Pinball Read Online Free PDF

seemed to have depth; that is, some things he saw swirling around seemed to be closer as he focused on them and others farther away. He became aware that, for the first time in many years, he was very much afraid. He had a sudden, incredible urge to step into the vortex, to see where it would take him — perhaps to Granite City, Northeast Corridor, wherever that was — but what if he could never return?
    Picking up a fist-sized stone, Steven tossed it toward the portal. Just as he expected, it disappeared. No flash of light, not a single sound; it simply winked out of existence as if he’d tossed it into another world, and he suspected that, indeed, he had done precisely that.
     

Chapter 5
    “Come on, everybody,” Steven called into the front door of the house, “There’s a project I want us to work on as a family.”
    A collective groan went up from the young group of gamers clustered in the living room.
    “No, I’m serious. Come on, it’ll be an adventure,” he said as he walked into the house. Five pairs of eyes stared at him in utter disbelief. Who is this stranger who looks like Dad?
    Finally Samuel asked, “Can I bring my sword?”
    “You know what? I actually think that might be an excellent idea,” he said, grinning at the shocked expressions on their faces. They knew he’d never cared much for the sword.
    Steven had his wife put together a care package with several ham and cheese sandwiches and six bottles of water. He sent Samuel to retrieve a hundred foot coil of rope that he had stored in the back of the garage. Steven then went to the storage shed out back and found the old combat knife and scabbard that had once been his father’s. Placing it on his belt, he looked around. What else might he need?
    He went to his bedroom closet and traded the worn tennis shoes he wore for a pair of practically new hiking boots that he recalled having worn only once before. Then he realized that wearing the boots with his khaki shorts made him look as if he should be singing The Lumberjack Song, so he changed into his favorite pair of worn denim jeans and a chambray work shirt with his favorite tee shirt, a brilliant blue one that read M ONTANA: B IG S KY C OUNTRY underneath.
    For the final touch, he took his son’s schoolbooks out of his backpack — a bright yellow one which had assured that Samwise would at least be visible to approaching traffic — and put the food and water inside. Then they all set out walking the mile and a half or so to where he’d found the portal.
    The children made the noises of typical kids, complaining about the distance and asking how much farther it was — Are we almost there? — all during the hike, but they grew strangely quiet as they neared the strange vortex. Steven glanced at them and realized they were as scared of the vortex as he had been earlier. No, not just scared — terrified was the proper word, or more accurately, scared shitless . He realized that even now, he still felt exactly the same way.    
    He walked over to a nearby tree, one of only a few in the area, and tied one end of the rope around its trunk with the only knot that he still remembered from his days as a Second Class Boy Scout nearly three decades before. Then he carried the rest of the coil over to within ten feet or so of the vortex.
    He saw in their faces as he looked around that they knew precisely what he had in mind.
    “Dad…” started Nikki, “You’re not actually going in that thing, are you?”
    “Yeah,” said Samuel, a tremble in his voice. “What if you can’t come back?”
    He paused a second to collect his thoughts. “Well, then, as Peter Pan once said, to die shall be the greatest adventure of them all.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Steven,” Lynne snapped. “You can’t possibly be serious.”
    “I’ve never been more serious. That metal bird would have eaten the house and me with it if I hadn’t managed to bash its electronic brains out. I need to make sure there