Read Mister B. Gone for Free Online Page A

she had in her throat that allowed me to re-create the sound. Of that I became certain.
    For several weeks following my discovery of the gift my bloodline had bestowed, I made the mistake of taking a shortcut on my way home that obliged me to walk through territory that had long been the dominion of a murderous gang of young demons who liked to slaughter those who refused to pay the toll they demanded. Looking back on this, I’ve often wondered if my own trespass was not truly accidental as I’d told myself at the time, but a test. Here was I—Jakabok, the perpetually terrorized runt of the neighborhood—deliberately inviting a confrontation with a gang of thugs who wouldn’t think twice about killing me in the street outside my house.
    The short version of how it went is easily told. I spoke in my Momma’s Nightmare Voice, using it to assault the enemy with an outpouring of the most vicious, venomous curses I could lay my mind upon.
    It worked instantly upon three of my four assailants. The fourth, who was the largest, was stone deaf. He took a moment to watch the retreat of his comrades, and then, seeing my wide-open mouth he sensed that I was making some sound that had driven the others off. He immediately came at me, grabbing hold of the back of my neck with one of his immense hands and reaching into my mouth to pull out my troublesome tongue.
    He caught it by the root, digging his nails into the wet muscle, and would have left me as dumb as he was deaf if my tails—entirely without my conscious instruction—had not come to my aid. They rose up behind me side by side, then parted company, each speeding past my head and driving their points into my assailant’s eyes. They lacked the bone to blind him, but there was sufficient force in their gristle that the points still hurt him. He let go of me, and I staggered away from him, spitting out blood, but otherwise unharmed.
    Now you have a full account of the weapons I took up in the World Above: one small dulled knife, my mother’s Nightmare Voice, and the twin tails I had inherited from my recently devoured father.
    It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
    So, there you have it. Now you know how I got up out of the World Below, and how my adventurings there began. Surely you’re satisfied. I’ve told you things that I never told anyone before, even if I was about to disembowel them. What I did to Pappy G., for instance. I’ve never admitted to that until now.
    Not once. And let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy confession to make, even after all these centuries. Patricide—especially when it’s brought about by dropping your father into the maws of hungry lunatics—is a primal crime. But you wanted me to sing for my supper, and I have sung.
    You don’t need to hear any more, believe me. I’d been hauled up out of the rock, you can figure that out for yourselves. Obviously they didn’t put an end to me or I wouldn’t be sitting on this page talking to you. The details don’t matter. It’s all history now, isn’t it?
    No, no. Wait. I take that back. It isn’t history. How can it be?
    Nobody ever wrote any of it down. History’s what the books say, isn’t it? And when it comes to the sufferings of the likes of me, a burned-up, ugly-as-sin demon whose life means less than nothing, there is no history.
    I’m Jakabok the Nobody. As far as you’re concerned, Jakabok the Invisible.
    But you’re wrong. You’re wrong. I’m here .
    I’m right here on the page in front of you. I’m staring out of the words right now, moving along behind the lines as your eyes follow them.
    You see the blur between the words? That’s me moving.
    You feel the book shake a little? Come on, don’t be a coward.
    You felt it. Admit it.
    Admit it.

    You know what, my friend? I think maybe I should tell you a little bit more, for the sake of the truth. Then there’ll be at least one place where the misfortunes of a runty demon like me are put into words, put into history