Heretics book 3 - The Apocryphile Press

320 :: JOHN R. MABRY
“Nah, I can hold it. Ought to start cleaning this mess up,
though.” He gathered the book and the papers spread out in
front of them and lowered them into Dane’s satchel. An odd
look came over his face as he did so.
“What’s up, Terry?” Susan asked, looking up at him and
noting his expression.
Terry stood up and lowered his left hand into the satchel.
Then with his other hand, he touched the bedspread. He
looked back and forth from one arm to the other. There was
no doubt about it. His left arm was bent at a more acute
angle than his right.
“Well...” he said slowly, thinking aloud, “Either my right
arm grew shorter overnight, or the bottom of this bag isn’t
the bottom of this bag.”
Susan’s needles stopped, and her mouth dropped open.
Terry turned the bag upside down and dumped everything
out onto the bed, and partly onto Mikeal as well. Then he
put both hands into the bag, feeling at the seams around
what he had previously supposed to be the bottom.
Concentrating, his eyes looked toward heaven, and moved
back and forth as he felt.
“Got something,” he said, and grasping a slight leather
tongue between his right thumb and forefinger, gave it a pull.
He heard a dim click from within the bag, and the tongue
gave way. He pulled it up and out of the bag. Attached to it
was a false bottom, which he set on the bed beside him.
“Holy shit,” said Dylan. “So what the fuck is in there?”
Terry reached in again and felt. There seemed to be lot of
small pieces of cardboard, almost like—“photos,” Terry
said. He pulled up his hand and deposited a handful of photographs
on the bedspread.
“I’m almost afraid to look,” Kat said, but she reached for
one of them anyway. As she pulled it towards her face, she
winced.