The Taking Read Online Free PDF

within easy reach.
        Across the room, on the dresser, stood a collection of half a dozen antique music boxes inherited from her mother. Spontaneously, a steely plink-and-jangle issued from them: six different melodies woven into a bright discordance.
        On the lids of two boxes, clockwork-driven porcelain figurines suddenly became animated. Here, a man and woman in Victorian finery danced a waltz. There, a carousel horse turned around, around.
        The cacophony of brittle notes abraded her nerves and seemed to cut like a surgical saw through her skull bone.
        These familiar objects, a part of her life since childhood, became in an instant strange, disquieting.
        Neil stared at the tiny dancers for a moment, at the circling horse, and appeared to be unsettled by them. He made no attempt to switch off the music boxes.
        Instead, he turned to the window once more, but he didn't crank it open, as he had been prepared to do a minute ago. He engaged the latch that previously he had unlocked.

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    4
        
        AS THEY HURRIEDLY DRESSED IN JEANS AND SWEATERS, Molly told him about the coyotes.
        The somber drone of the rain, the manic plinking of the music boxes, and the almost subliminal pulsation of unknown source served as a musical score, without coherent melody, that made the adventure on the front porch seem far more ominous in the telling than it had been in actual experience. She tried-but knew that she failed-to convey to Neil the sense of wonder and the reverential awe that had characterized the incident.
        Seated on the vanity bench, striving to describe the bond with nature that she had felt as she'd stood among the coyotes, she worked her feet into a pair of waterproof walking shoes. Her hands trembled. She fumbled with the laces, finally managed to tie them.
        Still talking, she picked up, by habit, the brush that lay beside the pistol. Although she realized the absurdity of trying to deny the weirdness of the moment by resorting to mundane tasks, she turned to the mirror to assess the state of her hair.
        Her reflection was as it should be, but everything else in the mirror was wrong. Behind her lay not the lamplit and cozy bedroom, neat except for the disarranged bedclothes; instead, she saw filth and ruin.
        Her voice broke off in midsentence, and she dropped the hairbrush. She swung around on the bench to confirm that the room had changed. It was as it had always been.
        In reality, only the bedside clock was out of order. A chaos of radiant green numbers continued to spill across the readout window.
        In the mirror, however, stained walls were textured by moss or mold. One lamp remained, the shade cocked and rotting. Across the headboard of the broken-down bed crawled vines too succulent to be native to these California mountains; gray-green and glistening with moisture, the leaves hung like a host of panting tongues.
        She was tempted again to believe that she had never risen from bed and gone downstairs, that instead she had been asleep through these events-and still slept. The rain and all the strangeness that began with it-from the coyotes to this mirror-made more sense if they were the fantasies of sleep.
        Drawn to her side, Neil reached out to touch the vanity mirror, as though he expected to find that the image in it was not merely a flat reflection, but a three-dimensional reality, a world beyond the mirror.
        Irrationally, Molly stayed his hand. "No."
        "Why?"
        "Because…"
        She had no credible reason to stop him, only a superstitious fear of what would happen when his fingertips met the silvered surface of the looking glass.
        With his free hand, he touched the mirror, which proved to be solid.
        Then, in that other bedroom, something moved. A shadow proved not to be a shadow, after all, but a figure sinuous and dark, darting so fast across the mirror's