That Which Should Not Be Read Online Free PDF Page B

father before, never with anyone I didn’t know. 
    “Sure, I am,” I said, mustering as much confidence in my voice as I could manage. 
    “Good, I’m going to need you,” he said.  He didn't say how or why.  I simply nodded.  I had learned not to question men like Tom too often, and then to ask only the questions that really needed answerin'.  But I'd be lyin' if I didn't say there was something about that night that scared me.  I don't know how I knew it then, but the trip already felt foul, as if it was marked from the beginning. 
    I stumbled through the darkness, the haze of the whiskey thick on my brain.  I don't know how long passed before I found my way to my bunk, but I do know my head had barely hit the pillow when I was asleep. 
    I had strange dreams that night, nightmares filled with flashes of light and thunder.  I was in the forest, but I was alone.  I still remember, even as I was dreaming, that I was struck by my own loneliness.  “Never trap alone.”  That was my father’s cardinal rule.  But there I was, without another soul in sight.  It was a familiar forest, and I felt I knew it, but in that familiarity there was also great fear, as if something wasn't quite right.  The forest was like Travis’s eyes.  It was missing something, something basic and good.  It was quiet, too.  A stillness as unnatural as it was complete.  Nothing moved there.  Nothing. 
    And then it was night.  I can’t explain it, but just as suddenly as you could strike a match, the sun vanished from the sky.  Darkness and silence.  Isolation, loneliness.  Those were the things that overwhelmed me.  But there was a voice in my head, too. 
    “Steady on Jack, steady on.  You have a job to do.  If you don’t finish it, no one will.” 
    And so I began to move.  But then came the thunder.  Then came the light.  It roared and flashed throughout the wood, and it was all the more horrible because of the silence it shattered.  Then a single roar over all others — the screeching of a bird, a great and terrible beast unlike any flying thing you ever saw.  A great black shadow covered me so thick even the flashes of lightning couldn’t lift it. 
    I woke, then, drenched in sweat, screaming.  I sat bolt upright in my bed.  Joe was sitting across from me, just a-starin’, his black Indian eyes as impenetrable as the meaning of my dream. 
    “What did you see?” he asked.  If he had spoken a word to me before that moment, it’s not one I remember. 
    “Nothin’.  Just a dream,” I said. 
    “No dream.  What did you see?” he asked again, this time more forcefully.  He scared me, but I wasn’t going to relive that, no matter what he did. 
    So I just said, “I told you, nothin’.” 
    I’m old enough now to know something I didn’t know then — an angry man, or a scared man, he’s liable to turn in a moment.  To snap, as they say.  And Joe snapped then.  He leapt from his bunk clear across the room to mine and grabbed me around the throat.  His mouth made sounds, but if they were words I could understand, I sure as Hell didn't then.  I think he would have killed me.  Well, I damn sure know he would have killed me, but then I felt him fly away from me.  I looked up and through my near-on blacked out eyes I saw Tom sling Joe across the room like he was a bag of dirty laundry. 
    “Enough!” I remember he thundered like Zeus himself.  “You two get your gear.  We’ve already overstayed our welcome here.”  There was anger in his face, but I knew despite my youth that it wasn’t directed at us.  He stood there for a moment longer and, then, turned to go, saying, “Be at the wagon in five minutes.”
    Three minutes later I emerged into the morning sun.  Tom was at the wagon with Dr. Stanley loading the last bit of supplies.  Travis was there, too, sitting on the buckboard smoking a rolled cigar.  He was smirking, and like everything else Travis did, there was no joy