Read Online Screamscapes: Tales of Terror by Evans Light - Free Book Online

unusual. He wasn’t terribly late getting home, not late enough to make Sonia get angry and take off, anyway.
    Besides, he had a good excuse - no, a great excuse.
    “Sonia?” he called into the darkness.
    He was relieved when she answered.
    “I’m in the living room, could you please help me with something?” she called in a happy, sing-song voice.
    Gerard fumbled along the wall, looking for a light switch.
    “Did a breaker trip in the garage again?” he asked as his fingers located a switch beside the living room door. He didn’t expect it to work, but flipped it into the “ON” position anyway.
    He was startled when the lights came on like they were supposed to, and then again when he found the living room full of balloons and smiling people.
    “Surprise!” everyone shouted. The room was draped with decorations; a big banner over the fireplace read, “ Lordy, Lordy, Gerard is Forty! ”
    A few minutes later, Gerard was seated at the head of the dining room table, and refrains of “Happy Birthday” filled the air.
    Maazo Maazo. Maazo Maazo.
    The refrain was still pounding in his head like a mantra, and it was making him feel as though he would burst if he didn’t start working on his book soon, or even better – right now .
    His fingers started tapping on the tabletop, impatient to begin typing. Gerard clutched his hands together in an effort to make them be still, but his fingers continued to struggle, as if they had a mind of their own and were eager to get to work.
    Sonia handed him the first slice of cake, but he only took two bites before he excused himself and darted off to his study.

    He settled into the soft leather chair at his desk and realized it had never felt so good before. He looked at the hopeless stack of papers piled on his desk - that was his draft, the one that needed to be completed in two weeks. Finishing his book had seemed almost impossible until tonight; he had been sure he would miss his deadline, and hadn’t been confident he would be able to make the project coherent enough to publish, much less sell enough copies for him to quit his day job.
    But those doubts had gone, replaced by a vigor and determination he had never felt before. He pulled his keyboard towards him, caressing its keys with his fingers as he waited for the computer to boot up.
    Beside the monitor was a functional dipping pen and matching ink well, a thoughtful gift Sonia had given him when they were dating. He remembered that she had wrapped it in glossy red paper dotted with little white hearts. It had been a permanent fixture on his writing desk ever since.
    Gerard picked up the pen, its metal surface cool and smooth against his skin. On its silver stem, the pen was engraved with elegant lettering: “ To the best man who ever wrote his way into the story of my life; make sure it has a happy ending! Love, Sonia ”.
    Once the computer was ready, Gerard slipped the pen back into the ink well and began to type. The noise of the party in the other room seemed to drift from somewhere now far away.
    Gerard began typing with a slow and steady pace at first, but the tempo of his fingers on the keyboard grew faster and faster as he went - a locomotive picking up steam and headed down the straightaway, a full load of coal in its boiler and the devil on its heels.

    Sonia and the kids found Gerard still working hard at his desk the next morning, dozens of printed pages strewn across his desk. It looked as though he had written his way through the entire night.
    After much pleading, she convinced him to take a break from writing and join her in the kitchen for breakfast.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said as he poured a coffee. “I shouldn’t have acted like that.”
    Sonia smiled.
    “It’s okay,” she reassured him. “I told everyone you were under a lot of pressure to meet your deadline, and they seemed to understand. I probably shouldn’t have sprung a party on you like that - I just thought you could use a night