Thy Fearful Symmetry Read Online Free

to cry, and when he looked over at Heather he was surprised to see she was doing just that. “I thought…” she stammered. “I thought he was…” For once, Clive's instincts as a husband won out, and he stood to embrace his wife.  
    “Me too.” Clive said. “But it's over now. Everything's going to be fine.”
    Whoever was screaming next door refused to stop, and the threats that filled the night chilled Clive's soul. Pulling Heather tighter, burying his face in her tight blonde curls, he tried to hold back his own tears as he heard the first distant wail of approaching police sirens.
    A shadow fell over him. Clive glanced out of the window without really thinking about it. What he saw in that second, before it swept out of sight, stayed with him for a long time, as though the image was carved directly onto his eyeballs. Great, malevolent wings beating powerfully. A frail, wounded man dangling between them as though they were an independent thing, a huge bat perhaps, carrying him to a place of refuge.
    Ambrose.

    Clive blinked away the image, pretending he didn't see it reflected in the sinister frost shapes sprinkling the playground. Heather and he had been frightened and tired. His imagination had run away with him.  
    He had seen it so clearly, watched it as it rode the night winds and vanished from sight.
    It wasn't important. Ambrose had not been heard from since, and that was Clive's single preoccupation. Never mind that his work was suffering, that Heather was drawing further away from him, that he couldn't sleep for fear of reliving the beat of vast wings. Clive had promised himself that he would not rest until he had found Ambrose, though he had not realised how literally he would live up to that vow. Sleep deprivation and worry were driving him beyond distraction, and sometimes he wondered if he was going mad.
    Despite his intention to investigate the disappearance personally, he had done nothing. He might fantasise about a Chandleresque investigation, full of bravado and derring-do, but he didn't know where to start. Mysteries had piled on top of mysteries, even from the start. When the police had arrived at Ambrose's flat, minutes after he had imagined that dark shape soaring on the night breeze, they had found nobody there. The howling stopped abruptly, moments before they had rushed down the hallway, and there could have been no escape for whoever had been inside. Yet he was gone. There were signs of a bizarre struggle in the flat, and it looked for all the world as though somebody had actually been hurled at the ceiling, leaving a sizeable dent where they had hit. Impossible of course – nobody could have the strength to inflict that on another person, and it was unlikely that the recipient of such treatment would be able to walk again for some time. Beyond that, the flat offered up curiously few clues. Listening at the wall during the investigation, he had heard the forensic team reporting in wonder that they could not find a single fingerprint in the flat. Even if the intruder had been careful not to leave a mark, they would have expected to find dozens from the occupant himself, Ambrose. Yet there was nothing.
    Clive's head hurt, the ache shifting in sick waves as it did whenever he tried to rationalise the events of that night. His own investigation so far had been pathetic, involving nothing more complex than wandering the streets late into the evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of his friend. For all he knew, Ambrose wasn't even in Glasgow any more. As for why the fight had started, Clive couldn't even guess. Ambrose was enigmatic about his life, and his occupation, and Clive had wondered briefly about drugs, gang warfare, or other underworld activities.
    He just didn't know. It was driving him mad.
    The tides of pain ebbed out from his head in swirling patterns, one moment causing his teeth to ache, the next jabbing at his neck and shoulders. Clive folded his newspaper carefully away, trying