Strangewood Read Free

remembered well, Grumbler
looked past The Boy at the cottage he'd once lived in. He glanced around at the
others, who smiled and sang and danced a jig for him. Grumbler looked at
Feathertop, who whinnied and looked back at Grumbler.
    "I'm so glad you've come home," The Boy said,
calmer now, but just as happy.
    "Well," Grumbler replied, his voice a bit
deeper than The Boy remembered. And much colder.
    "It isn't as though we had much of a choice . . .”
     
    —an excerpt from Fly
Away to Strangewood
    by TJ Randall. The last,
unfinished Strangewood story.
     

CHAPTER 1
     
    There was no fanfare to announce the moment when Thomas
Randall's life began to change. No dramatic storm, no sudden enlightenment or
shift of fortune.
    It simply happened, much like the mundane act of turning a
light on, yet without even the sudden illumination to mark the event. And
Thomas himself did not even notice that anything had changed.
    But everything had changed.
     
     
    The waitress clinked a sweating bottle of Dixie Crimson
Voodoo onto Thomas Randall's table at Live Bait, where he waited for his agent
to arrive for their late lunch meeting. According to her name tag, the waitress
was named Beverly. She was an extraordinary black woman with chocolate skin and
a metal bolt through her tongue that flashed when she thanked him for her tip. Something
so sexy about that.
    Then again, all the waitresses at Live Bait — and
waiters too, for that matter — were sparklingly good-looking. There was a
myth about New York, and Los Angeles as well, that every waitress was an
actress or a model. One particularly sluttish woman in L.A. had even proudly
introduced herself to Thomas as an "AMW."
    Naive fool, he'd asked, "What's an AMW?"
    She'd bestowed upon him a particularly condescending smile
and chirped in Clueless tones, "Actress, model . . .
whatever!" Then she'd laughed, a self-conscious cackle that tossed her
hair back and made her breasts heave just enough to confirm their impossible
roundness. Impossible, that was L.A., all right.
    Which was why, after the first animated film from Disney, entitled
simply Adventures in Strangewood , Thomas had moved his family back to
Westchester County, New York. Mission accomplished.
    On the other hand, he didn't really have a family anymore.
     
     
    Thomas wiped several beads of condensation off the neck of
his Crimson Voodoo. He loved that ale mainly because he loved New Orleans,
where it was made. Part of him wanted to live in New Orleans, but it was just
too damn hot down there, and too exotically alien. Manhattan was his town. Dangerous,
yes, but since he lived in Westchester, Manhattan's dangers seemed more exotic
than risky. Thomas also preferred the Northeast because, simply put, he needed
seasons, a sense of time passing.
    "Can I get you another?" Beverly asked.
    "Hmm?" Thomas replied, then looked down to see the
bottle of Crimson Voodoo nearly empty.
    "All this heat," he observed, and waved a hand
over the bottle. "It must have evaporated."
    They grinned at one another, and Thomas agreed that, yes, he
would have another beer. He was thirty-two, divorced from Emily less than six
months, and the father of one son, Nathan, who was five. Beverly the waitress
was barely old enough to drink — if that — sexy as all get out, and
flirting with him. It wasn't any serious flirting. Thomas wasn't an idiot. But
it was a pleasant kind of energy passing between them, and he enjoyed it just
for that.
    The second bottle of Crimson Voodoo replaced the first. Beverly
put it down precisely where the other had sat, as if the small ring of
condensation were a bulls-eye. Thomas moved the bottle. Maybe just his way of
keeping count, marking the passing of the first dead soldier. For a moment, he
watched Beverly move, admired her athletic build, the black shorts and
sneakers, the white socks and tee, even the dirty little green apron. She was
curiously unadorned for a New York woman, particularly one who wanted to be a
model