Read Pretty Little Dead Things Online
Authors: Gary McMahon
Pretty Little Dead Things (39 page)
  I have been unable to trace the young man whom Brand called Travis, nor have I had much luck in tracking down the security staff who let us into the property. As I have already stated, the identity of the ghostly young woman remains a mystery.
  The film was not recovered from the scene. The builders working on Daleside House claim never to have unearthed such an item, and the developers have threatened to take me to court if I pursue the matter.
  I badly wanted to learn what the others had seen in the film, but now that was obviously out of the question. Had they all shared the same delusion or had each seen their own private version of Satan's features grinning back at them between frames containing a storm of static?
  In the final reckoning, I had seen little â next to nothing. But why had that been the case? Had my unique insight protected me from those killing visions, or had it deserted me once more, this time at a crucial moment when I might have peered behind the workings of the world â this one and so many others â to catch sight of the unutterable? It seems to me now that I will never know the truth.
  The thing that keeps me awake at night, drinking into the small hours and scratching my tattoos, is the fact that I was not warned of the presence of something malevolent that evening. My perceptions failed me; I had no idea what was coming.
  The unswerving confidence I once had in my abilities has reduced to the point that I no longer trust what I see or feel or experience. This realm of the senses has blurred irrecoverably with those other realms beyond â the ones I so foolishly and conceitedly believed that I was beginning to know and even understand.
  In my darker moments, when I feel something spinning so slowly that it could be either the world or a thin, black stylus turning somewhere deep inside my burned-out soul, I think that perhaps it is better this way. For if my recent doubts are proven to be true and I am not in fact here to help or offer guidance, but to
usher in the dark
, that sensation might just be the void opening up inside me.
usher in the dark
, that sensation might just be the void opening up inside me.
ANGRY ROBOT
A member of the Osprey Group
Midland House, West Way
Botley, Oxford
OX2 0HP
UK
Midland House, West Way
Botley, Oxford
OX2 0HP
UK
www.angryrobotbooks.com Â
All in a row
Copyright © Gary McMahon 2010
Gary McMahon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-85766-071-8
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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