The Faceless One Read Online Free PDF

hall and its own spastic progress. Or perhaps there was true life in it, life enough to seize the small boy who had eluded it so long ago, that small boy now grown to a meal much more filling and tasty.
    It seemed to see him then and reached out its arms, twig fingers clutching and grasping at the air, trying to tear that first hot morsel from him and shove it raw and dripping into ruined lips.
    Jimmy backed away from it. He moaned, and the sound of his terror carried through the phantom corridor. It entered the eyes and mouth of the Stick Man and came back to him, soured and twisted, his own voice giving song to this terrible creature. Jimmy choked on his fear and struggled to put more distance between himself and the Stick Man.
    Jimmy rounded a corner and was shocked to see it lined with human skulls stretching into infinity, some covered with blood gone the color of rust, cartilage hanging like brittle rubber, others bleached white and turning ever so slowly to dust. In this stark necropolis, among the many grinning scraps of bone, he saw George’s hat and bow tie, mounted like trophies under one brittle skull, and a small groan escaped him. His beloved friend was dead. The whole world was dead.
    Jimmy thrust out his hands protectively and was shocked to see his long fingers and wide hands becoming small, his skin growing supple and smooth. His arms lost their knotted musculature; liver spots disappeared into cinnamon-colored skin that was smooth and untroubled, his flesh as it was before the traumas of age and its erosion. He felt his point of view shift as he shrank, becoming once again the perspective of a small boy. His adult mind stayed intact but was fully in the grip of a child’s terror. His mind flashed upon cave walls adorned with strange animal skulls, remnants of a forgotten age, all that was left of great creatures that had once held dominion over the Earth.
    He whimpered as he backed away, a small boy with an old man’s mind trying to remain in control. The Stick Man clicked and snapped, frail twig skeleton popping and creaking with every movement. But it would be strong enough to eat him, oh yes—his blood would bring color to the ravaged visage, his fat would lubricate the splintered skeleton and make it shine.
    Jimmy turned to run and found his uncle Will standing there, angry and impossibly tall, agiant in this new world of childhood revisited.
    His uncle grabbed him roughly and shook him.
    “This is your fault!” Uncle Will shouted. His voice shook the hall like a thunderclap, and Jimmy heard himself wailing in response. He tried to reason with the man he loved so dearly, tried to find out what inspired such hostility.
    “Your fault, Mouse!” Uncle Will shouted again, his eyes blazing with righteous rage.
    Jimmy glanced back. The Stick Man was just feet away, its billowing face sending out gusts that smelled of death and mold and sickness and rot. It was the smell of dead fish in the summer sun, of a possum rotting under a log, of a wound gone to gangrene. It was the smell of rust and algae and unspeakable creatures that live far away from the light, things that emerge only when there is no moon, to prey on the unwary.
    Jimmy shrieked and tried to bury his head in his uncle’s chest, thinking that surely the man would protect him, no matter how angry he was.
    His uncle grabbed him roughly and held him out at arm’s length, his viselike grip strong and unyielding. Jimmy squirmed and wriggled in his panic, but the old man was far too strong.
    Then he felt the sharp jab of jagged fingertips piercing his shoulder and heard the travesty the wheezing-billows face made of his name. He tried to call out but felt it skewering his tongue with one long finger, a tasty pink fish already on the spit.
    A drum started then, perhaps calling other creatures to feed on him. It grew in intensity as he began to lose consciousness, a drum announcing the end of the world.
    Jimmy awoke with a start on his balcony.
    A