The Ravens Read Online Free PDF

with you?”
    Abruptly she stood up, ready to leave.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t be talking to you like that.”
    She gave him a conciliatory smile. Lance noticed again that there was something odd about the look in her eyes, something that hadn’t been there before. But he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

7
    THE NEXT DAY he was driving aimlessly through the streets of Duluth when he caught sight of the redbrick building that housed the Great Lakes Aquarium. The building drew his attention in an inexplicable way, luring and enticing him, as if promising that it contained something he needed.
    After he bought a ticket and hung his jacket in the cloakroom, he stood in the middle of the huge hall, his mind blank as he looked around. The few other visitors who were present only served to make the place seem emptier; both their bodies and their voices seemed to disappear inside the space. Outside the windows on the east wall the white icy expanse stretched out until it met the blue sky at a razor-sharp divide. Only the small, dark figures of the ice fishermen broke the perfect barrenness out there.
    The aquarium’s three huge fish tanks rose vertically through the central part of the building, looking rather like giant test tubes filled with water and fish. Consequently, the middle of the building was open all the way up to the glass roof high overhead. In these tanks the fish swam in various layers through the water, clearly distributed according to the depth that each species preferred. At the very bottom were several sturgeon—big, prehistoric-looking fish, maybe five feet long.
    Lance closed his eyes for a moment and listened. The whole aquarium was pervaded by the steady, bubbling sound of oxygenbeing pumped into the various tanks. The sound vaguely reminded him of being underwater. It was the lake that had lured and enticed him. Because the lake was inside here too, in the bubbling from the tanks, in a silvery fish flapping its tail fin in the light shining through the glass roof, and in the sensation that he was underwater. Lance knew that the moment he opened his eyes, he would see the lake’s frozen nothingness stretching out toward the horizon.
    When he did open his eyes, he felt a flicker of fear pass through his brain, and instantly began moving away from the center of the big, vaulted space.
    There were no other visitors in the room with the model of the Great Lakes. Gratefully Lance sank down onto a chair at the western end and let his gaze wander over the huge display table, many square feet in size. On exhibit was an exact model of America’s five Great Lakes and the surrounding terrain. The cities were marked by tiny houses and bridges. The old Aerial Bridge in Duluth, which was the town’s most prominent landmark, was not depicted to scale; instead, it was larger than the tallest buildings. If Lance leaned forward and stretched out his arm, he would be able to touch it, but he didn’t like the thought of touching his own world from above, as if he were some sort of giant in a comic book. A freighter was also included in the display, no doubt loaded with taconite. He could have picked it up between his thumb and forefinger to lift it high above the lake with water pouring in a steady stream off the hull, and then he could have tossed it against the mountain ridge, where it would have crushed a countless number of old wooden houses along with the people inside. Suddenly everyone who was outside would be craning their necks to stare in terror at the giant looming overhead in the sky. His hand alone was larger than the biggest building in town. The streets of his childhood would be filled with the sounds of panic. But wasn’t there something familiar about that enormous face? It was so big and round and reached so high into the sky that it almost looked like the sun. Sooner or later someone would shout: It’s Lance Hansen! Look how big he is! Yes, and how horrible, someone would add.