Swan Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

and a claw of fear clutched at her stomach. Who had that been, passing on the sidewalk, she wondered. What kind of monster dressed in human skin? She saw the marquee of a theater before her, advertising a double feature of The Face of Death, Part Four and Mondo Bizarro. Walking closer, she saw that the poster for Face of Death, Part Four promised Scenes From The Autopsy Table! Car Wreck Victims! Death By Fire! Uncut And Uncensored!
    A chill lingered in the air around the closed door of the theater. Come In! a sign said on the door. We’re Air Conditioned! But it was more than the air conditioner, she decided. This was a dank, sinister chill: the chill of shadows where poison toadstools grow, their ruddy colors beckoning a child to come, come take a taste of candy.
    It was fading now, dissipating in the sultry heat. Sister Creep stood in front of that door, and though she knew that sweet Jesus was her mission and sweet Jesus would protect her, she knew also that she wouldn’t set foot inside that theater for a full bottle of Red Dagger-not even two full bottles!
    She backed away from the door, bumped into somebody who cursed and shoved her aside, and then she started walking again-where, she didn’t know, nor did she care. Her cheeks burned with shame. She had been afraid, she told herself, even though sweet holy Jesus stood at her side. She had been afraid to look evil in the face, and she had sinned yet again.
    Two blocks past the forbidding theater, she saw a black kid toss a beer bottle into the midst of some overflowing garbage cans set back in the doorway of a crumbling building. She pretended to be searching for something in her bag until he’d passed, and then she stepped into that doorway and started looking for the bottle, her throat parched for a sip, a drop, of liquid.
    Rats squealed and scurried away over her hands, but she didn’t mind them; she saw rats every day, and much bigger ones than these. One of them perched on the edge of a can and squealed at her with furious indignation. She tossed a cast-off tennis shoe at it, and the thing fled.
    The smell of the garbage was putrid, the smell of meat that had long since gone bad. She found the beer bottle, and in the murky light she rejoiced to see that a few drops remained. She quickly tilted it to her lips, her tongue struggling into the bottle for the tang of beer. Heedless of the chattering rats, she sat down with her back to the rough brick wall. As she put her hand to the ground to steady herself she touched something damp and soft. She looked to her side; but when she realized what it was, she put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
    It had been wrapped up in a few pages of newspaper, but the rats had chewed that away. Then they had gone to work on the flesh. Sister Creep couldn’t tell how old it was, or whether it was a boy or a girl, but its eyes were half open in the tiny face, as if the infant lay on the edge of sweet slumber. It was nude; someone had tossed it into the heap of garbage cans and bags and sweltering filth as if it were a broken toy.
    “Oh,” she whispered, and she thought of a rainswept highway and a spinning blue light. She heard a man’s voice saying, “Let me have her now, lady. You’ve got to let me have her.”
    Sister Creep picked up the dead infant and began to rock it in her arms. From the distance came the pounding of mindless music and the calls of the vendors on Forty-Second Street, and Sister Creep crooned in a strangled voice, “Hushabye, hushabye, little baby don’t you cry…” She couldn’t remember the rest of it.
    The blue light spinning, and the man’s voice floating through time and distance: “Give her to me, lady. The ambulance is coming.”
    “No,” Sister Creep whispered. Her eyes were wide and staring, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “No, I won’t… let… her go…”
    She pressed the infant against her shoulder, and the tiny head lolled. The body was cold. Around Sister Creep, the