Free The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman

blinked and rubbed his eyes. The trees seemed to waver. It didn’t change anything. Something just off the end of the roof was blurring a section of horizon. “There’s something up here,” he said over his shoulder.
    “Kid . . . come on!”
    Tucker got down on his hands and knees and crawled along the ridge toward the edge. If he didn’t look at it directly, he could make out a perfectly round distortion of the air — a gauzy cloud had been compressed into the shape of a four-foot-diameter disk — but the closer he got, the harder it was to see. He heard a faint humming sound, like a swarm of tiny insects. He smelled something like burning oil, and he felt a tugging sensation, as if the disk were sucking at the fabric of his shirt. He was reaching out his hand when something grabbed his belt and yanked him back.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Kosh shouted in his ear.
    “Do you see that?” Tucker pointed, but there was nothing to point at. The disk was gone. He could no longer hear the faint hum; the air was perfectly clear.
    “See what?”
    “There was something there,” Tucker said.
    “Yeah, well, if there was, it’s gone. Now come on. You almost fell off the roof. I don’t want you breaking your scrawny neck on my watch.”
    Neither Tucker nor Kosh talked as they followed the county road out of town toward I-90. The trees and buildings and signs became less familiar with each passing mile. Kosh turned onto the freeway and brought the Chevrolet up to seventy miles per hour as Tucker stared numbly out through the windshield. He felt as if he was living in a dream, as if he might wake up and the entire last year would go away. Maybe he
was
crazy. Seeing ghosts. The thing on the roof. His dad disappearing. Lahlia, with her strange ways and even stranger stories.
    After a few more miles, Kosh spoke.
    “You thought you saw something up on the roof, huh?”
    Tucker turned his head slowly to regard the man behind the wheel.
    “I
did
see something.”
    “Not saying you didn’t.”
    “I could smell it. And hear it.”
    Kosh drove for a while without replying. Finally, he spoke.
    “Life really sucks sometimes.”
    Tucker laughed. “Yeah, right. And then you die.”
    “That’s right, kid.”
    “Tucker.”
    “Yeah. Tucker,” Kosh said with a smile.

K OSH F EYE LIVED ON AN OLD FARMSTEAD NORTH OF La Crosse, Wisconsin, in a black barn.
    “You live in a
barn
?” Tucker said.
    “House burned down ten years ago,” Kosh said, pointing to a collapsed, charred foundation with ragweed and nettles growing up through the rubble.
    “You painted your barn
black
?”
    “I like black.” Kosh lifted one of Tucker’s boxes from the trunk.
    “What’s
that
?” Tucker pointed at the top of the barn, where the dark profile of a motorcyclist stood on a short post.
    “Weather vane,” said Kosh. “He always rides against the wind. Made it myself. Come on, I’ll show you your room.”
    The bottom level of the barn was a sprawling garage/workshop/junkyard containing several motorcycles, an ATV, two tractors, a snowmobile, and a school bus with no wheels.
    “You got everything,” Tucker said. “Except a car.”
    “Don’t like cars,” said Kosh. “Anyway, we got Adrian’s Chevy now.” A long worktable was covered with engine parts. More machine parts and tools were stacked on metal shelves and hanging from hooks on the walls. They threaded their way through the shop to a black iron spiral staircase. Tucker followed Kosh up the steps through the ceiling.
    The second floor was a different world: a single open space the length of the barn, with polished wooden floors and a bank of picture windows looking out over a forested valley. An enormous stone fireplace dominated one end of the room. At the other end was a kitchen area with a wall of stainless-steel appliances. A black leather sofa and chair were positioned in front of the fireplace; a wooden trestle table and chairs divided the kitchen from the rest