HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre Read Online Free PDF

now… all gone. So tragic.”
    “ I studied those Old Times in school. So you ’ re from that gray pas t, is that it?” she asked, rising and going to the bed to sit next to the little box on the side table. Now they were getting somewhere. Now she might discover the secrets of the box.
    The sounds ended so that the room was as silent as the bottom of the sea . Angie waited. Then she picked up the box and shook it. She swore at it. She pleaded. Silence enclosed her and left her wary. What did this mean if the box could speak at will or was there someone somewhere speaking through it? What did it mean that it s p oke of the Old Times most of them never really believed? None of them liked to talk about that, even the teachers who were forced by law to do so. It had been a golden age and sorely missed by her great grandparents. For her, of course, it had never been a part of her life so she had no real affinity for those things lost.
    She put the box down, turned to go to the desk and her letter. A small boy stood in her way, having appeared without smoke, without fog. He stood on the flowered carpet, staring at her wi th incredibly sad eyes. “ It ’ s my box, you must give it to me,” he said. He was blond and fair, a cherub.
    “ Let me see, the box belongs to a wolf, a foreign woman, a bear, and now you. So which one does it really belong to?”
    “ It ’ s mine. It isn ’ t supposed to be here. It ’ s going to cause… everything to… rip.”
    “ Rip?” She approached the boy, going down slowly, painfully, into a crouch so as to be on eye level. “ You're a shape-shifter. Where do you come from?”
    “ The Far Back.”
    “ So you're dead. You're a ghost.”
    “ My wo rld ripped and took me with it.”
    “ We were told there were bombs.”
    “ No, that's wrong. It was a rip. We had a box, too, that wasn't supposed to be there. It was that one.” He pointed to the small whirring object near her bed. “ Now you have it.”
    A sudden ripp le of fear shivered down Angie's spine. She had put on a dress today, giving up her pants and chaps, hoping to fit into the town and what people expected from a single woman. Now she felt the corset whale bones digging in under her breasts and into her sh o ulder blades. She stared hard at the child, willing him to take back that last revelation.
    “ Give it to me.” He spoke softly and his voice enticed her to obey him.
    He shifted so rapidly her eyes hardly followed the transformation. He whirled until he was c loud and from out of that cloud came a dragon whose scaly head was bowed by the tall roof of the ceiling. It opened a great mouth and the roar that issued forth filled Angie's ears until she clapped her hands over them. She was uncontrollably yelling and c ursing again. “ You damned fool creature, shut your damned mouth!” She could not get to her feet. The dress tangled itself around her ankles and the high lace collar felt as if it were strangling her. “ Stop!” she screamed.
    Minutes later, after the shape-shi fter had thankfully disappeared, her door opened and the devil man entered, his hat cocked to the side, his hand on the gun holster at his waist. “ You will be removed from this house right this minute,” he said. His eyes were dark and fierce, a brook-no-a r gument look settling in.
    Angie had clawed her way to her feet and stood now wobbling in the middle of the room. “ I'm sorry, please tell the landlady I am extremely sorry...”
    “ She wants you out. As an instrument of the law, I order you to gather your thing s and leave.”
    A wild low beeping filled the room. Both Angie and the sheriff looked over to the little box emitting the noise. “ Is that one of those spy boxes that record your voice?” he asked.
    “ No, it's just a...” She was going to say “ music box,” but the room's temperature dropped several degrees and Angie's words trailed off. She knew something terrible was coming, something larger and more wondrous, more