sunlight. Dust motes swam lazily in the slanting mellow beams.
    Alan jerked around to gape at the diagonal window. After a moment of confused hesitation, he began to pry off the next board down. It was nailed thoroughly and he really had to lever and