Читать книгу Moon Garden - V. J. Banis - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

Fire!

Hot and cold played in alternating waves over her bare arms—the cold of the night air, the rush of heat from the flames. The glow gave her face, which would have been ashen in any other light, a ghastly pallor. Her eyes were unearthly wide, filled to the brim with the flickering horror before her.

Someone brushed rudely against her, almost knocking her off balance. A fireman went by, rushing on some errand that would be too late.

Too late to save the house. Too late to save the man trapped inside. Too late....

“Ellen. Oh, my poor child, this is so awful.” Someone put a hand tentatively on her shoulder.

She did not turn. Her eyes remained fixed on the house. One of the chimneys collapsed, falling through what remained of the roof. A volcanic eruption of smoke and ash and fire burst upward.

“Yes,” was all she said, and after a moment the hand went away and she was alone again with her misery. She stared and trembled, and knew that it would remain with her forever—she and this nightmare, merging together, becoming one, forever, and ever and ever.

And then, as if her entire soul weren’t already blackened into ash, as if she hadn’t already known her last moment of inner peace, as if she hadn’t already condemned herself to the eternal fires of hell—as she stood shivering in the cold of the night, there came from within the inferno that terrible scream. The cry of a man as his life is wrested from him.

It went on and on. She heard it even through the blackness that enveloped her with would-be mercy. She heard it while the doctors probed and questioned. She heard it through her mother’s anguish-laden words of reassurance.

She embroidered little flowers on useless doilies, and heard that scream.

She took soothing walks with the kindly nurse, and the trees screamed.

She grew stronger and calmer, and could even laugh again. The scream lingered.

She slept the man-made sleep of sedation. Even in her sleep, she heard the scream.

With it, crashing through her mind over and over and over, was that one awful thought.

I killed him.

I killed him.

I killed him.