Destroying Angel

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Book: Destroying Angel by Michael Wallace Read Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Wallace
Tags: thriller, Fantasy, Mystery
dimensions, and then started down into the darkness.
    The wider opening relieved the pressure on his shoulders and arms from forcing himself through the narrow passageway, and the crushing claustrophobia eased. But in the wider shaft he had to wedge his feet against one side and his shoulders against the other. Lose his grip, and he’d fall. He crept down foot by agonizing foot until his muscles trembled with exhaustion. He must be seventy feet down now, maybe a hundred. How much more?
    And then his shirt caught on another rivet. It wasn’t much, only a little snag. But it caught him high on his shirt, near the collar, and there was no way to relieve his weight from the rivet and unhook the snag. His back, arms, and legs were too exhausted to crawl back up the ventilation shaft. He spent a few minutes trying to free himself, more terrified with every moment.
    “Help me,” he said. His voice made a hollow echo up and down the pipe. “I’m going to die in here. Please!”
    He strained his eyes against the blackness, as desperate to see the angel now as he’d been to avoid it earlier. But the angel didn’t appear.
    And then the solution came to him. It was so simple that he laughed out loud in a release of nervous tension. Take the weight off it, then either get it free or leave it behind. He unbuttoned his shirt, wriggled his arms out one after the other. The rivet hadn’t hooked his undergarment, which was good, since it was a single piece that went all the way from the wrists to the ankles.
    But when he got his second arm free, the canteen strap fell off his shoulder. His fingers clutched for it, but it slid off. He expected it to fall and fall, booming against the sides of the shaft all the way to the bottom. But it clattered to a stop only ten feet or so below him. He let out a shuddering gasp of relief.
    With his weight off the shirt, it was easy to get it free. He reached the bottom of the shaft moments later and squirmed back into his shirt in the cramped space, then crept along again on his belly. A gray light came to his eyes. He rounded a corner and there it was, a metal screen opening in the ceiling of a small, brightly lit room. He kicked out the screen and dropped to the floor.
    He found himself in the rear lounge. There were three women in the room. One was nursing a baby, another changed a toddler’s diaper. A third woman wore only her undergarments and was getting ready to put on a dress.
    A small refrigerator hummed in the corner. The carpet was twenty years old by style, but clean and barely worn. The couch and lounge chairs looked like something from a hotel lobby. The room held the faint scent of air freshener. A television played the news, some droning broadcast about food riots in the Philippines. After so many months outdoors, the scene assaulted Taylor Junior’s senses more than any number of noxious smells, animal bones, or dead bodies ever could.
    Upon his appearance, the three women gasped and the undressed woman threw a hand over her crotch and an arm across her breasts. Two of these women were Aaron’s widows, and the third had belonged to Eric Froud. They were his now.
    Taylor Junior pulled the plug on the TV, then turned back to face the dumbfounded women. “Who is in charge? If he doesn’t have a good explanation, I will kill him.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    From the personal journal of Henrietta Cowley.
    Laura and Maude joined me to confront Sister Annabelle about the angel. We found her in Witch’s Warts, her bare feet buried in the cool sand beneath a sandstone arch. Two boys had discovered the arch stretching between a pair of sandstone fins, and when the weather turned exceeding hot, kids would come in after finishing the chores, scale the arch, and leap into the sand, laughing as they tumbled down the hill. But it was the middle of the day, and even the children were working.
    Annabelle looked up. “You’ve got counselors now, is that it?” She fixed Maude with a hard look. “And

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