Cursed Be the Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

for him. Here he would become all he wanted to be, all he was meant to be. The house was imbued with a spirit that had summoned him here to his rightful place, as the sea had once beckoned Herman Melville.
    Warren smiled to himself. He was being quite ridiculous and grandiose. A house was a house was a house.
    Except the typewriter on his cluttered desk was not a typewriter; it was his typewriter. The green portable manual, an Underwood circa 1959, noisy as hell, was the typewriter he’d used to write the very first short stories, years ago, the machine which had produced his two novels, Fishing With Live Bait and The Endurance of Lynn Tomer. Certainly he could have afforded a new electronic typewriter or, the way prices were dropping every month, even a word processing computer, but he felt emotionally and spiritually linked to the Underwood. Call it superstition, but Warren Barringer considered it gut-level intuition.
    And he trusted his intuition because he was a writer!
    A writer, by Christ!
    A Civilized Man was going to be a masterpiece.
    And if not? If the book goes nowhere, if things go bad, if things go so bad, if life goes bad, there’s the downturn, the down spiral, the down and down and going down, because, it can happen, amigo , it can happen, Jack, one day sailing along smooth, and then, Titanic …
    Warren Barringer was prepared for the future.
    He pushed back the chair and opened the right hand desk drawer.
    He didn’t take out the gun, a loaded .25 caliber automatic. He just wanted to make sure it was there.
    The gun was his secret, unregistered, bought from a lowlife he’d met in a lowlife bar during one of his lowlife bad spells. If he were forced to, if choice no longer existed for him, then he had the gun to put a final exclamation point to an intolerable life.
    But hell, he had no reason to think this way, not now, not when A Civilized Man was shaping up so beautifully.
    Warren slammed the drawer.
    He checked his watch and was surprised to see that it was 11:45. When the writing was going well, he lost all track of time. He’d done enough for tonight. It was wrong to push it.
    It was time for a drink. He’d earned a reward.
    Drink number three, the nightcapper, so he could shut his eyes without his eyelids vibrating like the head of a snare drum. Only drink number three tonight, never more than drink number three in a day—Uh, what about that noontime Bloody Mary? That was different. There was a reason, so it didn’t count, all right? He was okay. He was doing fine. He had control.
    He shut off the lights in his study and went down to the basement rec room. At the bar, he poured a shot of Johnny Walker Black into a highball glass. He plopped in two ice cubes from the freezer of the half-sized refrigerator under the counter.
    He was about to add water but, three drinks a night, no harm in making the last one potent enough to not only take off the rough edge but to sand it down fine. Another full shot of Johnny Walker, then a splash of water, and he had a drink worth drinking.
    It warmed his belly and immediately began to relax him, and as he drank, he seemed to feel the house—my house—all around him. Ten minutes later, the glass held only two melting ice pellets. He thought about another drink. One more wouldn’t hurt.
    Warren smiled. Uh-uh. He had will power. He was in control. He rinsed the glass and left it in the stainless steel sink.
    On the main floor, he checked to see the doors were locked. The bannister guided him up the long flight of stairs to the second floor.
    Passing the door of Missy’s room, he thought he heard her call.
    Drink of water? Nighttime tummy ache? A dream?
    He opened the door.
    The covers were on the floor. Close to the edge, Missy lay on her stomach, an arm hanging off the bed. Her head was turned, no longer on the pillow where her Winnie-the-Pooh bear lay alone. In the dim glow of the nightlight, her slender legs seemed made of ivory.
    She was sound asleep. He