For Those Who Dream Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

up.
    “We
got the wrong house.”
    “What?”
    “We
got the wrong house,” Frank hissed loudly, annoyed at having to repeat himself
– an action that just seemed to emphasise the stupidity of his mistake.
    “What?”
    “Elgin
Avenue!” yelled Frank. “66 Elgin Avenue ; not Elgin Road …
Okay? … Now let’s get rid of him and get out of here!”
    Harry didn’t appear to be listening. His eyes were bulging out of his head; his
injured hand felt like it was on fire, and he could no longer feel his face.
His entire world had shrunk to the overwhelming task of forcing his lungs to
expand and contract, one breath at a time.
    “What
about that ?” asked Tiny, pointing to the scorpion fish jutting from
Harry’s face. The fish’s gills were opening and closing rapidly, its eyes were
bulging much in the same way as those of its owner, and it too was slowly
losing its battle for life.
    “Don’t
touch it,” warned Frank, looking down in disgust at the spiny monstrosity
protruding from the impossibly puffed up, bleeding face of the man at his feet.
“I think it might be poisonous.”
    A
few minutes later, Frank and Tiny were dragging the prostrate Harry out through
the back door. Darkness had fallen fully during their erroneous house visit,
and they took advantage of it, and the evident lack of potential witnesses, to
dump Harry in the canal that ran along the bottom of the hapless postman’s
garden.
    By
the time Harry hit the water, his laboured breathing had stopped. The impact
with the canal dislodged the scorpion fish, and its dead body drifted down into
the murky depths.
    Harry’s
body sank slowly, the weight of his clothes pulling him down. Greyness and calm
descended on the postman, but his release was not to last long.
    Suddenly
Harry felt a searing pain all over his body as he jolted back to life. The
gaping wounds in his face, where the fish’s barbs had penetrated, were
pulsating with a strange life of their own, transforming and turning into flaps
of skin that rose and fell. Water entered Harry through the gashes in his
cheek, but, rather than drowning, Harry’s body extracted oxygen from the
liquid. Harry Tomlinson had grown gills – gills that were now opening and
closing, oxygenating his blood and keeping him alive. Over the next half-hour,
he would grow another set.
    The sick-looking young man was looking even sicker as Tiny pushed his face down
towards the gas-ring.
    “Where
is it?” demanded Frank, as he gestured to Tiny to let the youth up. “Tell me
where it is, or we light the gas.”
    “I
don’t know!” Frank produced a Zippo lighter from his pocket and proceeded to
light the gas, as the youth squirmed in Tiny’s grasp. Once Frank had adjusted
the flame to his satisfaction, Tiny forced the youth’s head down again. A
strand of his hair caught fire and he screamed loudly, tearing himself out of
Tiny’s clutches and running headlong through the kitchen.
    “For
God’s sake, shut him up!” snarled Frank. “The neighbours will hear him.” Tiny
strode over to the youth – who had reached the sink and was trying to stick his
head under the tap – and punched his lights out.
    “Great,”
complained Frank. “Now we have to sit here and wait till he comes back round.”
Tiny looked nonplussed for a while, but soon perked up.
    “I
got an idea,” he beamed with pride.
    “Great,”
Frank did little to disguise his sarcasm, but was pleasantly surprised when
Tiny filled a saucepan with water and threw it in the youth’s gaunt face. The
young man came to, then screamed. Tiny went to hit him again, then stopped
short as he realised that the youth was staring at something behind him. The
thug turned around slowly and screamed too.
    The excruciating pain had receded and Harry found himself floating effortlessly
in the inky canal water. Despite the murk, he could see clearly all around him:
mud-coloured plants, their sparse leaves swaying in the sluggish current; small
fish darting this way