Waltz of Shadows by Joe R. Lansdale, Mark A. Nelson Read Free Book Online

something went by my ear like a bee, and then I was dipping down toward the woods and the Doc’s park.
    As I got into the pines there, a piece of bark jumped off a tree next to me and puffed in all directions, then I was down the hill and tripping over a stone seat, tumbling into the creek. I waded on across and started running through the woods.
    Behind me, I could hear someone coming, and I knew without looking it was Cobra Man. He had followed me through the busted out window.
    I ducked and weaved under branches and jumped over bushes and briars, hoping if he got off another shot, I’d be a hard target to nail. One thing in my favor was he didn’t seem too good at hitting what he aimed at.
    If he fired again, I never knew it. Few moments later I was out of the woods and stumbling onto the highway, not even looking for cars. One went by me and swerved and honked and someone screamed “Motherfucker,” but I was across the highway then, running like hell into the University parking lot.
    I didn’t have Dave’s car keys, of course, so I kept running. Across the lot and down into the stretch of woods that grows on either side of Morgan Creek. I went along the creek a while and finally stopped to listen. I didn’t hear anyone following, but I didn’t come out. I laid down in the leaves and tried to be quiet and think.
    I wasn’t sure what to do. I hadn’t broken any law, really. I hadn’t busted into the Doc’s house. We had been let inside by a man with a gun.
    What was the deal?
    What was the fat man, Fat Boy, the other called him, doing there?
    Who had screamed?
    What in the hell had happened to Doc’s schedule?
    And the others, Sharon, the Disaster Club, what was to become of them?
    No answers came to me. I lay there and felt the water that had splashed on my legs turn cold. Where I had banged the stone seat with my shin ached like hell. I felt like a coward, running like that, but what else could I do? I figured what Fat Boy had in mind was going to be unpleasant, and had I hesitated one moment longer, I felt certain I would have found out how unpleasant. There wouldn’t have been any getting away.
    Finally, couple hours later is my guess, I got my nerve up. I went along the bank where the creek travels through the heart of the University, under the bridge and along these deep concrete channels the city put in for flood control. I came out on the other side of the University and started walking home. I guess I had been down there on the creek bank for a couple of hours, maybe longer, scared, not knowing what to do. I figured now the thing to do was get home and call the cops.
    I wasn’t very far from my place by then, and I started walking home. You haven’t seen this place, Uncle Hank, but it’s not the Ritz. It’s over by the University and I moved there when I started school. It’s down in the one area over there hasn’t been upgraded. There’s about six streets with rows of ramshackle, slumlord houses on either side, and one of those dumps is mine. There’s one street light at either end of the street, so unless you’re under one of those lights, or you have a porch light on, way all those oaks and elms along there droop, you won’t see much.
    I got to my street and started down it. Dogs barked at me along the way, and a goddamn bat swooped down on my hair and scared the hell out of me. Time I got to my walk, I was a bundle of raw nerves. Everywhere I looked, I thought I saw Fat Boy or Cobra Man. My empty carport was full of shadows and all of them looked like people with guns.
    But there wasn’t anyone. I got my key from under the steps and unlocked the door and slipped inside, still trying to figure what to do next, and it was while I was figuring that the smell hit me. The stink of Cobra Man. I tried to back out of there, but I went back too fast and slipped and fell. I tried to get up and my hand went into something wet. I lifted it to look, saw what I had slipped in.
    Blood.
    Then, between