Nightmare Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

something like a fourth of a mile from the rusty mountain. It didn’t look so hideous under a new sun, looked mysterious and inviting against a clean sky. Now that it wasn’t shadowed, she could see patches of grass and weeds on it.
    Her breathing and heartbeat returned to normal, new strength replaced the rubbery feeling in her legs. Anticipation of breakfast and the wonder of morning coffee … the euphoria after a good run. Iron Mountain was still a dump, but not a sinister one this morning. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
    But back in the apartment, when she tried to fill the coffeepot, there was a great clanking of pipes, a gush of water that slowed to a dripping and then nothing. Poking bread into the toaster, she stared out the window over the sink. Weeds and rubble formed what passed for a backyard, a distance of perhaps twenty feet before the abrupt takeoff of Iron Mountain.
    â€œNothing I can’t handle.” She spread margarine on toast with a hint of savagery.
    On each end of the duplex a shedlike back porch with wooden steps sagged into the backyard and obstructed the view to either side. In the Whelans’ apartment a door off the kitchen led to this porch, where Tamara had already discovered a washer, dryer, and freezer sitting on a concrete floor with a drain.
    Splashing water on the same red shorts she’d worn the day before, Vinnie Hope struggled past this enclosure with a pail, and up the wooden steps to the Fistlers’ porch.
    Tamara was outside waiting for her when she emerged with the pail empty. “Vinnie, we’re out of water too. Whom do I see about it?”
    â€œWe already sent word up to Russ Burnham. I’ll bring you some soon as I feed the chickens and stuff.”
    Darker brick showed where a third porch had been torn off the middle of the building to make a triplex into a duplex.
    â€œI’d like to meet the Fistlers.”
    â€œOnly Jerusha lives here, and she’s gone. I’m taking care of things.”
    â€œThen why carry water into the house?”
    â€œFor the plant. Takes lots of water.” A shy grin on a pretty but dirty face. Vinnie skipped off.
    Roads cut into the side of Iron Mountain. A row of derelict gondola cars rusted on weed-laced tracks near the bottom. And just below them a small goat, jet black with a blaze of white licking up each side like white fire. He sprinted around the fenced yard, tiny hooves meeting beneath him so hard they clicked. A final leap brought him to a standstill on top of a doghouse. Black horizontal pupils in gold-brown irises. Chickens pecked about in another fenced area.
    On the other side of the Fistler porch a crumbling sidewalk bordered the building. Two windows here, both densely curtained on the inside with leaves. Elongated leaves with scalloped edges and browned ends. Jerusha Fistler must be a house-plant nut. Tamara stepped closer to peer in at the leaves. They looked thick and waxy and were coated with dust. A faint whooshing sound came from within and then stopped. Through the foliage she could just make out the edge of a bed and a portion of a bare arm lying out of the covers. The whooshing sounded again.
    Tamara backed away, embarrassed. Perhaps it had been a roll in the sheet, and not an arm. Sun flashed off a silver propane cylinder at the corner of the house. There were two windows on the front of the apartment, and they too were coated with the long narrow leaves.
    â€œOdd thing to do, grow the same plant in every room, Tamara thought aloud. She looked around to see if anyone had heard, and remembered Russ Burnham talking to himself the day before. But not a soul stirred in Iron Mountain, and she could see it all from where she stood. Sunshine and white dust coated car bodies and weeds, the roofs of two squat clapboard houses across the road by the school, and the double trailer with the gargantuan TV antenna.
    Up the road past the gate and the chain-link fence, the