Read Online Goodlow's Ghosts by T.M. Wright - Free Book Online Page B

were blank, that they bore no color at all, and that her mouth was lipless and impossibly wide—it terminated at the sides of her head, like the mouth of a toad.
    And she said, as she bent over him and he stared wide-eyed at her, as his full bladder let go because of his fear, "I'm going to read to you. And you're going to listen, dammit!"
    ~ * ~
    Ryerson Biergarten could not clearly remember what had sent him screaming from his office on the second floor of his town house. He remembered a face, but indistinctly, as if it were covered by a stocking.
    He remembered little else. He remembered nothing of the conversation he had had with the man who owned that face, though he remembered that there had been a conversation. Oblique and cryptic.
    He knew well enough why he couldn't remember what had happened only moments earlier. He was protecting himself from something fearful and odd and unexplainable. If his clocks suddenly began moving counterclockwise, he would have the same reaction. He would tell himself that his clocks were moving clockwise, although his inner self would know better. His inner self, after all, was much better equipped to handle such things. It was connected to the real, unpredictable, anarchic universe in a way that his outer self wasn't. It was that way with everyone, he knew. He wasn't special.
    With the eye of his memory, he sought to peel away the stocking that covered the face. He thought that it was a male face, and that surely it had been hideous; otherwise he wouldn't have run screaming from it.
    Creosote stood beside him. He glanced down at the dog but said nothing. The dog's flat, gummy face could have been easier to look at, he thought, than the one behind the stocking.
    Creosote whimpered.
    Ryerson looked away.
    He was in his kitchen. He didn't remember coming here. He didn't even particularly like it here. He knew that people congregated in kitchens because they were places that were often filled with warmth and with friendly smells. But his kitchen was bare and utilitarian, and he didn't eat in it often because there was no one to eat in it with.
    He couldn't peel away the stocking that covered the face in his memory. He saw Creosote's face beneath it—round, dark eyes, tiny fangs, and triangular patterns of black and white fur. He grinned.
    The face in his memory cleared and grinned back. He gasped. But he did not scream. That, he thought, was a beginning, at least. The next step would be communication.
    The prospect made him weak in the knees.
    ~ * ~
    Sam Goodlow thought, I am in another man's chair, in another man's house, and I've just scared the hell out of him . He wondered how he had done it. He wondered what there could be about him that would make a grown man scream and run away.
    And he wondered why he was here, in that man's chair, in that man's house.
    Why was he anywhere ?
    He was dead, for God's sake. Wasn't he?
    Maybe not.
    But of course he was. He remembered the mammoth Lincoln Town Car coming at him, the beefy driver grinning at him, remembered the sky coming down, the road coming up.
    Then nothing.
    Clear enough. He was dead. (Unless he had survived, somehow.)
    And he was sitting in another man's chair, in another man's house.
    Why? Because the man knew him? Because he knew the man? Because they were friends?
    Who knows? he wondered.
    And answered himself that the man knew, of course.
    He rose from the desk chair, crossed the room, and went out into the hallway. "Hello?" he called. "Who's here? Is someone here?"
    This was stupid, he thought. The man who owned this house had to be here, unless he'd run screaming out into the street.
    A tall mirror stood at the end of the hallway, not far off, and Sam looked at himself in it.
    What he saw there made him shudder.
    ~ * ~
    The phone rang, and Ryerson turned his head quickly toward it. The phone was in the foyer, down a short hallway from the kitchen. He thought briefly about ignoring it, but went down the hallway and answered it