Lost and Gone Forever by Alex Grecian Read Free Book Online Page B

cigar, and stretched. The others followed suit and, in small groups of two or three, the men left the room and closed the door behind them. Ambrose hurried across the roof and watched the fog moving slowly along the street below. In due course, he heard the men exit the building and go their separate ways, creating eddies in the mist and hollering “good night” back and forth.
    Ambrose went back to the skylight and looked down into the darkened room, empty but for those crates of volatile merchandise. He felt along the outside of the wooden casing for a lock or a catch and, when he didn’t find one, tried pulling upward on it. He heard something creak and felt the frame give. There was the sound of splintering wood and the big pane of glass cracked, a fine silvery thread zigzagging away from Ambrose toward the far edge of the roof. At that moment, below him, the door opened and the man with the white gloves entered the room. Ambrose froze, still clutching the skylight’s frame, afraid to let go for fear it would make further noise or, worse, come apart and crash inward. The man with the gloves held the door open for the two washerwomen, who entered behind him. One of them held a rag and a bucket; the other carried a mop. Ambrose could hear their voices as the three people talked, but they were too far away and the cracked glass muffled the sound. Below, the man closed the door and turned a lock. Neither ofthe women looked up as he removed his gloves, folded them, and put them in his pocket. From another pocket he took a folding razor and opened it. As Ambrose watched, the man stepped up behind one of the women, grabbed a handful of her hair, and snapped her head back. In a flash, he had pulled the razor across her throat, releasing a spray of blood that glistened black in the wan light. Ambrose gasped. The other woman started to turn around, but the man let go of the first woman and stepped over her body as she dropped to the floor. He moved gracefully, like a dancer, and grabbed the second woman’s arm before she had a chance to move. Ambrose forgot himself and pounded on the skylight. The silvery crack in the glass widened, but didn’t separate. The man below him slashed the razor downward, in one practiced move, opening up the second woman from her throat to her pelvis, and her insides splashed out at his feet.
    Then the man looked up and saw Ambrose. He was still holding the arm of the second woman, who had gone limp and lifeless. In his other hand he held the razor. His right shirtsleeve was drenched in dark blood. Ambrose held very still.
He can’t see me,
he thought.
It’s dark and the glass will obscure my shape against the sky,
he thought.
    But the man smiled at Ambrose and saluted him with the dripping razor, and Ambrose could no longer hold himself still. He reeled backward, pushing away from the skylight, and almost fell off the roof. He ran trembling to the access ladder and made his way down to the alley floor so quickly that his feet only touched every third or fourth rung. He ran as fast as he could to the mouth of the alley and didn’t stop, but pelted breathlessly down the street.
    Behind him, he imagined he could hear the door open and quiet footfalls as the man stepped gracefully out into the grey mist.
    Surely,
Ambrose thought,
surely he didn’t get a look at me. Surely he could never find me again.
But somehow he knew that the man hadseen him and would find him, no matter how fast or how far Ambrose ran.
    •   •   •
    T HE DRAPER ’ S SHOP was closed for the night, the doors locked, the shutters bolted over the display windows that faced the park. Day woke up from a dream about a whispering shadow and leapt out of bed. Someone was pounding on the door. He lit a candle and threw a dressing gown (made especially for him by Esther Paxton) over his nightshirt before taking the back steps to the ground floor. The pounding continued, growing louder as he moved closer. Through the small