Читать книгу Demon in My View - Tom Henighan - Страница 11

He awoke to the smell of fresh pancakes; sunlight flooded the room. Toby rolled over, yawned, stretched his arms. Then suddenly, darkly, he remembered and threw back the covers.

“Father!” he cried out. His hopes leapt, then died as he saw the old man grope and fumble, prying up the pancakes from the overheated skillet.

“Here, let me help you.”

The boy sprang from the bed. Within minutes they were sitting down to breakfast together. But his first impression had not been entirely wrong, Toby decided, for his father seemed lively and happy, not at all sunk in the gloom of the previous night.

“I’ve had a good dream,” the old man explained as they sipped tea and dipped the last of the pancakes in honey. “I have to tell you about it, because it concerns you.”

Puzzled, the boy leaned across the rough table.

“In my dream an angel came to me,” Talby explained quietly, a kind of glow in his voice, as he carefully sipped his tea. “He took me by the hand and showed me my cousin, John Wilson, another Old Believer, who lives some ways east and south of Apple Valley. As soon as I saw John’s face I remembered the five hundred dollars in gold coins I lent him some years back — money that will come due this spring. Your mother made me save that money and bury it, but when Cousin John needed it for his daughter’s dowry, I sent it to him. The angel told me I might get a treasure still. With that money, maybe I can get a cure for my eyes. There must be —,” and here the old man swallowed hard, “there must be a good surgeon left somewhere. There’s just got to be! And if that fails, maybe I can hire someone to help us in our work.”

Talby was silent for a moment. In the face of his father’s new hope, Toby could not understand why he himself felt so sad.

“What did the angel look like?” was all he could think to ask.

Talby pressed his hands to his eyes, then said, almost as if he was ignoring the boy’s question. “I’d forgotten that nothing, except death itself, can take away the sights of my dreams. It was wonderful there, all the things I saw!”

“But you can’t remember what the angel looked like?”

“Of course I remember what the angel looked like, boy. He was dressed all in white, with a great sword bound round his waist. He had shining blue eyes and blond hair. He was a beautiful creature, that angel. And he mentioned your name, Toby, that he did! He said you were to go over to the country beyond Apple Valley to fetch the money from John Wilson and bring it back here, safe and sound!”

The boy felt a kind of excitement tingle his scalp and his fingertips.

“Me?”

His father groped, shook his head in frustration, and finally took hold of the boy’s shoulders.

“You must go right away, Son. There’s not a moment to lose. I know you won’t fail me.” He paused, hearing Ranger barking at something outside. “Why is that dog making all that noise?”

“But how can I go off and leave you, Dad?” asked Toby, ignoring Ranger’s calls. “The Reardons might come back. And how will you feed yourself? Anything could happen. I just can’t pick up and leave you.”

In his heart, Toby knew that the journey frightened him. In all his years he had never been far from the homestead. To go out into the world — to leave his father all alone and blind — was more than he had courage for. He wanted to run and hide in the back of the shed, in the darkness, where he had sometimes concealed himself when the sounds from the woods grew too painful.

Toby felt his father’s fingers tighten on his shoulders. Twisting away, he turned, knocking over a stacked pyramid of bottles. A wild clatter followed. He burst through the door and stopped short.

“Toby!” his father’s voice followed.

A man stood a few feet away, a great hulking figure who seemed to take up all the space in the clearing and to absorb the dazzling sunlight with the sheer bulk of his presence.

Toby gazed on the stranger, hearing his father’s voice as from a distance, or as from a deep well. The boy did not turn but kept his eyes on the newcomer.