The Thing on the Shore Read Online Free PDF

big to be human, the passenger was squeezed tightly into his seat, his knees pressing against the one in front. He was wearing a black suit with an open-necked white shirt. His huge, long head was perfectly bald and unusually pointed. His eyes were dark and deep, overshadowed by a pair of thick, heavy eyebrows that swept upward like the feathers above an owl’s eyes. His actual eyes, in fact, were just about invisible—all Bony could see of them were twin points of light. His nose was sharp and pointed. He had a neatly trimmed black goatee, and his lips were thin. His skin looked naturally tanned and, even though he sat folded up into a train seat too small for him, he gave an impression of physical fitness and coiled-up strength. Each of his hands could have encased Bony’s entire head, and on his fingers he wore thick gold rings.
    Bony quickly scanned all the other windows of the train, but there didn’t appear to be any other passengers. He then stared back down at the massive man below him, whose mouth was now twisted in derision.
    Stop looking at me
, thought Bony.
Stop looking at me, you terrifying bastard.
But the deep glints that passed for the man’s eyes didn’t leave Bony’s face until the train had edged further along the track, and the windows finally shifted out of alignment.
    Once the big man had passed from view, everything started moving more quickly. Bony opened the cabin door and watched the train recede to the north. It appeared black against the inky blue of the landscape and theluminous purple-blue of the sky. The orange windows still stood out clearly, as if they were the only lit-up things in the world. Bony became aware of the sound again. The sound of the train as it grew quieter. He stood in the doorway and watched.
    Soon he felt totally alone once more, standing in the doorway watching nothing, and listening to the Drigg cows bellow and moan in the darkness of night.

A RTEMIS A PPROACHES
    The train’s conductor was young and fat and sweaty, and his badly shaved head was covered in small cuts and spots. Every now and again, he would dash up and down the train as if he had something important to do. Artemis couldn’t bear the sight of him, and wished he had a gun, even a knife, just to scare him. And why didn’t this stupid fucking train have a first-class carriage, anyway? And where was the shop? Where was the wi-fi? He would have waited for the fucking monkeys at the garage to fix his car if only he’d known he would end up stuck here in one of these crappy tin cans. Pitiful things. Small and slow and old.
    He stood up to stretch his legs. The dome of his head bounced against the carriage roof as the train swayed, so he hunched his back a little. It wasn’t even as if there was anything of interest outside the window. Just the sea at night. He couldn’t believe they were sending him to this no-place: this empty coastline with its small, grimexcuses for towns and villages, its miserable little houses, gray stony beaches, the cold gray ocean, and the weird, unintelligible people. If the ice caps actually melted and angry water swamped this bleak shithole of a place then it would be no real loss. There wasn’t even anybody else on the train, but then nobody in their right mind would come up here if they didn’t have to. Artemis shook his head at his reflection in the window. Out there on the sea shone an orange light. Some sort of boat? It shone at him through the reflection of his shadowed eyes.

A T H OME
    â€œI don’t want to talk,” Bracket said. “I don’t want to talk about anything. I’m sorry. Just—I’m just going to go and sit down.”
    He regretted saying that almost before he finished uttering the words. Isobel had been looking at him as if she were about to tell him something fantastic; a smile playing around the corners of her mouth, her eyes wide and bright with excitement. He hadn’t read