The Postcard by Tony Abbott Read Free Book Online Page A

taken from Grandma’s closet sat next to me on the floor. Taped on it was her note in black marker:
Very Important Papers!!!
I wondered what she — or Grandma — would consider very important, so I opened the carton flaps and lifted out a stack of yellow folders filled with old papers. My dad had already gotten the will and the deed to the house from a safe deposit box at the bank, but this was other stuff. Old tax records, home insurance policies, store credits, bills, receipts, manuals for appliances, bank statements, all kinds of records you probably didn’t need but couldn’t just throw out.
    Grandma had signed some of them. On the old ones from the 1960s and ’70s, her signature was thin and neat. Later ones were signed more raggedly. On the very recent ones her writing was no more than a scribble. On one, from fewer than ten years ago, there was a scrawl followed by initials ending in K. Mrs. Keesh, maybe? I couldn’t tell.
    I was just about to leave the carton for Dad to go through when I found something that didn’t belong. In a folder marked
EB
was a copy of an old magazine. But it wasn’t like
Time
or
Life
or
National Geographic.
    The magazine was called
Bizarre Mysteries
and was dated October 1944. On the cover under the big yellow title was a dark, crazy picture. A man in a suit and tie was crouching, holding a machine gun and firing it. His eyes were staring in terror at something outside the frame of the picture. His jaw was set hard. His suit was ripped, and there was a streak of bright red blood on his arm. It matched the color of his tie. A beautiful woman in a red dress (the same color as the blood and the tie) seemed to be leaping down next to him from a height. Her eyes were filled with fear like his, but a pistol in her hand was blazing with orange flame as she fired at someone or something in the same direction as he was.
    But that wasn’t the most amazing thing. Behind them a giant alligator lay on its back, its massive jaws hanging open loosely.
    Even that wasn’t the most startling thing. Behind the alligator were three ghoulish-looking creatures, hardly human, holding long, curved daggers. They wore billowy black capes that shimmered in wild colors like an oily rainbow. They looked like demented clowns, their skull-like heads silhouetted against the dull glow of the background. They were ready to pounce on the man and the woman, who obviously didn’t know they were there. To make matters worse, the couple seemed to be in a dismal swamp somewhere, with thick vines and wispy moss hanging down from above. And they were up to their ankles in bubbling black water.
    But the most astonishing detail was one I hadn’t even caught right away. It was only when I looked and looked did I see that on the woman’s back, arching up from her red dress, were what looked like wings — feathery wings of very deep blue, almost invisible against the darkness of the swamp. Wings! A flying lady!
    “What the —!” I swore to myself.
    Running along the bottom of the cover were the titles of some of the stories inside the magazine: “Dying the Hard Way,” by a guy named Chester H. Dobbs; “Who Killed Owen Taylor?” by Chandler Hawks; “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun” by Gerald McHiggins; and “Twin Palms: A Novel of Thrilling Terror,” by someone named Emerson Beale.
    “Emerson Beale,” I said, glancing at the thin letters penned on the folder tab. “EB.”
    When I heard my father pull up in the driveway next to the Dumpster, I jumped to the door. “Dad, you have got to see this!”
    He came into the living room with a bag of groceries and a wad of folded cartons under his arm. “Hmm?”
    “Look at this thing,” I said.
    He dropped the boxes on the couch and set the bag on the kitchen counter. He put a half gallon of milk, more eggs, a six-pack of beer, a loaf of bread, and a bag of sliced cheese in the fridge. Then he pulled out one of the beers and came in and took the magazine. “So what’s