Interstellar Pig Read Online Free PDF Page B

collection of plates and cups arranged on open pine shelving, the meager assortment of pots and pans under the sink. I didn't go through it very thoroughly. Who ever kept anything important in the kitchen? If anything was to be found, it would have to be in one of the bedrooms. I pushed open the flimsy door to the bedroom beside the kitchen.
    In the darkness, a deformed face swam toward me, all huge bulbous forehead, with tiny squashed-together eyes and two pursed, fishlike mouths hanging from the nonexistent chin.
    I hardly shrieked much at all, and quickly complimented myself on how cool I was to realize, without even bolting from the house, that it was merely a warped mirror on the opposite wall. But I turned on the light immediately. There was a sagging double bed, a narrow closet, and a small dresser. And nothing to be found but men's clothes and a very large assortment of toiletries.
    Each of them had a separate bedroom, I learned that much. I came to Zena's last. The lingerie, much of it with delicate lace embroidery, I found 'particularly interesting. It smelled like Zena's per fume. And if I hadn't taken the time to go through carefully, I never would have found the photocopied sheets paper-clipped together, pushed off into the bottom corner of the drawer.
    And if Zena hadn't underlined certain passages in red ink, and scribbled flamboyant comments in the margins, I probably wouldn't even have given the papers a second glance. But the marks made me curious, and I sank down on her bed and began to read.
    On my way over to their house, I hadn't thought much about their car being there, since I had assumed they were at home. And when I saw that they weren't home, I forgot to think about the car at all. If I had thought about it, I might not have stretched out so comfortably in her room and forgotten where I was; I might have been better prepared to expect them to return suddenly and without warning.
    The papers were a photocopy of an old diary, scratched in archaic longhand, smudged and stained and difficult to read. But I persisted: The heavy underlining meant that Zena had thought the document was extremely important.
    September 1864
    Last night, only two minutes past two bells it was, an unpredicted, unexplaind comet sighted, streaking so slowly across the breadth of the night sky that all men on watch were able clearly to see it, creating much uproar and hullabaloo, and cries of "Money, money, money!" I like it not. Long have I studied the skies, and yet have never seen celestial body move in such an erratic course.
    September 1864
    It is with the utmost reluctance that I put pen to paper on this most grievous day, when for shame alone my soul would rather to expunge from this account, than record for all posterity these most black and bitter events.
    Only yesterday it was, at six bells, that the survivor was sighted from the crow's nest; yet now it seems many months, rather than mere fleeting hours, ago, that the tragedy commenced. The body, clinging to the blackened spars, was seen to appear to move; I could not but order a lifeboat to the rescue. And, indeed, when he was borne to the deck, I was able to ascertain that the foreign mariner did breathe, and ordered brandy and poultices, and did all in my limited power to soothe and refresh the invalid; and only minutes later was rewarded by the opening of his bloodshot eyes, and by his garbled and unintelligible expressions of gratitude. Though his tongue was as outlandish as his garb, I perceived nevertheless a miraculous calm in the fact of such dire circumstances.
    By this time, of course, I had realized what this document was. This was even better than the article Ted had mentioned. Zena had managed to dig up Captain Latham's own handwritten account of the tragedy, probably from his log, and had made photocopies of it. Their behavior in our house this morning now began to make a little more sense. Clearly, they had some intense personal interest in the morbid