Читать книгу The Tanglewood Murders - David Weedmark - Страница 7

PROLOGUE

In her dreams the river is always thick and bloated, its surface cast in the familiar blues of twilight. Along its flooded banks, thick gnarled willows are intertwined with scrap pine and coarse dead brush. As she approaches the water, the willows lean towards her, their branches like wet tangles of hair brushing across her bare shoulders. The pine trees shift in jagged angles. The bushes crowd towards her and obstruct. Hearing again the muffled cries of her friend, Jennifer wades into the water towards them, but she can see no trace of the girl, no movement in the shadows. As her nightgown rises around her thighs, the water chills her legs. Her steps are slowed by the thickness of the water and the grip of the mud around her feet. Waist deep in the water, Jennifer calls out to her friend, but the cries have faded. Her own voice is absorbed by the growing silence, which is now as thick as the water and the shadows themselves.

She turns around, and around again, searching the shoreline for any sign of the girl, scanning the water for an extended hand, or a rising face gasping for breath. But the river is overcome with silence. She sees only her own black silhouette rippling on the surface. Then the remains of a crow float slowly towards her, one wing spread upon the skin of water, the other submerged. Slowly, it circles past her and fades into the shadows. Jennifer is alone.

She calls out again, but the silence, dark and cold, has a weight, has a substance now all of its own. The water rises around her, and the shadows cover her eyes and ears. The silence fills her open mouth.

She awakes in her bed choking, gasping for breath.

From the window, a bright wash of moonlight cascades across her pale legs and onto the splash of white cotton sheets around her feet. Breathless, panicked and alone, Jennifer shivers in the air-conditioned chill and draws the sheets around her body.

It is the first clear night in a week. The moon, pale and bloated, sheens down through the silence. She rolls away, grasping the sheets in her hands and drawing her knees to her chest. She begins to sob silently, shaking with remorse and fear. The dream continues to play out as her thoughts ebb and flow between wakefulness and sleep. The girl’s frightened, lonely cries echo in her mind, even as the silence pulses in her ears.

After her dreams, Jennifer begins to count, as she used to when she was a child. She counts quickly, silently, her lips barely moving, as she feels herself trapped between her desire to lose herself in sleep and her fear that the nightmare will return. When she reaches one hundred, her breathing still has not calmed. She is too afraid to close her eyes. Exhausted, she begins to count again, backwards now, winding down to zero.