Tales from the Nightside Read Online Free PDF

neighbor's hedge without stopping.
    He was not disappointed.
    They never stopped.
    In school it was because of the load of books he carried; downtown it was because of the way he kept close to the buildings; and today it was football. He could smell it, taste it, feel it in the dull yellow leaf he crushed absently in his hand.
    And regret.
    It was the season's last game, and he had to watch the house. The one cloudy Saturday afternoon of the entire season, practically of the entire year, and his mother had told him he had better watch the house. But as soon as bile rose angrily to his throat, he swallowed it with a stem reminder that it had been his choice, after all. He could have easily drifted off to the game with the rest of them and, after a fashion, perhaps even enjoyed himself. It would have been nice. The last game. But in the light—he grinned—of his mother's unspoken promise, and the gathering at last of the nerve and the knowledge, the regret became an unimportant thing. A little thing. Inconsequential. He soon ignored it, and soon it passed.
    Hate was much better; and the distant scent of power.
    He shifted, feeling the onset of a cramp in his left foot. He knew he was growing anxious. The afternoon's voice had faded into the restless rustling of the few last leaves. The shadow of the old house—that might have been called a Victorian had it held a sense of history—the shadow stretched to merge with the trees and the shrubs. The temperature fell. He shivered then, and decided to take a short walk, to kill the time moving now in a slow-motion race toward a grey and bleak sunset. He stretched carefully to relieve the stiffness that had settled in his arms and legs, bent at the waist to loosen his back. Then he vaulted the railing, wishing Claire had walked by to see him sailing. The ground was damp and pillow- soft; he leaned over to see if it were really as black as he imagined.
    It was. He smiled.
    He moved deliberately, with small measured steps, staring up at each window, envisioning each room huddling beyond, all of them unchanged and most of them unused for as long as he could remember. A late-leaving sparrow was playing in a rusted, canted gutter, knocking frail twigs and clumps of dirt over the side. David ducked away from one of the harmless bombs and laughed.
    Little bird, he thought, would you come with me if you knew?
    Probably not. Birds don't have emotions; and especially, they don't hate.
    Halfway to the back he stopped involuntarily at one window heavily curtained and streaked with an accumulation of dust-turned-grime. The top half was covered by a screen that was tom and laced with debris the wind had thrown. It was his father's study. He closed his eyes for a moment to search for a reminder of the time when the family was three; but nothing came to him, not even a voice. He shrugged the effort away. It wasn't important enough to worry about. For all he knew, the man was little more than a bedtime myth. Or he might be dead. Or he might have run away when he had gotten to know his wife. Or he might be locked in a padded room. Or he might be dead. Might be... David shrugged again.
    Somewhere down the street a telephone shrilled and a woman shouted shrilly.
    In the backyard he spotted the dull green throw rug from his mother's sitting room draped limply over the clothesline. It made him think of spring, of grass, of trees... of the sun. He stepped up to it and reached out timidly to stroke the worn tasseled fringe. "Hello, Mother," he whispered. The rug hung there until a sudden gust of rain-promising wind shoved it firmly against him. He stumbled back with one arm upraised. "Hey, Mother," he said, less softly. Then he turned away quickly before the rug could move again, and as he passed the plants in the garden he was not allowed to touch, he muttered, "Wait, Mother. Wait."
    And he thought about the plan, and was cheered.
    Thought about his old friends, and smiled.
    Twice, then, and three times