Dark Companions Read Online Free PDF Page B

Devoir, Therese Desqueyroux . In the original French, good Lord. Why are you grappling with these?”
    “So that I’ll be an interesting young woman,” Alma replied instantly. “I’m sure I’ve told you I feel guilty doing nothing. I can’t practice, not with this cold. I only hope it’s past before the Camside concert, Which reminds me, do you think I could borrow your transistor during the day? For the music programme. To give me peace.”
    “All right. I can’t today, I start work at one. Though I think—no, it doesn’t matter.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, I agree with Peter, you know that. You can’t have peace and beauty without closing your eyes to the world. Didn’t he say that to seek peace in music was to seek complete absence of sensation, of awareness?”
    “He said that and you know my answer.” Alma unwillingly remembered; he had been here in her room, taking in the music in the bookcase, the polished record-player—she’d sensed his disapproval and felt miserable; why couldn’t he stay the strong forthright man she’d come to admire and love? “Really, darling, this is an immature attitude,” he’d said. “I can’t help feeling you want to abdicate from the human race and its suffering.” Her eyes embraced the room. This was security, apart from the external chaos, the horrid part of life. “Even you appreciate the beauty of the museum exhibits,” she told Maureen.
    “I suppose that’s why you work there. I admire them, yes, but in many cases by ignoring their history of cruelty.”
    “Why must you and Peter always look for the horrid things? What about this house? There are beautiful things here. That record-player—you can look at it and imagine all the craftsmanship it took. Doesn’t that seem to you fulfilling?”
    “You know we leftists have a functional aesthetic. Anyway—” Maureen paused. “If that’s your view of the house you’d best not know what I found out about it.”
    “Go on, I want to hear.”
    “If you insist. The Brichester Herald was useless—they reported the death of the owner and that was all—but I came across a chapter in Pamela Jones’ book on local hauntings which gives the details. The last owner of the house lost a fortune in the stock market—I don’t know how exactly, of course it’s not my field—and he became a recluse in this house. There’s worse to come, are you sure you want—? Well, he went mad. Things started disappearing, so he said, and he accused something he thought was living in the house, something that ‘used to stand behind’ him or mock him from the empty rooms. I can imagine how he started having hallucinations, looking at this view—”
    Alma joined her at the window. “Why?” she disagreed. “I think it’s beautiful.” She admired the court before the house, the stone pillars framing the iron flourish of the gates; then a stooped woman passed across the picture, heaving a pram from which overflowed a huge cloth bag of washing. Alma felt depressed again; the scene was spoiled.
    “Sorry, Alma,” Maureen said; her cold hand touched Alma’s fingers. Alma frowned slightly and insinuated herself between the sheets. “… Sorry,” Maureen said again. “Do you want to hear the rest? It’s conventional, really. He gassed himself. The Jones book has something about a note he wrote—insane, of course: he said he wanted to ‘fade into the house, the one possession left to me,’ whatever that meant. Afterwards the stories started; people used to see someone very tall and thin standing at the front door on moonlit nights, and one man saw a figure at an upstairs window with its head turning back and forth like clockwork. Yes, and one of the neighbours used to dream that the house was ‘screaming for help’—the book explained that, but not to me I’m afraid. I shouldn’t be telling you all this, you’ll be alone until tonight.”
    “Don’t worry, Maureen. It’s just enjoyably creepy.”
    “A perceptive