Special Deliverance Read Online Free PDF Page A

so badly, and his luck might continue with the seventh.
    He moved down the line to number seven. After he put out his hand to insert the second dollar, he pulled it back.
    Why take the chance? he asked himself. Maybe number five had only set him up. The Lord only knew what would happen if he played number seven. And yet, he thought, if now he should turn about and walk away with a pocketful of gold, he’d never know and he’d never quit questioning himself. He’d not have an easy moment, he would always wonder.
    “The hell with it,” he said aloud and dropped the dollar. The machine gulped it down and made a clanking sound, and the lights came on the dials. He chugged the lever down, and the dials began their crazy spinning. Then the lights went out and the machine went away. So did the room as well.
    He stood upon a path in a woodland glen. Tall, massive trees hemmed him in, and from a little distance off he heard the liquid chatter of a singing brook. Except for the brook there was no sound, and there was nothing stirring.
    And now he knew, he told himself. He might have been better off if he’d walked away from number seven, although of that there was no certainty. For this transformation to a woodland glen might be as delightful a circumstance as winning all the gold, although even as he thought it he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.
    Don’t move, he told himself. Have a look around before you stir from where you’re standing. And don’t give in to panic—for already, in these first few seconds, he had caught the smell of panic.
    He had a look around. In front of him the ground rose up, rather gently, and from the sound of it the brook could not be far away. The trees were oak and maple. Their leaves were turning color. Ahead of him a squirrel scurried across the path that angled up the hill. After the squirrel had disappeared Lansing could mark its progress by the rustling of the fallen leaves disturbed by the small tornado of its passage. Once the sound of the squirrel had faded out, the silence (except for the chatter of the brook) closed in again. Now, however, the silence did not seem so heavy. There were soft noises now—the noise of a falling leaf, the almost indiscernible scurryings as little creatures of the forest made their way about, other faint sounds that he could not identify.
    He spoke to number seven and whatever (or whoever) else had operated to put him where he was.
    “All right,” he said, “what is this all about? If you’ve had your fun, let’s put an end to it.”
    There was, however, no end put to it. The woodland glen stayed on. There was not the slightest indication that he’d been heard by number seven or, in fact, by anything.
    It was unbelievable, he thought, and yet all of it had been unbelievable from the very start. This was actually no more unbelievable than that a slot machine had talked. If he ever got back, he promised himself, he’d hunt up the student Jackson and, with his bare hands alone, dismember him piece by painful piece.
    If he ever got back!
    Up until this moment he had thought of the situation as only temporary, subconsciously believing that any minute now he’d pop back into the room with all the slot machines lined against the wall. But what if that didn’t happen? He sweated thinking of it, and the panic that had been lurking back there somewhere in the trees swooped suddenly on him and he ran. Ran unthinkingly, with reason gone to pot—running blindly, with terror riding him and no room for thinking of anything but terror.
    Finally he stubbed his toe against a small obstruction in the path and went blundering into a tree, falling to the ground. He did not try to get up. He huddled where he had fallen, out of breath, gasping to pump air into his lungs.
    While he lay there, some of the terror seeped away. Nothing chewed on him with long, pointed fangs. No horror drooled on him. Nothing was happening.
    Regaining his breath, he pulled himself