The Girl on the Glider Read Online Free PDF Page B

but the road was clear. There were no vibrations, no disturbance.
        And yet the glider was moving.
        I said, “What the fuck?”
        The glider’s rails squeaked in response as it continued rocking. Cigar clenched between my teeth, I walked over to it. It stopped moving when I was halfway across the deck.
        If this was fiction, this would be the part of the story where the protagonist starts to put two and two together-the dream of the girl on the glider (so eerily similar in setting to what was now occurring in real life), the glider moving on its own while the protagonist watches. But this isn’t fiction, and I didn’t put those two events together. Not then.
        That came after my son started saying “Hi” to something I couldn’t see.
        

ENTRY 11
        
        Been a few days since I worked on this. Real life intruded. To paraphrase Bob Segar, deadlines and commitments, what to leave in and what to leave out. I finished the extra material for Darkness on the Edge of Town tonight. It’s a little after 3 a.m. and I’m sitting here wondering how “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” by Vaughan Mason and Crew ended up in my iTunes library. I’ve got about ten-thousand songs on iTunes, the culmination of a lifelong music collection, and when I write, I put them on random shuffle. It makes for eclectic and inspiring background music. I never know what will pop up next. Jerry Reed and then Anthrax, followed by The Alan Parsons Project and then Marvin Gaye and then Public Enemy and then Johnny Cash or Guns N’ Roses or Neil Diamond or Iron Maiden or Alice In Chains or Dr. Dre. But I don’t remember ever owning this disco tune, and here it is, blasting from my computer’s speakers and subwoofer.
        I don’t have a lot in life. Material wealth has not accompanied my success, and these days, I seem to have more hangers-on and acquaintances than I do real friends, but the one thing I’ve got going for me is a kick-ass collection of tunes. And an awesome fucking library. This is what I leave behind for my sons-a metric fuck-ton of books, comics and music.
        Anyway, I went back through this tonight, reading what I wrote, and I noticed something. Even in this, my secret diary, I avoid mentioning the baby’s name. When he was born, Cassi and I made a decision to guard his privacy as much as possible. We’ve never posted a picture of him online. Indeed, when I do talk about him in public, I refer to him as ‘Turtle,’ rather than his real name. Maybe we’re just being paranoid, but I don’t care. I’ve got enough crazies out there, and have gotten enough death threats that I’m not taking any chances. Like I said at the beginning, I genuinely half-expect to get done in by some crazed ‘fan’ one of these days. What’s to stop the guy who said he wanted to, (quote) “shoot me in the head with a cross-bow because I psychically stole his story ideas” (end quote) from hopping on a Greyhound and coming to York County and tracking down my kid at school? These are the thoughts that keep a horror writer awake at night. So we guard his identity, and I did it even here, in this Word document, and I wasn’t even aware I was doing it until now.
        I would do anything for my sons. I would murder others to keep them safe. My oldest son, David, is now an adult and can fend for himself. He’s as big of a genre geek as I am, and he likes telling goth girls who his Dad is, in the hopes of getting laid. And it works, too. He gets more game at sci-fi and horror conventions than Coop and I ever did back in the day. I don’t have to worry about him as much anymore. He’s a smart kid… hell, he’s not even a kid. He’s a man, now. But I still have to worry about my youngest son. The world is a scary place and he has no fear. When he attempts to climb out of his crib, he isn’t aware that he might fall. When he clambers up onto the couch and rolls around, he doesn’t