Supernatural Noir Read Online Free PDF Page A

and descended the bed.
    Reaching the edge, Meyers dove into the blackness of the Delaware. Ships had taken on cargo here. It had to be deep enough to dive. He was depending on it.
    He hit the icy water and swam for his life. The current clutched at him but he kicked furiously out into the river, refusing to be dragged under. He thought of the girls Drozdov had tortured and dumped, their corpses down below. He swam harder.
    The creation of wood and glass and paper and metal leaped in after him. He heard the splash, dared a look back as it vanished into the black water. It surged up once, thrashed like a crazed animal at the surface, and then sank. This time it did not reappear, but Meyers turned and kept going, driven by the fear that any second, monstrous hands would snag him from below and pull him to his death.
    He didn’t stop until he’d crawled up on the rocky Camden side. He was shivering. His breath steamed. He made himself get to his feet and go on, up and into the weeds. He stumbled and shuffled and kept moving, and maybe half a mile up found a service station by the side of the highway that was open and pumping gas. He went inside, pulled out a sodden five-dollar bill and begged the most expensive cup of coffee he’d ever had. The attendant eyed him as if debating whether to call the cops, but Meyers told him to keep the bill, and that settled that.
    He held the stained mug in both shaking hands as he drank. Two other men, truck drivers, stared at him as they might have stared at a raccoon that had wandered in for a pack of Luckies. Nobody asked him what had happened, as if they knew the answer would be impossible to reconcile.
    He drank a second cup before he set down the mug and headed out. The Delaware River Bridge wasn’t far. He took the footpath up alongside the cars passing from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. Every few feet he was compelled to glance back to confirm that the dingus wasn’t pursuing him. Dingus. That’s right. He laughed at the word, making a joke of the horror, and the fact that he’d escaped it.
    The events rolled around in his head like marbles. The woman had created it, called it into being somehow. He’d seen it with his own eyes. Some kind of witch. She would’ve done the same at the roadhouse. Those coins, buttons, whatever they were. How many did she throw at Cody? Why was he wondering this? It was crazy. Coins that brought trash to life.
    He was cold and tired, and he’d just escaped from a goddamn dingus that nobody was ever going to believe in.
    Back in Philly, he rode the Third Street Trolley to Fairmount Avenue and caught the Fairmount Trolley up past the prison. He sat away at the back of both by himself. It was coming up on seven in the morning. He smelled like the river; his clothes were damp; his hair was crazy. He looked like someone who’d gotten falling-down drunk in a fountain.
    He was never so happy to see his cab as that morning. Tumbling into it, he spent a moment breathing in the stale, wonderful smell of Rosario’s cigars. A fit of laughter burst from him. He pounded the steering wheel and yelled and yelled until he’d worn out the terror. Then he started the cab, drove back to the depot and parked.
    Rosie would be showing up any minute for the day shift, but Meyers didn’t wait. He walked the few blocks home, stripped out of the wet clothes, and then, in dry shorts and undershirt, he opened a tin of beans, heated them up on the stove, and ate ravenously out of the pan, mopping up the red sauce with a hunk of bread. He wanted a pot of coffee and a steak.
    The night’s events were bending into some warped dream. Meyers furiously scratched his cheek. He kept turning it all over in his head. Had everyone been killed? He tried to remember, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe one of the goons had escaped into the warehouse. And the woman, the witch, she’d gotten away, oh, yeah.
    Getting away seemed like a very good idea. If any of Drozdov’s guys were still loose,