Read Online Thirty Miles South Of Dry County by Kealan Patrick Burke - Free Book Online Page B

and looked from Iris to Kirkland, who were walkin’ unsteadily toward the fountain from the far side.
    “He looks like he’s been drinkin’,” I said.
    Iris nodded. “You would too if you were him.”
    Kirkland were wearing the same sky blue suit he’d been wearin’ the day before, only now it had dark stains all over it. When he reached the fountain and bent over to retch into the murky water, I figured I knew what those stains were. Man looked like he’d been tryin’ to kill himself with liquor. Nobody but me and Iris paid him much mind though.
    “What is it that’s supposed to happen here?” I asked her. “Why are we here?”
    She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “You already know the answer to that. Me tellin’ you won’t make it seem any less surreal. Nor will seein’ it for yourself. But every universe has an engine. It’s the anniversary, and you’re here to see ours.”
    Kirkland settled himself on the same side of the fountain as Cadaver, but didn’t acknowledge him. Didn’t look my way either. It were as if someone had dropped a bunch of strangers into the middle of a ghost town as a lark, or an experiment.
    We waited for what felt like hours, no one sayin’ a word.
    Then, there came the sound of an old fashioned bicycle bell. It were faint at first and I might have thought I’d imagined it if everyone there hadn’t jolted as if struck. Tired eyes became wide with fear, spines snapped straight, and folks began to look off in the distance behind them, where there weren’t nothin’ to see but apparently there were plenty to be nervous about. They were watchin’ the north end of the square, farthest away from us, where there stood an abandoned store. The sign were so faded it couldn’t be read, and the window were clouded up with dust. I strained to try to make out what it were I were supposed to be seein’, cursin’ my poor vision.
    And then he were there.
    I think I staggered back a step out of fright. Whatever I did, suddenly Iris, without lookin’ away from the man outside the store, grabbed my elbow, steadying me. I did not thank her, not then. Couldn’t. I just let loose a breath and stared at the spot on the street outside the store where a moment before there had been nothin’ to see.
    There was somethin’ to see now.
    It were the man from my dreams. The Bicycle Man. A myth we’d heard once or twice over the years and never believed because it made no sense. Of course that day I knew sense weren’t somethin’ that could be measured in places like Milestone, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a man step, or rather, ride out of thin air into the square. But I were. When I’d dreamed him, I’d woke up screamin’. Seein’ him in the flesh made me feel no better.
    With a tring! of his little bell, he rode just as slow as you please across the square toward us.
    He were riding one of those old-fashioned bikes, the kind you used to see on circus posters. A black thing with a small back wheel and a front wheel taller than a man. A penny something-or-other I think you call them. He rode it with the ease of someone who can’t imagine any other way to get around. And he were smilin’ as if he found no greater pleasure in life. He were wearing a top hat and tails and a black and white striped pair of pants that ended in thick black clogs with enormous heels, though they didn’t seem to interfere with his pedalin’. His hair were long and black as crow’s feathers, and he had no eyes. It weren’t like he’d lost them somehow. There just weren’t any, as if he’d been born without them. Though the kind of woman who might have shoved a thing like this into the world didn’t bear thinkin’ about neither. His waxy, chalk-white face were perfectly smooth on both sides of his nose.
    This, I realized, were what I had almost expected Kirkland to be, though I’d never have been able to imagine somethin’ this bad.
    This were the engine of the Milestone universe. And