Father Panic's Opera Macabre Read Online Free PDF

line along a single wall shelf.
     
    There was a young man lying in the bunk. He looked to be a teenager still, certainly no older than twenty. His skin was clear, his features boyish, his hair cut short and neatly arranged. A red sheet covered him from his feet to his chin. A stark iron crucifix was mounted on the wall directly above the boy's head. The skeletal Christ figure looked like it might have been carved out of ivory that had turned brownish-yellow.
     
    Neil stood there for a moment, taking all this in, trying to imagine an explanation. He stepped closer and studied the youth. There was no sign of breathing-in fact, the boy's skin looked icy blue, though that was probably an illusion caused by the glass candleholders. Neil took one candle and held it below the boy's cheek, illuminating his face with a clear light. Oddly, all that did was make the blueness more apparent.
     
    Unlikely possibilities flashed through Neil's mind. The boy had just died and was laid out here as at a wake. But why wouldn't Marisa tell Neil about it? Even more to the point, why would they put the body up here in this absurd little raised alcove instead of a proper sitting room downstairs, or the nearest funeral home? That made no sense. Perhaps the young man had died some time ago, and the family knew a way to preserve his body more or less perfectly, as it now appeared. But that seemed no less implausible.
     
    Neil leaned forward and lightly pressed the back of his hand against the young man's gleaming forehead. It felt very cold and hard. When Neil took his hand away he saw a clear rosy-whitish impression of his fingers on the boy's skin. It disappeared in a second or two, heat vanishing.
     
    Then Neil thought he heard a faint exhalation, and he became aware of the metal noise again, rasping somewhere nearby. He stumbled back, his socks slipped and he had to grab the wall to keep from falling on the stairs. Neil returned quickly to his room.
     
    Pockets
     
    Neil had no time to think about what he had just seen before he heard Marisa's heels clicking loudly down the corridor. She appeared in his open doorway, a sudden irresistible vision. She looked gorgeous. She was wearing a fashionable short, tight, sleeveless black dress with a scooped neckline. It was a dress perfectly designed to emphasize the generous curves and elegant lines of her splendid body.
     
    It was impossible not to stare at her-Neil realized he was probably gaping like a teenage boy. But it also occurred to him that she had obviously chosen to dress like this for him and no one else in this place. Marisa's body filled his vision-it seemed to fill the entire barren room with the explosive richness of life.
     
    She knocked needlessly on the door frame. That was when he finally noticed the smile on her face-playful, expectant.
     
    "You look lovely," he told her.
     
    "Did signore try his bed?"
     
    "Yes, he did."
     
    "And was it satisfactory?"
     
    "Yes, it was very ... comfortable."
     
    "You're quite sure?" Mock-doubtful.
     
    "Well, I think so."
     
    "Nothing else you need?"
     
    "Now that you're here, I'm fine."
     
    She laughed. "That little rest did you some good, I'm thinking. You don't look so tired now."
     
    "I do feel much better. Refreshed."
     
    "Good, I'm glad. Are you ready to go downstairs?"
     
    "Sure."
     
    Neil put on his sports jacket and Marisa took his hand in hers as they left the room. She startled him by turning to the right in the corridor, so they were bound to walk right past the steps leading up into the alcove. He was even more surprised when she stopped at the entrance and turned as if to go up the steps-but there were no steps, only an open doorway into another room, this one quite small, with a circular staircase down to the ground floor. He must have misjudged the distance, he told himself. The stairs and alcove must be a little farther along that corridor. Neil almost asked Marisa about the dead boy, but decided not to for the time