Frogmouth Read Online Free PDF Page B

time ago, "Who would have done this?"
    "I don't know."
    "Who doesn't have wishes?"
    The vet, standing up, moved on to the gutted Shetland ponies by the donkey.
    Feiffer said softly, "I don't know." He had been there with his son himself.
    Yat was weeping, shaking. He had nowhere to look. He looked steadily at the silhouettes of all the buildings and the smog and slightly blue mist of the city of Hong Kong through the trees. Only the Wishing Chair had been smashed. All the animals and birds were dead.
    WISHING CHAIR—WAI WILL GRANT WISHES FOR GOOD CHILDREN.
    Yat said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He was weeping, smiling, trying to apologize.
    Yat said softly, apologetically, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't talk anymore. I want to be with my two boys."
    Everything, all the wishes, were dead.
    Still moving his hands in front of him, a short, balding man in his fifties, still trying to clap the air to make it all go away, still weeping, he began to walk slowly toward his two sons dressed up as keepers trying to think of what to say to them.
    At the going down of the sun we will remember them.
    You didn't have to. At the beginning of the day they were rising out of their graves to visit.
    You couldn't have a haunted wall. Yes, you could. In Poltergeist , for God's sake, you had a haunted television set. In The House That Dripped Blood you probably even had haunted fuseboxes. In the Detectives' Room all the phones were ringing. There was no one on the line. Oh, yes there was, but it was the wrong line. It was the line to The Pit. Down in the pit, in the wall, the pendulum with the scythe on the end—the one that took off Vincent Price's head in the last reel—was going, "Whoomp, whoomph, whoommp" as it swung slowly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth . . .
    "RAAAHHGG!"
    Something in The Pit didn't like it.
    Or It did.
    "—Wah!"
    Yep, it liked it. It loved it. There was a cackle, a roar and then, as virgins' heads rolled like cauliflowers somewhere between the brick, the masonry, the plaster and the peeling green paint, there was a hissing sound, then a gasp and then . . .
    All the phones stopped ringing. All the phones started howling.
    "RAAH-HA!"
    It didn't like it: it loved it. There was thumping, pulsing, roaring. Grabbing on to the side of his desk, waiting for the wind that would stick them both to the ceiling, Lim with his hand upraised in the traffic policeman's Number One Stop Signal, yelled, "Go! In the name of God and all the angels in heaven I command you to GO!" It didn't work. You had to be a Christian. He was a Buddhist. Lim, as the sound of a lost soul with a sledgehammer came banging off the wall, yelled to O'Yee at the top of his voice, "Sir, sir, you're Irish! Say something Catholic!"
    O'Yee said, "Oh, Jesus—"
    The Thing inside the wall said, "RAAH-HO!"
    Lim said, "Say something else! You've got him on the run!"
    The wall was dripping slime. It wasn't slime. It was still condensation. It was very slimy condensation. It fell onto the dead fly and made it glisten. There was a flash of lightning and the fly was luminous. O'Yee said, "Oh, God . . . oh, God . . ." O'Yee said, "I'm a married man!"
    "Command it!" You needed a voice like Rod Steiger. O'Yee, his glasses fogged, had a voice more like Rod Steiger's cat. Lim, waving his arms around, thinking he was going forward, but in fact going backward, ordered the wall, "Be still!"
    The wall ordered him back, "AAARRGG— wah! " The wall, getting hold of the pendulum and swinging it like an axe, went, "Boom! Boom! Boom!"
    Lim yelled, "Sir!" Lim yelled, "Sir! Do something! A cross! Get a cross!" The Thing—The Force—was lifting Lim off his feet and then dropping him back down again. No, it wasn't. He was hopping up and down. Lim, hopping, yelled as the wall, moving onto higher things, began screaming at them like a woman having her throat cut, shrieked, "Sir! Mr. O'Yee, goddamn it— you're the senior officer around here, not me !"
    "Boom, boom, boom, boom!