Insomnia Read Online Free PDF

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.’
    ‘Nah,’ Trigger said, grinning and peering past his extravagantly flapping windshield wipers, ‘dey got the drainage system all fixed up now. Beauty!’
    The combination of the cold rain and the warm cab caused the bottom half of the windshield to steam up. Without thinking, Ralph reached out a finger and drew a figure in the steam:

    ‘What’s dat?’ Trigger asked.
    ‘I don’t really know. Looks Chinese, doesn’t it? It was on the scarf Ed Deepneau was wearing.’
    ‘Look a little familiar to me,’ Trigger said, glancing at it again. Then he snorted and flapped a hand. ‘Listen to me, wouldja? On’y t’ing I can say in Chinese is moo-goo-gai-pan !’
    Ralph smiled, but didn’t seem to have a laugh in him. It was Carolyn. Now that he had remembered her, he couldn’t stop thinking about her – couldn’t stop imagining the windows open, and the curtains streaming like Edward Gorey ghost arms as the rain poured in.
    ‘You still live in dat two-storey across from the Red Apple?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Trigger pulled in to the curb, the wheels of the truck spraying up big fans of water. The rain was still pouring down in sheets. Lightning raced across the sky; thunder cracked.
    ‘You better stay right here wit me for a little bit,’ Trigger said. ‘She let up in a minute or two.’
    ‘I’ll be all right.’ Ralph didn’t think anything could keep him in the truck a second longer, not even handcuffs. ‘Thanks, Trig.’
    ‘Wait a sec! Let me give you a piece of plastic – you can puddit over your head like a rainhat!’
    ‘No, that’s okay, no problem, thanks, I’ll just—’
    There seemed to be no way of finishing whatever it was he was trying to say, and now what he felt was close to panic. He shoved the truck’s passenger door back on its track and jumped out, landing ankle-deep in the cold water racing down the gutter. He gave Trigger a final wave without looking back, then hurried up the walk to the house he and Carolyn shared with Bill McGovern, feeling in his pocket for his latchkey as he went. When he reached the porch steps he saw he wouldn’t need it – the door was standing ajar. Bill, who lived downstairs, often forgot to lock it, and Ralph would rather think it had been him than think that Carolyn had wandered out to look for him and been caught in the storm. That was a possibility Ralph did not even want to consider.
    He hurried into the shadowy foyer, wincing as thunder banged deafeningly overhead, and crossed to the foot of the stairs. He paused there a moment, hand on the newel post of the banister, listening to rainwater drip from his soaked pants and shirt onto the hardwood floor. Then he started up, wanting to run but no longer able to find the next gear up from a fast walk. His heart was beating hard and fast in his chest, his soaked sneakers were clammy anchors dragging at his feet, and for some reason he kept seeing the way Ed Deepneau’s head had moved when he got out of his Datsun – those stiff, quick jabs that made him look like a rooster spoiling for a fight.
    The third riser creaked loudly, as it always did, and the sound provoked hurried footsteps from above. They were no relief because they weren’t Carolyn’s, he knew that at once, and when Bill McGovern leaned over the rail, his face pale and worried beneath his Panama hat, Ralph wasn’t really surprised. All the way back from the Extension he had felt that something was wrong, hadn’t he? Yes. But under the circumstances, that hardly qualified as precognition. When things reached a certain degree of wrongness, he was discovering, they could no longer be redeemed or turned around; they just kept going wronger and wronger. He supposed that on some level or other he’d always known that. What he had never suspected was how long that wrong road could be.
    ‘Ralph!’ Bill called down. ‘Thank God! Carolyn’s having . . . well, I guess it’s some sort of seizure. I