Thy Fearful Symmetry Read Free Page A

disturbing, horrific thoughts had slammed into his head, leaving him feeling rank and violated.
    Resting his chin on his hand, he looked back down at the paper spread across his desk. Worry was doing this to him. Since his next door neighbour had vanished nearly three weeks ago, he had been distracted and anxious.  
    Heather didn't know the cause of his stress, and Clive couldn't find a way to make clear why the man was so important to him. How did you explain to your wife of two years that you couldn't sleep at night for thinking about another man's eyes, the way he looked at you in the corridor, the quiet, sensitive conversations you had about Shakespeare, and Milton, and Keats?  
    Clive knew in his heart that he wasn't homosexual, but the way it looked was undeniable. Sometimes, when it caught him by surprise, he even found himself reacting to the man physically, his erection straining before he could reign his daydreams in. But he wasn't gay. He had just never had a male friend quite like Ambrose before. That was all.
    Even before his violent disappearance, Ambrose had been preoccupied, less willing to pass time than he used to be. Clive had worried that he had inadvertently done something to push him away. Perhaps Ambrose sensed how Clive felt about him and panicked, reading more into it than was meant.  
    Now Clive might never have a chance to put that right. Disturbed by the deep, unfamiliar lines of worry his fingertips could trace in his forehead, he sat back and gazed out of the window. Spidery frost patterns still clung to the schoolyard where the shadow of the old Victorian building held back the sun. There was something strange and mournful about the shapes they traced, and the longer Clive gazed at them, the more distant he felt from his own body. Yes, he had worried for a long time that Ambrose was pulling away from him, that this beautiful, magnificent man had been scared off. Since that night three weeks ago though, darker, more frightening alternatives had presented themselves to him. Now it was possible that Ambrose had not been running from what they felt for one another at all (when he was distracted, Clive could acknowledge those feelings he would not otherwise concede). Instead, he thought his friend had protected him from something dangerous, violent, and treacherous. Something that visited at Ambrose's flat that night, and howled.  
    Clive's memories danced out at him from between the trailing crystals of the frost-strewn playground, swarmed up, and engulfed him.

    Clive woke with a start, not sure whether the clamour belonged to a dream or the real world. His head had barely touched the pillow, so he could not yet have drifted into dream worlds. When he felt Heather's hand on his arm he knew it had been real. “Was that next door?” she whispered.
    A cold fist wrapped around his heart, at the same time as something heavy crashed into the ceiling and dropped hard to the floor in Ambrose's flat. More chilling was the vicious roar that had preceded it – the sound that had dragged him from sleep in time to hear the crashes. “I think so,” he murmured.
    “Should we...”
    “Shh. Listen.” They turned their heads, straining to hear through the wall behind the bed, all that separated them from Ambrose's living room. Clive heard voices. One was Ambrose, definitely, his elegant, cultured tones easily identifiable even though he was speaking too softly for the words to carry. The second voice was one Clive did not recognise, though the accent was English like Ambrose's own. A relative, perhaps? A brother or cousin, come to visit, and in the middle of a family row? The darkness around him sharpened his focus, and he thought he made out words. Horns… Pandora… Michael…  
    Clive climbed out of bed carefully, searching with his feet for his trousers. It felt very important that he be as quiet as possible. If this were a family argument, he wouldn't want Ambrose to think he had invaded his