Ancient Eyes Read Online Free PDF

he and Angel stepped close, dropping to their knees in the loamy soil, their eyes locked to Greene's.
    The shadow antlers had grown heavier and thicker, so huge and ponderous that they loomed over the old man like a separate entity, a larger, darker being glowering down at them through the lenses of Greene's eyes.   They would never have knelt before old Silas, but they knelt before that higher power.
    The grass at Greene's feet was thick.   It surged, and Tommy gasped as tendrils of greenery burst through the ground, wrapped about Silas' ankles, and snaked their way upward.   There was strength in the old man's presence that had never been there before; youth and vigor rippled through his form and seemed ready to burst from him in an explosion of impossible energy.
    Silas held something, and as Tommy raised his eyes, he saw that it was a cup carved from a single curving horn that spiraled like the inside of a seashell he'd seen in a schoolbook. A fog rose around the three of them, heavy with moisture and rich with the scent of mud and the cloying perfume of exotic flowers.
    Tommy's face was damp with perspiration and with the clinging moisture that suffused the air.   The cup rippled, the spiral at the end of the horn whirled impossibly. He couldn't quite make out the color of it. Designs spun across the polished surface, and something brilliant and glittering winked at him from the rim.
    Tommy shuffled closer and felt the damp soil soak the knees of his jeans. Greene smiled, but it transformed his narrow features into an expression so alien to the shopkeeper's visage that Tommy shook his head slowly back and forth to refocus and bring it into perspective. His thoughts grew slow and thick. He saw the vines rise to circle Greene's form almost entirely.   They were thicker, and they trailed down into the Earth and danced about Silas Greene like green, leafy serpents.
    Tommy came within reach, and he felt something grip his hair hard, tilting his head back. The horn was brought to his lips and upended. Hot, slick liquid oozed over the lip of that chalice and down his throat. He fought at first, but he was held easily, and the thick liquid flowed in and down, cutting off his breath completely.
    He arched his body, uncertain if he was fighting against the grip in his hair and his slipping consciousness or diving forward into darkness. The hold in his hair was released, and at the same time the arm supporting him fell away.   He toppled backward. The drop to the ground took years, and he didn't feel the impact of his shoulders on the trail, or the crack of his head on a loose stone. He felt nothing, saw nothing, though somehow he was still aware of the sensation of falling. He couldn't focus his vision, but he sensed the sky far above, the branches of the trees with their glowing nimbus of morning sunlight, and those antlers, stretching out and twining with the trees, winding in and up, down and out to encompass the mountain and the stone, the valleys and the rivers.
    Tommy closed his eyes.   Things moved around him and over him, things that he knew he should be trying to brush away, but he heard voices as well, and they called his name. The taste of the drink lingered. At the same time that he thought it strange to say so, he knew that it tasted—green. He concentrated on that for a second and the image of sap oozing from a spike driven deep into an ancient oak tree merged with that of small dewdrops falling from the blossoms of flowers so brilliant in hue and heady in scent they swirled his thoughts off and away.
    He saw someone walking, someone smaller than himself, and familiar.   It was a girl. Her long dark hair trailed after her and spread out like a cape. She ran, her feet bare and the grass beneath them greener than any he'd ever seen. He knew that hair—knew the face that he would see if she stopped or turned. His heart lurched.
    The green taste became his breath. It permeated his mind and flowed into his limbs.