The Wrath of Angels Read Online Free PDF

a mountain lion, because they’d both heard stories about the possible return of big cats to the state. Nobody had seen one for certain for the best part of twenty years, but they didn’t want to be the first.
    They stepped around the remains of the buck and advanced on the open space. It was only as they drew nearer that they smelled it: dampness, and rotting vegetation. A body of still black water lay before them, so dark that it was more pitch than liquid, with the promise of a viscosity to match. Staring into it, Harlan caught only the barest reflection of his own face. The water appeared to absorb more protons than it should have, sucking in the beams of their flashlights and what little illumination filtered through the branches above, allowing almost nothing of it to escape. Harlan took a step back as he felt his sense of balance faltering, and he bumped into Paul, who was standing directly behind him. The shock caused him to teeter, and for a moment he was about to fall into the pool. The ground seemed to tilt beneath his feet. His rifle fell to the ground and he raised his arms instinctively and flapped them at the air, like a bird striving to escape a predator. Then Paul’s hands were on his torso, pulling him back, and Harlan found a tree against which to lean, circling its trunk with his arms in a desperate lover’s embrace.
    ‘I thought I was going in,’ he said. ‘I thought I was going to drown.’
    No, not drown: suffocate, or worse, for just because he was certain that no living thing moved through its depths (Certain? Certain how? Certain north was north, and east was east? But such certainties did not apply in this place; of that, at least, he
was
convinced.), it did not mean that the pool was empty. It stank of malevolence, of the possibility that something more than the sucking power of its mass might drag you down if you fell into it. Harlan was suddenly aware of the silence of this place. He was conscious too that night was coming on quickly: he could see no stars in the sky, and the damn compass was gone all to hell. They could be stuck out here, and he didn’t want that to happen, not one damn little bit.
    ‘We ought to leave,’ said Harlan. ‘This place feels wrong.’
    He realized that Paul had not spoken since they found the pool. His friend stood with his back to him, the muzzle of his gun now pointing at the ground.
    ‘You hear me?’ said Harlan. ‘I think we should get out of here. It’s bad. This whole damned place is—’
    ‘Look,’ said Paul. He stepped to one side and shined his flashlight across the expanse of the pool, and Harlan saw it.
    It was the shape that marked it out, although the forest had done its best to obscure its lines. At first glance, it looked only like the trunk of a fallen tree, one much larger than those that surrounded it, but a portion of one wing protruded from the foliage, and the flashlight made parts of the fuselage glitter. Neither of the men knew much about airplanes, but they could see that it was a small twin-engine prop, now minus the starboard engine, lost during the crash along with most of that wing. It lay on its belly to the north of the pool, its nosecone hard against a big pine. The forest had closed over the path that it must have torn through the trees upon its descent, although that in itself was not so remarkable. What was strange, and what gave the men pause, was that the plane was almost entirely covered with vegetation. Vines had wrapped their tendrils around it, ferns had shaded it, shrubs had masked it. The very ground itself appeared to be slowly absorbing it, for the plane had sunk some distance into the earth, and the lower portion of the port engine was already lost. The plane must have been here for decades, Harlan thought, but the portions of it that were visible through the greenery did not appear that old. There was no rust, no obvious decay. As he would tell his family during his final days, it was as though the forest