Hazardous Materials Read Online Free PDF Page A

two.”
    Jarrod caught sight of some numbers—or maybe symbols—flashing at the corners of the screen. They whipped by too fast to read. A glowing ring rippled the length of the cylinder, catching his attention. He stared at it, and it began to pulse, bathing his face in a cold blue light.
    A comforting, familiar light.
    JARROD STOOD IN the roller rink. Things he’d known for sure that they’d demolished and carted away were back in place. Things he’d ripped out with his own hands were whole again. And not just whole; they were new. Things like what he stared at now. Things like the mural.
    He narrowed his gaze at it. The colors were bright. The paint fresh. And things, again, were not as he remembered them. Instead of pins, the man leading the children now juggled bones. The eyes of the woman fleeing the satyr seemed full of allure instead of fear. Her head tilted coquettishly, and her hand, once held out in warning, now beckoned. The man kneeling at the pool wasn’t simply looking anymore; he scooped the water for a drink. And the mermaids floating lazily around him flashed hungry smiles of needle-sharp teeth.
    It’s all different . But of course it was. It was a dream, and he knew that. Things are different in dreams.
    â€œYou like that thing?” Ludwig’s voice came from far behind him.
    He turned to see his boss at the edge of the rink itself. In one hand dangled a pair of roller skates, in the other a smoldering Newport Light. And there was something else different about Ludwig. His eyes were gone. Where they should have been were only dark patches of nothingness. “You can see it?” Jarrod asked, wondering why he wasn’t terrified. It was a dream,he justified. Things were different in dreams. “You can see me ?”
    â€œI see plenty. Plenty enough, anyway.” He exhaled a billowing cloud of blue smoke. Behind him, the door to the arcade beckoned with a wash of flashing lights.
    Jarrod could smell charred mint all the way on the other side of the rink. No. That’s not right ,he thought. Can you smell things in dreams? He wasn’t sure. It doesn’t matter. Things are different in dreams.
    â€œSmoke?” Ludwig asked, dropping the roller skates and reaching for his pack. The twin voids of his eyeless sockets seemed to take in everything and nothing at all.
    â€œI don’t smoke.”
    Ludwig laughed. “You will. You will. And you know what they say.” He drew deep on his cigarette. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You don’t smoke now, bucko, you’re gonna smoke later. You’re gonna burn.”
    â€œDon’t listen to him,” came another voice from his left. A small voice. “You need to be strong. You need to prepare.”
    The voice belonged to a little boy, maybe five years old, standing next to him, dressed in zip-front footie pajamas. His eyes were bright with life but tarnished by sorrow. “Who are you?”
    The boy simply took Jarrod’s hand in his, and together they faced the mural again. “He can’t see them.”
    â€œSee what?”
    â€œLook.” The boy pointed one small finger at the trees in the background of the painting.
    Jarrod leaned close. The shadows in the forest began to move, shifting closer to them. Patches of gloom seemed to coalesce into eyes—eyes and teeth. From the corners of his vision, he caught flashes of figures slithering in the darkness, but when he twisted his head to face them, nothing was there but flat paint. “What are they?”
    â€œDemons,” the boy answered.
    â€œDie demon die,” Jarrod muttered to himself, remembering the graffiti. He peered even closer at the mural. The juggler now juggled knives. The children’s eyes had been replaced by hollow blanks the same as Ludwig’s. The woman’s arm had grown long and boneless. It wrapped around the satyr’s neck, choking. And the man was