Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett Read Free Book Online Page B

tilted.
    The boy looked up at me expectantly, eyes wide. The mass he had expectorated trembled on the table. It was pale gray and lined with what appeared to be pinkish veins. Though I addressed the boy, it seemed wise to keep a careful eye fixed on the thing on the table. This I did.
    "Erm," I said, and then I stopped, unsure of precisely how to continue.
    "Are you looking," the boy grinned toothlessly, "for a good time?"
    I gaped at him.
    "They are outside," he said. "The grown-ups. In the wood."
    I looked back down at the table. The mass was gone. The lights seemed to brighten.
    All the children, except for the sleeping ones, were looking at me, their eyes swimming with secrets.
    I stood and headed for the exit.

     
    u ncle red reads to-day’s news
     
    Stolen from the Millside Church of the Most Holy Redeemer by the Hampshire and Hampden Canal: one (1) crucifix, two (2) pews, fourteen (14) hymnals (spines and covers only), three (3) jugs Holy Water, and the Private and Personal effects and papers of the venerable Father William Garrett Shineface; substantial reward for the return thereof, and for secrecy concerning the contents of the most holy and incorruptible Father Shineface's personal papers and diaries.

     
    t he sons of ben number 3
     
    It always happened at the craggy precipice of sleep, so I never knew if it was a dream or a memory. I was swimming in brown water, terrified I might be swimming down...away from the surface. But then I would emerge, bellowing out breath, the water crumbling to dust around me, a flat steel sky with black-painted clouds above. I would crawl, then, through an askew city of rounded, flat, windowless buildings carved with unfathomable graffiti.
    My elementary school, a few flat, one-story buildings connected by windowed corridors, lay across a narrow access road from the cemetery. A modest playground was situated by the inner curve of the road. I was making swirlies in the sandbox with my fingers when I first saw the tall man standing at the wrought iron fence. He was bald on top, long-haired, the hair a flat brown, damp. He wore tiny wire glasses that sat crookedly across a substantial and accusatory nose. A white shirt that showed shadowed ribs from under a dark grey waistcoat. He did not have to beckon with his long finger; his eyes, a brilliant blue, called me across the road. I was six. He could have been forty; he could have been fifty.
    How did I know that he was my father? I had known only that my mother was my mother and had been so for eternity. I had known forever that the man who lived with her could not have been my real father, though that was the charade. He treated me like a baffling stranger, and I was grateful for it.
    He was vaguely unpleasant, and one sensed he was somehow...off. The armpits of his white striped shirts were perpetually stained. He spoke bumblingly, in a dopey and sing-song voice. He worked at and for the church in some capacity I never understood, and The Lord came first for him. Perhaps only for him. He seemed removed. His conversations with my mother were hushed and muted and few. They would read most nights; she her romances and he his worn Bible.
    But the man at the cemetery was a vital man, a man who looked at the world with fire and at me with only embers, which I regarded as warmth. Warmth and excited recognition. The first time I saw him, as I said, I went to him across the road. He knelt and regarded me, grinning widely. I noted that behind his yellowed teeth was another full set of teeth--top and bottom, also yellow, also pointing this way and that. His gums were red and, below and above his canines, split to the bone.
    He said to me that day the following: You must always take what you want, however you can. You'll find, he said, that once you are known for taking what you want, you won't have to anymore. It will be given to you freely.
    Then he rose, not without effort, and strode away. I went back across the street and Mrs. Wisert