Read Online The Paradise War by Stephen R. Lawhead - Free Book Online

blood-red ears shimmering in the twilight. Their long snouts flashed sharp teeth as they reared and jerked to get at me. Again I felt like hightailing it back to the car, locking the doors, and driving away very fast. But I fought down the impulse.
    The man watched me impassively, his face all creased and wrinkled like a monkey’s, his eyes glittering hard and bright. He did not speak, but with the unholy racket the dogs were making I would not have heard him anyway.
    We might have stood there all night long, if I had not made up my mind that, dogs or no dogs, I had to check the cairn one last time. Raising my hand in wary entreaty, I stepped hesitantly forward. “Look,” I shouted, “I’m just going to the cairn down there”—I pointed past him toward the glen and then turned toward the car— “and then I’m going to get in the car and leave—”
    When I turned back, the man was stumping away across the field. I did not wait for an explanation but legged it down the hill. The glen was almost as dark as the inside of the cairn, but once down I had no difficulty finding the entrance hole in the side. I stuck my head in and hollered a few times and flicked the flashlight around inside. No answer. No sound. Nothing.
    “All right, Simon, have it your way,” I hollered, my voice falling dead at my feet. “This time you’ve gone too far. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself! You hear me, Simon? I’m leaving you here!”
    I dug his wallet—bulging with cash, credit cards, various forms of identification—from the inner breast pocket of the jacket and pulled out a Barclaycard. I shoved the plastic credit card in a crack between two stones at the entrance to the cairn, where he would be sure to find it. “There you go,” I shouted, my voice loud in the silent glen. “You’re a smart guy, Simon. Find your own way home!”
    I turned my back on the cairn, climbed from the glen, and returned immediately to the car. Halfway across the field, I saw a man in a long yellow coat hurrying along the road. At first, I thought of running to meet him and telling him what had happened. If he lived in the area, he would know about the cairn. Anyway, it seemed I should tell somebody.
    As I got closer, the man slowed as if to meet me at the car so we could speak. When I got within shouting distance, I even lifted a hand and called to him. But at the sound of my voice, the man quickened his pace and hurried on. I reached the car just before he disappeared around a bend in the road, a few dozen paces further on.
    I shouted again. I know the man heard me, because he turned. Even in the twilight, I could make out his face—if face it was. His features were large, exaggerated, masklike, with a long, hooked nose, a wide mouth, and absolutely enormous ears sticking out from under an uncombed mat of wild black hair. His eyes were wide and bulging beneath the single dark arch of a furry brow.
    I beheld this singular visage, and all desire to speak to the man fled. My throat seized up and the call froze on my tongue.
    He glanced once over his shoulder, then turned away again. Upon reaching the bend, the man disappeared. I do not mean that the bend of the road took him from sight. Strange as it is to tell, he actually seemed to vanish.
    I say this because the man’s clothing glimmered as he passed from sight. Now, it might have been a trick of the fading light, but I swear his coat shimmered, giving off a distinct flash as he departed. That, more than the sight of the man’s hideous face, rooted me to the spot. I stood gaping after him, and the sound of the wind rising in the trees gave me such a chill that I jumped into the car and drove away.
    On the drive back to Oxford, I had a good long time to think things through and convince myself a dozen different ways that Simon deserved getting left behind for his idiotic practical joke. I don’t know how he managed it, but I knew Simon. If anyone could pull off a stunt like that, he