The Dark Volume Read Online Free PDF

taken place, in Harschmort House. What did it mean that Miss Temple's true memories could be entwined so seamlessly with what she remembered from the book, as if such distinction was a boundary for the weak, or no real boundary at all? If she could not keep her own life apart from what she had consumed from the lives of others, how could she retain who she was? She sat up at once.
    “Celeste?” asked Elöise. “Are you all right? Are you too cold?”
    “I am fine,” said Miss Temple. She dabbed a pearling of sweat from her upper lip. “Perhaps there is something to eat?”

    LINA HAD packed cold mutton, hard cheese, and some loaves of country bread. Miss Temple unhappily chewed a mouthful of meat while gazing about her. The woods had continued to deepen.
    “Where exactly are we?” she asked Elöise.
    “Heading south. Beyond that I cannot say—past the forest there are apparently hills. On the other side of them we may have hope of a train.”
    “The road seems perfectly fine,” Miss Temple observed.
    “It does.”
    Miss Temple watched Elöise closely until the woman met her gaze. Miss Temple made a point of speaking loudly.
    “This forest… is this where the people were killed?”
    “I've no idea,” said Elöise.
    “I would think it must be.”
    “It is entirely possible.”
    “Did you not go there?”
    “Of course not, Celeste. The clothing was brought to me—Lina knew what we needed.”
    “So no one has seen the Jorgenses’ cabin?”
    “Of course people have seen it—the villagers who found them—”
    “But that is not the same at all,” cried Miss Temple. She called to the driver in her firmest voice. “Sir, we will require you to take us to the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens. It is most urgent.”
    The man pulled his horse to a stop and turned. He glanced once at Miss Temple but then settled on Elöise as the person in charge. Miss Temple sighed and spoke in the most patient tone she could muster.
    “It is necessary we visit the cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Jorgens. As you can see, I am wearing the poor woman's dress. It is incumbent upon me—for religious reasons, you understand—to pay my respects to her memory. If I do not, it is impossible that I shall sleep soundly ever again.”
    The man looked again at Elöise. Then he turned and snapped the reins.
    Miss Temple took another bite of mutton, for she was extremely hungry still.
    IT WAS perhaps twenty more minutes until he stopped the cart and pointed to their left. Through the trees Miss Temple saw a winding path washed away in more than one spot, like a penciled line incompletely marred by the jagged pass of a gum eraser. She scrambled from the cart without assistance and then gave a hand to Elöise, whose expression was far from her own excitement.
    “We will not be long,” Elöise called to their driver. “It is just…just along that path?”
    He nodded—Miss Temple wondered if the man possessed a tongue—and pointed. Miss Temple took her companion's hand and pulled her away.
    The washed-out sections were moist and required careful steps to avoid thick mud, but in minutes they were out of sight of the cart, no matter how Elöise kept glancing back.
    “He will not leave us,” Miss Temple finally said.
    “I'm glad you think so,” answered Elöise.
    “Of course he won't. He has not been fully paid.”
    “But he has.”
    “ You think he has, but he surely plans to charge us that much more again once we are stranded with him in the hills.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Because I am used to people wanting money—it is the dullest of things. But now we can speak—and look , Elöise, there it is!”

    THE CABIN was small, and nestled comfortably between the trees on one side and a lush meadow. All around them Miss Temple could see the flotsam left from the flooding rain and its recession. The air was tinged with a certain whiff of corruption, of river mud churned and spread like a stinking condiment amidst the grasses and the