Time Thieves Read Online Free

as ever, and she said: “Well, let's do some work! Maybe some exercise will help settle your nerves. I'll lay some tile in the bathroom-and maybe you can clear some of the brush away, downslope, toward the road.”
        
        “I guess we've nothing better to do,” He saw the dismay she tried to conceal between flickerings of a tentative, strained smile, and he knew that it wasn't any good, this transmitting his uncertainty to her. He kissed her then and made enthusiastic noises about getting the cabin closer to completion.
        
        He fetched a sickle from the tool rack and tramped through the ragged clearing he had already cut, to the shaggy perimeter of the lawn. There, he set to work hacking down the shoulder-high brush between the trees.
        
        The work did have a therapeutic effect He soon removed his shirt and settled to the enjoyment of his muscles working in rhythm. Every time he stopped to survey what he had accomplished, he felt better. It was as if each chopped weed, each torn and dismembered bush, made him less hollow and more sure of himself, made those two lost weeks far less important than they had seemed at first.
        
        Peter Mullion was a man less bound by tradition and a need for security than most. He had never buckled down to a nine-to-five job in his life, and he never intended to, even if the now prosperous ad agency should suddenly fold. In the early years when the agency wasn't making much money, he had simply adjusted his living standard and didn't worry much. Money had been put away for a nicer house, travel next year, for books, records and art. They had modest investments. But as for a retirement fund-well, he felt that the sooner a man started saving for old age, the sooner his apathy toward the present set in.
        
        Yet, there were limits to his casualness. Missing two weeks of his life was beyond those limits. If he did not discover what had happened to himself, he would never be at peace.
        
        Thinking slowly brought the panic back.
        
        The faster he swung the sickle, the greater the panic became. It was a vicious circle: he could only escape fear through the monotony of manual labor, but manual labor gave him time to think-and thinking brought him directly back to the fear.
        
        He chopped harder, trying to lose himself in the exertion.
        
        But the fear swept his mind, the bristles of that dark broom digging deeper every time it arced.
        
        The sickle, blurred by the furious rate of its arc, struck the trunk of a locust tree. The impact made his arm so numb that his fingers opened and dropped the blade into the high grass where he lost sight of it.
        
        Pete sat down, exhausted, breathing hard. He felt centuries old. Chin on his chest, he made soft whooping noises as he drew breath and tried to settle himself.
        
         I am not going mad, he thought . I will not. I cannot! I won't!
        
        But he was not so sure.
        
        He had read, somewhere, that the mad never suspect they are mad and that only the rational man wonders about his sanity. Wasn't that evidence of his sanity?
        
        As he recovered his breath, he began to feel that he was being watched. It was such a strong sensation that it either proved an incurable paranoia or was based on fact. His first reaction was to turn and see if Della had come down from the house in response to his berserker spell, but he saw that she was not there. He looked about the periphery of the clearing, and he moved just swiftly enough to see the mountain laurel rustle to his right, as if someone had parted it slightly in order to look at him and had dropped back out of sight as soon as he had begun to turn his head in that direction.
        
        Paranoia. He couldn't give in to it. There was nothing there; he had not seen anything at all.
        
        But before