Read Online The Rainy Season by James P. Blaylock - Free Book Online Page B

illuminating the wreathing smoke, which seemed actually to move now, languidly, the shape undulating slowly as if in a breath of wind.
    He looked around him, but there was no apparent hiding place nearby aside from the fireplace itself. He lay the glowing seashell on the mantel and pushed at the stones, running the candlelight over the mortar between them. With the fireplace poker he pushed at the burnt logs in the grate, sliding the cowry into the firebox itself. If anything the glow diminished within the stone confines of the box, but glowed doubly brightly on the mantel. He felt along the wooden edges, looking for a hidden latch. Finally, in desperation, he pushed against the front of the mantel itself, and the entire wooden structure of the thing depressed inward and then sprang back out, the front face opening away from the rest of the mantel. The cowry tumbled backward, falling into the opening, and without thinking he snatched at it, catching it with his fingers and closing his hand over it. …
    … and at once he felt as if he were falling, headfirst down a dark well. Then, with a sudden jolt, someone J stood before him—a bearded man, scowling, holding a narrow stick in his hand. He knew it was a stick without seeing it—he
remembered
that it was a stick—and recoiled even as the man swung it at him. He felt the sharp pain of the stick hitting his wrist, and in that instant he dropped the cowry, heard the clatter of the object falling on stone and the clang of metal against metal. He staggered backward, caught himself on the desk in the room, and found himself staring at the fireplace tools, which lay now on the hearth next to the fallen cowry. His mind was clouded with confusion, and he put his hand to his forehead, recalling the racing fear that had filled his head only moments ago, the loss of himself, the presence of someone else’s mind within his own. …
    Groggily, he picked up the iron tools, hanging them on their rack and listening again to the house. He heard what must be a door creaking open and the sound of low voices, and he stood up and groped in the darkness of the hidden space within the mantel. He found the glove, but continued to search until he found, pushed toward the back of the space, a leather bag with something solid inside. He took it out, glanced at it hastily, and slipped it into his pocket, then picked up the fallen cowry with the glove, shoved it into another pocket, and pushed the mantel closed before going straight out into the hall.
    There were footfalls in the house now, and he hurried through Alejandro’s bedroom and into the now-lamplit hall beyond, where he ran straight into a short, black-haired woman who carried a cast-iron pan. She shrieked in fear, and surprised, swung the pan over her head, then turned and fled back into the bedroom again, slamming the door shut behind Colin, who heard the crack of the frying pan pounding against the door. He fumbled with the window latch, hearing a shouting behind him now, expecting the woman to burst into the room at any moment. The window pushed open so suddenly that he staggered out through it, onto the porch, feeling the night wind on his face. He ran forward, thumping in his stocking feet across the floorboards, saw a dark shape materialize at the far corner, stopped, and headed back up the porch in the opposite direction, toward the back of the house now. A light grew directly ahead of him—someone hidden by the corner of the house, coming fast toward the corner.
    He vaulted the porch railing and ran into the darkness of the sycamore trees, hearing shouting behind him now. There was simply no place to hide, and so he ran straight out into the open again and down the road toward the distant oak trees. There was the crack of gunfire, once, twice, and he ran flat out, his heart pounding, straight into the trees where he realized for the first time that he had left his boots behind. He kept on, deeper into the darkness, picking out a