Read Online A Dark Matter by Peter Straub - Free Book Online Page B

could continue.

    Now. Enter Spencer Mallon, seated on a carton in the store’s basement, swinging his legs beneath him and leaning forward on an arm so ropey the muscles cast shadows. Wiping a sleeve across his eyes as he muddled unseeing into the Game Room, fat old Howard Bly had no problem at all in seeing them as they had been on that day. Tall, athletic-looking Dilly-O on the floor, leaning against a low wall of boxed canned goods, his knees hugged to his chest, his head drooping over. Dill’s dark hair, longer than that of the others, swung forward over his ears to frame his young tough’s face. Between his lips, a cigarette from a pack of Viceroys lately stashed behind the cash register sent up a straight, unruffled column of white smoke.
    Dilly-O, you were like a god! You were!
    In a UW rowing team T-shirt, dirty white painters’ pants, and tennis shoes, Boats squatted on the floor, staring at Mallon, hoping for some indication of what they were to do that day. With his newly awakened senses, little Howard was painfully aware of how greatly Boats wished to become Spencer Mallon’s favorite disciple.

    Spencer Mallon leaning over, staring at his legs moving back and forth like pistons … He wiped a hand over his face, then ran it through his perfect hair.
    “Okay,” he said. “Things are getting intense. Meredith drew up a chart, and it tells us that the optimal time and date are only two days away. Seven-twenty p.m., Sunday, the sixteenth of October. We’ll still have the light, but no one else should be around.”
    “Around where?” asked Boats. “You found a place?”
    “The university agronomy meadow, on the far end of Glasshouse Road. Good site, excellent site. Tomorrow afternoon I want us to go out there for a rehearsal.”
    “Rehearsal?”
    “I want us to get it right. Some of you knuckleheads hardly know how to listen.”
    “When you said ‘chart,’” asked Boats, “did you mean some kind of navigational chart?”
    “Astrological,” Mallon said. “Based on our group. Time and date of birth are when we first got together at La Bella Capri.”
    “Meredith did an astrology chart?” asked the Eel. “About us?”
    “She’s an experienced astrologist.”
    He grinned at his followers. To Howard, the man’s inner desperation immediately shrank to a more tolerable level.
    “I still feel a little weird about relying on that thing, to tell you the truth, but Meredith was absolutely confident of her results, so we’re aiming for seven-twenty two nights from now. What about four o’clock for our rehearsal? Everybody cool with that?”
    They all nodded. Only Howard, it seemed, felt that Mallon was still uneasy about the use of astrology.
    “Will Meredith come to this rehearsal?” Howard asked.
    “She damn well better,” Mallon said.
    Laughter followed this remark.
    Mallon said, “I want you to partner up tomorrow. It could get wild out there.”
    “What do you mean?” Boats asked the question for all of them.
    Mallon shrugged. “Hey, on the other hand, these things usually go nowhere. And that could happen, too.”
    “You’ve done this a lot?”
    Momentarily, discomfort erased Mallon’s anxiety. “What do you think my life is about? But this time, okay, this time I think I’m closer than ever.”
    “How can you tell?” asked Boats, with a silent, stricken echo from Howard Bly.
    “I can read the signs, and the signs are all around us.” His discomfort arose again and affected his posture, his expression, even the angle of his legs.
    “What do you mean, signs?” asked Boats.
    “You got to keep your eyes open. Look for the little things that don’t belong.”
    With a shock of surprise, Old Howard, who had moved onto a chair in the Crafts Room, realized that if Boats and Dilly-O were ever to get together now, they would not, not ever, not really talk about what had happened in the meadow—because they would never be able to agree about it. He almost wished one of them, maybe