The Manor Read Online Free PDF Page A

dust, a lit-tle blood, and a few loose teeth. And the fear. The taste was metal and rust and the kind of smithy, gunpowdery bitterness that filed the air when a fixer-upper worked a hammer. The collapsed shed settled around him with a splintering groan.
    George knew he'd better open his eyes. Because in-side his head, he was looking down a long dark tunnel, and the deeper he got, the farther away he was from the light pouring in from the mouth of the tunnel. He was riding down into that tunnel as smoothly as if he were on miners' rails. And part of him wanted to slide on away, down into that cool airless place just around the bend.
    But the other part of him was taking over. The part that had pulled his hind end through the jungles of Vietnam, the part that had roled him out of that hospi-tal bed when the doctors told him he was a heartbeat away from the Big One, the part that had lifted him into the sunshine after the foggy months of loneliness. It was the part that George thought of as Old Leatherneck. Sort of a secret identity that he took on when times got tough. And he realy needed Old Leatherneck now, be-cause times didn't come any tougher than this.
    Another bad thing about closing his eyes was that he kept seeing her. The Woman in White. So he forced his eyelids open, thanks to his secret identity. Wood splinters sprinkled down and stuck to his tears. Something warm and wet trickled down his right temple, but he wasn't too concerned with that at the moment. First he wanted to figure out what that purplish, raggedy thing was, the thing speared on a split two-by-four a few feet over his head. It was oddly familiar, but out of place, like a sailboat in the middle of a cornfield.
    The purplish thing wriggled. No, it had only slid down a little on the broken tip of the board, making a sound like Jell-0 dropping onto the floor. Even in the gloomy light and swirling dust, George could make out five litle stubs dangling like the teats on a cow's udder. That's when Old Leatherneck kicked in like a dozen cups of percolated coffee.
    "So it's a goddamned hand, Georgie-Boy. What's the problem? How many people in this world was born with no hands at all? Why, you saw Joes in Nam that lost every frigging limb they had, and al they could do was lay around flopping like beached puppyfish. So get the hell over it."
    George gulped, and the imaginary broken glass in his mouth worked its way down his throat. The dead fingers above were splayed out as if waiting for a high five. George hoped Old Leatherneck didn't cut him one inch of slack this time. Because he didn't believe there was an inch to spare.
    "And since you're the only bozo laying around down here in this crap heap of a falen-down shed, then odds are pretty good that it's your hand, soldier."
    George turned his head a little so that he couldn't see the hand. He roled his eyebals down to look at his body. He couldn't see anything past his chest because a pile of hemlock ceiling joists were spilled like jumbo tiddlywinks across his gut. He tried to wriggle his shoulders and pain erupted in flaming colorbursts.
    "Okay, soldier. You gonna whine like a litle girlie-boy, or are you gonna stand up and haul your wrinkled rump hole out of here?"
    George didn't see any way he could stand up. For one thing, he couldn't feel his legs.
    "Excuses, excuses. Well, Georgie, it could be a whole lot worse. 'Cause in case you didn't notice, there's a slick sheet of roofing tin about four inches away from your main neck-vein, and that could have just kited on down and done some business. Then we wouldn't even be having this lovely little chat." The sharp edge of the tin caught the dying sunlight. As he watched, the piece of roofing slid closer with a metallic squeak. More cracking came from high above in the invisible carnage of the eaves. Something slith-ered in the soft shadows.
    "No, it ain't no snake. Never mind that the copper-heads and rattlers get active this time of year, doing the last