Read Online Darkroom by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

and looked up at the painting of the man with the black cloth draped over his head. She stared at it, unmoving, although both of her ears were pricked up.
    â€˜Don’t worry about that,’ said Jim after a while. ‘I’m going to see if Genevieve Frost can sell it for me.’
    Tibbles turned around and looked at him, and gave him a querying
miaow
.
    â€˜OK, we can leave it up if you like. But Vinnie says it gives him nightmares, and it’ll probably give me nightmares, too, especially after six beers and a
quattro staggione
pizza with extra jalapeno peppers.’
    Tibbles gave a more dismissive miaow, as if she didn’t want to discuss what Jim was like after six beers and a
quattro staggione
pizza with extra jalapeno peppers. Then she jumped up on to the sagging brocade couch and sniffed distrustfully at the cushions.
    â€˜That’s OK,’ said Jim. ‘That can be your couch.’ He went across to the throne-like chair which was standing in the far corner of the room. ‘This one’s going to be mine.’ He confidently tried to pick it up, but it was carved out of solid Spanish oak and he couldn’t even lift it off the floor. In the end he had to drag it and push it and walk it on alternate feet. He maneuvered it to one side of the fireplace and smacked its seat cushion in a cloud of dust. Its purple velvet upholstery was faded and threadbare, and half of its buttons were missing, but it still had grandeur. Jim sat down on it and said, ‘There … King Jim and Queen Tibbles in their royal palace. No serfs, admittedly. No minstrels, no dancing girls. But what do you expect for seven hundred and fifty bucks a month?’
    Tibbles didn’t stay on her couch for very long. While Jim watched her, she jumped off it again and started to explore the rest of the living room. ‘You hungry?’ Jim asked her, but she didn’t respond. ‘I bought anchovies. Mmmm, anchovies! No? How about a saucer of milk?’
    When she didn’t respond, he went back into the kitchen and took a cold can of beer out of one of his grocery sacks and wrenched open a giant-size bag of pretzels. ‘Beer and pretzels, the food of real men everywhere!’ He unpacked Tibbles’s bowl and set it on the floor next to the antiquated fridge. ‘You’re sure you’re not hungry?’ he asked her. ‘I bought spaghetti shapes, too. Simpsons spaghetti shapes, your favorite!’
    He opened the fridge. It was reasonably clean inside, even if it smelled a little like sour milk and the light kept flickering, as if it were trying to warn him of something. He took out the salad tray, sniffed it to make sure, and then filled it up with green capsicums and beef tomatoes and a cucumber. He had made up his mind that he was going to eat much healthier food now that he was back in Los Angeles. When he was in Washington he had been too harassed and overworked to cook for himself, and he had lived mostly on cheeseburgers and fried chicken. He hadn’t put on very much weight, because he had been too stressed out, but he had always felt slightly nauseous, as if he had just staggered off a fairground carousel.
    He was stacking blueberry yogurts in the fridge when he heard a screech of agony. For a split second, horrified, he thought that it was human. He dropped one of the yogurts and it splashed across his foot. ‘Tibbles!’ he called. ‘Tibbles, are you OK?
Tibbles!
’
    He pushed his way through to the living room. The spectacle that greeted him made him stop dead, and he felt as if cockroaches were running down his back. Tibbles was perched right on top of one of the torchères. It was over five feet high, and how she had managed to jump up on top of it without knocking it over he couldn’t even begin to imagine. Her eyes were like slits and her lips were stretched back over her gums, baring her teeth. Just above her head, a twist of brown smoke was