Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft Read Online Free Page A

haired women laughed to see such fun. There was a computer room on the other side. A one-legged man about my age was looking through eBay, a palsied woman tied in her gerry chair was unsuccessfully trying to contact a Bible site, another woman, very large with bright red lipstick and a fabric rose behind her left ear, was looking at a JPEG of a family at the beach in Maui or some other tropical paradise. My God, Carter has been here at least forty-one years. I walked on to the end of the hall. Some rooms were open. A woman restrained on a bed screamed as I went by, wanting Alfred. In another, two gray-haired black gentlemen in threadbare flannel robes bent over a chessboard.
    There were two twin beds in room 13. They were nicely made and to my amusement had Spiderman bed covers. A wall clock with large numbers told me it was almost 10:00. There was a small painting of a green-skinned ghoul sitting on a tombstone, contemplating some gnawed-upon Yorrick. The painting could have been from a sci-fi convention where it had not taken home any awards. On the opposite wall hung a framed faded print of Albrecht Dürer’s Praying Hands. There was a small bookshelf under the ticking clock. There were a few paperbacks, The Truth about Black Magic, The Secret of the Great Pyramid, Teach Yourself Typing, Hunza Valley Health Secrets, UFOs in Colonial America, How to Make and Sell Macramé, Houses That Kill, and The Truth about Ghouls. All by Amos H. Carter. The room being empty, I crossed to the shelf to examine the last volume. The atrocious painting had provided the cover art for this collection of forgotten lore. In the room I saw his gerry chair, the filthy white bondage belts hanging loosely at its sides.
    “Amos is out by the bayou,” came a frail feminine voice.
    In the doorway was a shrunken old woman in a wheelchair. Her cornflower blue eyes twinkled, her cheeks were rouged, and her thinning hair nicely coiffed. Her attendant, an ebon black young man with cornrows, had a white orderly’s uniform which had a nametag ALFRED and incongruous blue bandana in the shirt pocket. He looked all in all like the Platonic form of boredom.
    I addressed the helpful woman. “Isn’t he supposed to stay in his room?” I nodded toward the gerry chair.
    “Bonds don’t hold Amos when he doesn’t want them to. We discussed that when you were here last.”
    “I am afraid you are mistaken, sweetheart,” I said. “This is my first visit.”
    “No. You were here that other time. The time there was all that blood,” she said. Alfred began to wheel her away.
    “Wait,” I said.
    “She just gonna get crazy, don’t get her going,” said Alfred.
    “What blood?” I asked.
    “All that blood everywhere and Alfred’s grandmother made him scour it off the floors and I told him he looked like Cinderella.”
    “See, I told she crazy.”
    “Where did the blood come from?”
    Alfred was wheeling her down the hall.
    “Where did the blood come from?”
    “From New Orleans, I reckon.”
    I left the nursing home and struck out for the bayou. There was a path through the tall Johnson grass and scrub oak. Even in October the air was hot and humid, and a bright green moss covered the tiny trunks of the little trees. Insects hummed and buzzed, the water gave off a sour and stale smell. The sky had begun to cloud up, and the sun looked a lead disk. The path cut round and back again like a water moccasin. I could only see a few feet ahead. I couldn’t believe how quickly I seemed to be in a primeval jungle, even though I knew I could only be a few hundred yards from Lee Street. Large butterflies with purple and black wings fluttered by. I was tempted to step off the sandy path and crush one, changing millions of years of the future, when I saw a middle-aged white man in blue shirt and Levis sitting on a stump about sixty feet ahead of me. He was resting his hands on a walking-stick with an elaborate ivory handle, apparently in deep conversation with the