This New and Poisonous Air by Adam McOmber Read Free Book Online Page A

“but that’s what happens there isn’t it? You told me so. People age backward. I didn’t believe you. I thought you were lying. But you’re him.”
    David started to say he didn’t know what she was talking about, but it was already too late. May was pulling him close. “We’ll go through the door ourselves,” she said. “I can be young again too, away from this place. I won’t mind about your teeth. I promise I won’t.” And then she drew close to him, searching for some reassurance that he was who she wanted him to be—her beautiful liar without his red suit.
    David Miller ran down the wooden staircase and burst through the black door. He would call his parents, and they would call the police, and all of them would call for Kitty until they’d lost their breath. They would question May, trying to understand the things she’d said that night, but the old woman would give them no straight answers, feigning confusion and turning up the volume on her record player. And as the days went by without any sign of Kitty, David Miller would come to believe that if he wanted his sister back, he’d have to take matters in hand.
    When he finally pulled a piece of loose concrete from the steps outside the Orpheum and threw it at one of the upright crocodiles that flanked the entrance, only a
few of us were there to see. He threw a second stone that shattered the glass poster case, and more of us came spilling from stores and houses to watch the boy. A few of us tried to stop him at first but only halfheartedly, knowing what had to be done. We no longer wanted to be the sort of thing that could not act. The kind of body that deserves a funeral every night.
    It took our strongest backs to do the initial work, breaking down the Orpheum’s glass doors, ripping the ornaments from the marquee, but by the end, even the weakest among us were able to get some of the work done, smashing the windows of the ticket booth and causing pink tickets to spiral onto the ground, destroying the concession stand, scattering popcorn and bright candy. We broke the decorative mirrors, pulled down the plastic vines, and threw May Avalon’s record player against the pipe organ. But it was David Miller, T-shirt streaked and chest heaving, who actually found the old ticket seller, cowering on her knees in a row of empty seats. He pulled May to her feet and looked into her frightened face, covered with the same gray dust that churned in the air. “Now you tell me,” he said, voice breaking. “You tell me, you old witch, without any of your crazy talk, where my sister is. You know, don’t you? You’ve known all along.”
    Before she could answer, one of us struck her in the shoulder with a metal pipe, and as she was falling, another drove a piece of molding against her temple. If we were giving a confession, perhaps we would say we did this to test the flesh of the Orpheum against the flesh of the woman. Or maybe we would tell the truth, that we’d always hated May Avalon for knowing things we didn’t. David watched her fall, then stood over her sprawled and unmoving body. He seemed to hesitate as she groped feebly with one hand to touch his shoe, not a dancing shoe at all, and finally
with all his strength, David Miller kicked the old woman in the stomach. She didn’t make a sound, and we had to look away from the terrible expression on her face.
    Our razing of the Orpheum made the news as far away as Chicago, and when they saw pictures of what we’d done, they thought the whole town had lost its mind. Mob rule, they called it. Psychologists were interviewed and said our actions could very well be the product of the modern nihilism fed by the movies themselves. No outsider could understand our motivations though, nor could they know that after we’d finished our job, when many of us had been hauled off to bleach-smelling cots in the nearby jail, we shared a dream.
    In the dream, we saw Kitty Miller injured and dragging her body, hand over