Rook: Snowman by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

Jim hesitated for a moment, and then he went across to the table and tugged the deck of cards from under her paw. He sat down on the couch, tipped the cards out, and proceeded to shuffle them with all the high-speed expertise of somebody who has spent many a long night losing his salary at poker. Tibbles Two dropped down on to the couch next to him and sat at his elbow, watching him acutely.
    “If I find out that something really lousy is going to happen to me, I’m going to blame you for it,” Jim told her. “I’ve had enough trouble for one day, what with that washroom turning into an iceberg, and Dr Friendly always getting on my case.”
    He laid the cards out in the Celtic cross pattern. He didn’t often consult the Tarot these days, except when entertaining women: they were always fascinated by having their fortunes told. He found its predictions too accurate, and he preferred the disasters in his life to take him by surprise. He was always worried, too, that one day he might turn up the Death card. If he was going to be killed in an auto wreck or drop dead of a coronary occulusion he didn’t want to know about it beforehand. He had learned that destiny is unavoidable, no matter what precautions you take. If theTarot says you’re going to die, you can stay indoors and wrap yourself up in a comforter, but one way or another you’re still going to die.
    This evening his cards turned out to be fairly ho-hum. He was going to go to work tomorrow as usual. He was going to have a minor but irritating argument with somebody who was close to him – Dr Friendly, no doubt. He was going to be affected by an unexpected change in the weather. He was going to receive an invitation to visit somebody he had never met before – that could be interesting. And there was something that he couldn’t quite understand about hands. There was definitely a combination of snapping or breaking and hands, but it was unclear what exactly it was and who it was going to happen to. It didn’t appear to be him. Maybe somebody he knew was going to break a finger.
    “What do you think this is all about, TT?” he asked Tibbles Two, but Tibbles Two impassively closed her eyes and didn’t even mew.
    He reached the second-to-last card. This covers you – the card that tells you what your present circumstances are, and why you need to know what your future holds for you. He picked it up and frowned at it in complete bafflement. It was a Tarot card he had never seen before. A completely new, different card. It showed a figure standing in an icy wasteland, under a black starry sky. The figure was dressed in a hooded white robe, which was rippling in the wind. Its face was completely blank, totally white, except for a pair of dark glasses with tiny, rectangular lenses. It carried a long white staff.
    There were footprints in the snow beside the figure, but they were obviously the footprints of somebody who had walked close by. The figure itself had left no footprints at all.
    At the foot of all the other Tarot cards, there was aname, such as The Fool, or Death, or the Five of Wands. This card had a space for a name, but it was blank, just like the figure’s face.
    Jim scrutinized the card for a very long time, while Tibbles Two watched him. He had been casting Tarot cards for years, and he thought he knew the whole pack back-to-front. So where had this card come from? It couldn’t have been accidentally stuck in the carton for all of this time. Even if it had been, how had it suddenly been dislodged?
    There was nothing in the picture to reveal what the card might signify. The figure was simply standing in the snow, motionless. The stars had been very carefully drawn, so if he could discover what stars they were, maybe that would give him a clue.
    The card gave Jim an uneasy sense of foreboding. It wasn’t just the fact that he had never seen it before, but the way the figure was standing, as if it were waiting for somebody, and wouldn’t leave