Perfect Little Town Read Online Free PDF

reemerging into the dark corridor, racing toward the nearest door, throwing it open to wafts of woodsmoke and a sweeter-smelling incense that he knows is his wife, roasting inside the golden bear.
    He starts into the theatre into an awful, disengaged clarity rooted in shock—people turning away from the horror onstage to see this uncostumed tourist with vomit down his jacket, barging in like he’s come to fuck up a wedding.
    The screaming of the bear has become harsher, the voice inside blown out, winding down, and Ron sees those white-masked executioners break through the curtains on stage right and rush down the steps into the outer aisle.
    Something inside him screams Run . 

    -24-
    Ron crashes into the doors of the Randolph Opera House and bursts out of the theatre, back down the sidewalk, kicking up clouds of snow as he runs toward the north end of town.
    After three blocks, he glances over his shoulder at the hordes of people spilling out of the theatre, a handful stepping into skis, flashlight beams arcing toward him.
    He turns left onto 7 th and runs so hard he can’t think about anything but the incomprehensible pressure in his lungs, sprinting past a chocolate shop, a closed hostel, the street taking a steep pitch as it descends toward a spread of ground so level, it can only be a frozen pond.
    Behind him comes a whoosh —a shirtless twentysomething, her long blond hair flowing in her wake and dressed like some Viking goddess right down to the horned helmet, gliding toward him on a pair of skis, accelerating as the street steepens, five seconds away at most.
    Ron digs his heels into the snow and slides to a stop and turns, the skier racing toward him, inside of ten feet.
    He swings, the serrated blade punching through the side of her neck, Ron temporarily blinded by warm mist from the severed artery, the ice ax all the way through.  He tries to grip the rubber-coated handle to rip it out, but the blood has made it slippery and the Viking Goddess slides away from him, still skiing down the street, her hands trying to extract the blade. 
    Ron wipes the blood out of his eyes, and fifty yards up the street, sees a herd of people make a wide, sliding turn around the corner of Main and 7 th , a crowd of thirty or forty tearing down the street after him, screaming, shouting, yeehawing, laughing like a throng of revelers cut loose from the world below.
    He runs down to the skier who has fallen over in the snow, sticks his foot against her head for leverage, and jerks the ice ax out of her throat.
    Then running again, falling, scrambling back onto his feet, veering into the yard of a private residence, a dog accosting him through a bay window, thinking if he doesn’t find some way to escape his tracks he doesn’t have the faintest hope.
    Up ahead, more shapes materialize out of the dark, a dozen perhaps, and smaller, their voices high-pitched—a band of children tramping toward him through the snow.
    Ron looks back, can’t see the pursuing crowd through the blizzard, but he can hear them calling out to him.
    Twenty feet ahead, on the shore of that frozen pond, his eyes lock on the remnants of a recent battle—saplings thrust into the snow supporting handmade flags (Stars and Stripes vs. the Jolly Roger) and opposing snow forts, their features smoothed and hidden by the storm. 

    -25-
    Ron crawls through a snow trench, his hands aching in the cold, somehow manages to still himself as a collection of footsteps approach.
    “I’m cold.”
    “Shut up, pussy, if we find him, you know how sweet Christmas will—”
    “I’m not a pussy.”
    “Okay, twat.  Wait, look.”
    “That’s just the others.”
    An adult male voice shouts, “Hey, who’s there?”
    “Just us!”
    “Us who?”
    “Chris, Neil, Matt, Jacob—”
    “What are you kids doing?”
    “Helping.”
    “No, you’re fucking up the tracks.  Shit.”
    “What’s wrong, Dave?”
    More footsteps arrive.
    Ron crawls a little further through the