The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) Read Online Free PDF Page A

then... he was there.
     
    His dark brown eyes grew wide with fear as he
appeared in the circling wind. He was older than she remembered.
Wrinkles had formed on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes.
The youthful glow had faded from his skin.
     
    The dark figure approached him, hovering
above the floorboards. Its robes dragged along the dirty ground,
leaving a trail in the dust. The fire crackled. The bones within it
shifted. The skull's mouth fell open in a silent scream.
Recognition dawned on the blonde man before the fire as his brown
eyes locked on Cynthia.
     
    “Cynthia?” He looked to the cloaked figure,
then back to her. “Cynthia, what's going on?”
     
    “For every joy there is a sorrow. You are the
sacrifice!”
     
    The blade of the scythe came down on his
skull with a loud crack. His eyes turned white as they rolled back
in his head. A gurgling noise escaped his throat, and he coughed,
dribbling blood over his lips.
     
    The tooth collector yanked its blade from the
man's skull. Another blow punctured the temple with a wet pop. The
lost soul turned its eyes to Cynthia, two rubies floating in a
black abyss.
     
     
     
    She woke up with Jason's fingers tucked in
between her own. He smiled with his mouth closed and gently
squeezed her hand. “Nurse, she's awake,” he said.
     
    Cynthia's pulse quickened as she came to. Her
eyes were panicked. “Is she... is she...”
     
    “She's beautiful,” Jason replied.
     
    Cynthia's heart swelled. Her eyes filled with
tears. “Where is she?”
     
    A nurse appeared beside the bed. She cradled
an infant, swaddled in a pink blanket. Wispy locks of orange hair
covered the newborn's head. Cynthia opened her arms. “May I have
her?”
     
    The nurse smiled. “Of course.”
     
    Cynthia took the baby in her arms. The
emerald green eyes stared up at her, and she fell in love with them
all over again. “I'll call her Mya,” she said, and kissed the
baby's head.
     
     
     
    Blood
On The Highway
     
    Snowflakes swirled in the headlights. They
shined like white crystals in the high beams before dissolving
against the windshield. Flake after tiny white flake. It was all
Emily had seen for hours.
     
    The wipers ran at full speed, smearing snow
across the glass. She closed her eyes, but the snowflakes kept
coming. She saw them in her head, an endless stream of icy
diamonds, the wipers going back and forth, back and forth.
     
    Tim was at the wheel. His face hadn't changed
in three hours. Determination creased his brow, and Emily wondered
if it would freeze that way. She stifled a laugh as she pictured
him literally frozen from the frigid climate, the same look of
perseverance in his eye.
     
    She leaned her head against the seat and
sighed. The melody to Jingle Bells had been stuck in her head for
hours. There was nothing to block it out but the whir of the car
heater and the beating of those relentless windshield wipers. She
had tried the radio, but Tim had turned it off and said “Em, I need
to concentrate on the road.”
     
    God, she hated Jingle Bells. She hated this
vacation. She needed to see something, anything, besides the
moonlit wintry highway, blurred by a veil of ever-falling snow—or
she would go mad.
     
    “Are you sure we didn't take a wrong turn?”
she asked.
     
    Tim glanced sideways without turning his
head, leering at her through the corner of his eye. “Are you
serious? Have you been paying attention? How many turns have we
even made since exiting the interstate, Em?”
     
    “Um, I don't—”
     
    “Two.” He gritted his teeth. “Two turns in an
hour. Hard to mess that up.”
     
    “Okay, okay, I was just—”
     
    “You were texting, reading, and discussing
movies with Roger Ebert back there—” He angled his thumb to point
over his shoulder.
     
    “Witty,” a voice chimed from the
backseat.
     
    “—while I've been chauffeuring you two
around.” Tim looked at her. A frown pulled at the corners of his
mouth. It marred the