Briarpatch by Tim Pratt Read Online Free PDF

trunk, and on the far left, in raised silver letters, the name of the model: “Wendigo.”
    A Chrysler Wendigo? Darrin had never heard of such a thing, but then, he wasn’t a car fanatic. Nicholas would know—probably this was some briefly-made and quickly-discontinued model with a tendency to explode in collisions or flip over in high winds. But wasn’t “Wendigo” the name of some kind of monster? Something like a Bigfoot, maybe, or . . . hadn’t Bridget made him sit through some horror movie set in Canada called
Wendigo
, with a monster made of sticks and trick photography?
    He unzipped his bag and removed his camera, turning it on and glancing down at the screen to make sure it was working. This car was practically a piece of folk art, and he wanted to document it, get a shot of the name and some of the interior—you wouldn’t be able to read the paper in the photos, so it wasn’t really an invasion of privacy, he thought. He sighted through the viewfinder and pressed the button.
    “You like my car there, buddy?” The voice was cheerful and touched slightly with a Minnesotan accent, and when Darrin looked up he saw a rotund man of middle age, with a deeply receding hairline, a compensatory walrus moustache, and a reddish nose. He wore an untucked shirt with a loud pattern that looked like it had been generated by a computer program, faded corduroy pants, and sandals held together with duct tape.
    “Ah, sorry,” Darrin said. “I just, uh, wanted to take a picture of the name, I’ve never heard of a Wendigo before.”
    The man slapped the hood of the car with an open palm and said “Yeah, she’s an import.”
    Darrin started to respond—
If it’s a Chrysler, how can it be an import
?—but the man was walking toward him, hand extended, saying “Name’s Arturo Glassini, pleased to meetcha, and you are?”
    Darrin shook with his non-camera-wielding hand and said “Darrin, Darrin Phare.” Arturo’s handshake was firm and dry.
    “You live up in the big ugly Georgian, right?” Arturo said, and Darrin was startled into a laugh, but Arturo was right, the house was ugly, a blocky Georgian house, complete with fake pillars, rendered in shades of tan stucco. “Big place for one guy, you got a family?”
    Darrin was suddenly uncomfortable with the thought of revealing the specifics of his life to a total stranger, and one with a car that bespoke a troubled mind besides, but the answer seemed safe enough: “It’s not that big, the house is broken up into four apartments, I just rent.”
    “Ahhh,” Arturo said. “I seen you leaving there some mornings.” Darrin kept expecting Arturo to smell funny—he looked like he should—but he didn’t, except faintly of paper. “Hey, listen, my Wendigo is a sweet ride, I see you taking the bus sometimes, so if you ever need a lift somewhere, let me know. I got nothin’ but time.”
    The offer struck Darrin as genuinely kind, rather than creepy, and he said, “Thanks, that’s nice, I really appreciate it.” He wondered how Arturo could expect to give anyone a ride, at least without removing several reams of loose paper from his passenger seat, but he didn’t say anything. Arturo was obviously eccentric, and probably harmless. He didn’t reek of suppressed violent crazy, as some of Darrin’s fellow travelers on mass transit occasionally did. Darrin considered himself a pretty good judge of character anyway, and using a camera so much these past months had helped make him more observant.
    “You live around here?” Darrin asked.
    “Oh, yeah, right by here,” Arturo said, motioning vaguely. He raised his hands and took a step back, toward the middle of the street. “Don’t let me stop you from takin’ your snapshots.”
    Darrin took a couple of quick shots of the logo and the car’s name, mostly to satisfy Arturo. “Well,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”
    “Yup,” Arturo said. “And that’s somethin’ to look forward to in this cold old