The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 Read Online Free PDF

whipping hair became a hideous toadstool around his collar.
    Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously, Green Terror leaped.
    I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on my back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I caught one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.
    When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the grainery bins in the all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had been beaten with padded Indian clubs.
    Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes were open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever gonna wake up. How you feel?"
    "Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"
    "We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."
    At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"
    His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an evasive answer.
    "Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know, Chips. I have to."
    Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't exactly what we told the cops-in fact we hardly told the cops any of it. No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's gone. I didn't even know that Legere guy was around."
    "And Green Terror?"
    Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought to death."
    "Other tiger? There's no other-"
    "Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell of a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."
    "What-where-"
    "Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler that way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.
    And that's the end of my story-except for two little items. The words Mr. Legere shouted just before the tornado hit: "When a man and an animal live in the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts determine the mold!"  
    The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me later, offering it only for what it might be worth. What he told me was that the strange tiger had a long scar on the back of its neck.

3: Charles Saunders - Amma
    A soft strain of music drifts delicately among the familiar midday noises of Gao, capital city of the empire of Songhai. Softly it weaves its way through the shrill bargaining of market women; the intrusive importunings of tradesmen; the strident admonitions of adhana- priests to prayer and sacrifice at the shrines of the gods; and the clink and jingle of mail- clad soldiers strutting through the streets. The music is easily recognizable: notes plucked by skillful fingers from the seven strings of a Soudanic ko.  
    There are other ko songs that mingle with the general hum of the city, for the ko is popular, and Gao large. Yet some there are in the teeming populace who pause when the notes of this one reach their ears. By the singular quality of its melody, they know that this in no outdated local strummer of weary songs, nor love-struck youth seeking to impress the object of his callow affections. They know, these connoisseurs of the ko, that a new griot has come to Gao.
    Before the final notes of the song have faded, a small crowd is gathered at the saffiyeh, a small square off the main marketplace where, traditionally, the newly arrived griot comes to display his talents. The stranger sits with his back against a whitewashed wall; his fingers dancing lightly acrosa the strings of his instrument. More like hands hardened by the gripping of sword or plow, these, than hands accustomed mainly to the touch of laquered wood and slender wire.
    Beneath the road-worn garments of a wanderer, the griot's frame bulks large, yet strangely gaunt, as though once-massive thews have been reduced to the minimum amount required for physical activity. His sepia-toned face is solemn and middle-aged, webbed with lines scored by adversity.