Tyrannia Read Online Free PDF Page A

and then the connection died. He stared at the phone and flipped it off.
    “Shit,” he said. He felt like he should have been scared or something. But he knew he wouldn’t have padded down the stairs and out of the house to the van if he was scared.
    More than anything, he wanted to see Tristana’s face.

    A few more wrong turns on country roads of mist, white darkness in his headlights and branches scraping against the side of the van. He felt drunk still. The mountain rain Febreze lingered in the van like a hospital’s spoor. When lost, he spun the van out on muddy parking lots connected to no buildings, in order to turn around and retrace his path. Outside of town, he only passed one other car, which weaved in the road so much that Patrick waited on the berm for the car to pass, its honks receding in the distance.
    After a few false starts, he finally found his way and his memory reasserted itself. At the foot of the farmhouse hill, he tried to keep his hands from shaking. There were no lights in the house and no other vehicles parked outside. There weren’t crickets. He climbed the hill and parked right in front of the house. He left the headlights on, took a flashlight in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, and got out of the van. No sounds. As he stepped into the house, the headlights did more harm than good. In the living room, the mattress was still there, with a twin depression in the middle.
    “Hello?” he called out. “Tristana?”
    He stood at the top of the stairs. There was a dim light coming from down there. He slowly went down the stairs, darting his flashlight around and finding nothing to see.
    On the basement floor, the battery-powered lamp was almost dead, giving off a reddish glow. The cooler was overturned and crushed beer cans were scattered everywhere. In the center of the room, the chair was still there—though its legs looked burnt and scorched—and was empty except for the professor’s shoes on the seat, polished black. The leather captured the glow from the lamp like the clouds of a dark Jupiter. Feathery strands of rope, like pillow down, were scattered around the chair. The rest of the basement was empty, but he did hear a trickling from the archway opening in the far corner. He took a deep breath and walked to the opening.
    A blast of cold air. He crossed his arms. He took a few steps into the tunnel, which began to slope downward. The footing was slick. He looked at his own sneakers and wondered if he was going to slide down the rest of the way. As he tried to grip the rough stone wall, his flashlight slipped out of his hands and skittered down the slope for a few seconds until it stopped.
    “Shit,” he said. The sound didn’t echo; it died.
    He heard sloshing down below. He stopped himself from sliding any farther and held his breath.
    Someone picked up the flashlight, and flicked it around, revealing a cavern about as large as the basement above, filled with a couple inches of reddish water. The person was all shadows until putting the flashlight under the chin. It was Tristana. She had a black eye, lacerations on the cheeks, torn clothes, gray skin. She was also barefoot.
    “Tristana,” Patrick whispered. “Come on up. Come on. I found you.” He kept himself from rushing down to her. It was not a hard decision and that surprised him.
    She looked up at Patrick but didn’t seem to recognize him. She wiggled the flashlight around the cavern walls, as if she hadn’t ever used one before. Patrick could catch glimpses of human skeletons and bear skulls embedded on the rough walls below him.
    “Tristana!” he said.
    More footsteps, and someone took the flashlight away from Tristana. It was Evan. He was hunched over. He was carrying the professor on his back, who looked unconscious or dead. Evan looked as mottled and wounded as Tristana did. He was barefoot also, and didn’t have any fingernails. He looked up at Patrick too, and then past him. Then Evan dropped the