Red Right Hand Read Online Free

will if you move too fast. “What do you need me for?”
    â€œOnly the Lovecraft bloodline carries the gift of Sight. I need you to be my hound, to help me hunt the avatars of the Old Ones that have already crossed the threshold before their power grows too great to stop.”
    â€œI’ve never seen anything like what you’re talking about. Not until tonight. Not until you.”
    â€œThe magick lies dormant inside you. After I place my Mark upon you as my Acolyte, your gift will spark. You shall be of me, and I of you. Then your magick will be accessible to you.”
    Dread sat like lead in my stomach. I didn’t want anything to do with this. I just wanted to get away from this … this Man in Black and his craziness. I felt stuck.
    Trapped.
    Trapped like …
    I shoved that behind its door, locking it away.
    No! Not like that. Never like that again. Keep it together, Charlie. Play along until you get your chance.
    â€œWhat do I have to do?”
    â€œSimply give me your hand.” His right arm moved out of the folds of his coat. His hand hung, red, raw, and sticky-slick. I pulled back. I didn’t want to touch that hand. I clenched my fist and shoved it in my hoodie.
    The Man in Black looked amused.
    â€œDo not fight me on this, Charlotte Tristan Moore. I will have your hand one way or another. It would be best to give it willingly.”
    Slowly, I unfurled my arm, stretching out my palm like a sacrificial offering. His dreadful crimson hand fell quick and terrible, clamping around the bones under my skin, rubbing them against one another. My mind loosened. The shiny cinnamon skin touched mine, firm and slick like scar tissue. I thought it would be sticky and tacky, like semicongealed blood. For a second it almost felt pleasant. Comforting.
    Then the pain struck. Small and quick, like a biting cuttlefish under the water. Just a sharp nip that faded before I realized it had happened.
    That wasn’t so …
    And then the cutting began.
    A jolt of agony slashed across my palm. My mind filled with the image of my dad using a woodcarving tool: the spiral blade spinning furiously, carving grooves into a piece of wood clamped to the worktable. The pain burrowed deep in my palm, and it moved, zigging and zagging across my grip, building and building and building, crashing and clanging inside my brain like a crescendo, a cacophony of agony. I tried to jerk away, but the red right hand clamped harder, grinding my phalanges together until they felt shrill and spiral-fractured.
    My muscles yanked and stretched, threatening to tear tendon from bone as I fought to break the grip. My mind babbled at me, overloaded from my nerves being set afire, the edges gone brittle and crackling like spun glass, threatening to shatter.
    He let go.
    I fell backward, ass banging on the kitchen floor, jarring my spine in a click-clack of vertebrae. My jaw slammed shut, teeth tearing through the sides of my tongue. Blood dripped and splattered on the linoleum around me, sizzling as it landed. My hand was smeared with it, looking like a kindergarten finger-painted version of his. I looked at my palm.
    The flesh had been excised in lines and whorls and squiggly trails. The raw wound was in the shape of a symbol I’d never seen before. It looked like a pentagram, but there were too many lines, too many swirls. The edges of the skin were crisp, the cuts deep, grooved all the way to the pink flesh underneath. Blood, my blood, pulsed out in time with my heartbeat. Each pulse matched a sick, queasy throb deep in my belly.
    His voice rolled like thunder. Pronouncing, “Charlotte Tritsan Moore, you have been Marked as my Acolyte. Now you will be able to See.”
    I looked up.
    The Man in Black was gone.
    In his place stood a monstrosity.

 
    5
    I AM GOING insane.
    I couldn’t see it all, couldn’t take it all in, my vision breaking on the edges like cheap windowpanes, crackle-fracturing