The Darkening Dream Read Online Free PDF Page A

town.”
    “In Greece,” Alex said, “you could ride for a whole day to find a telegraph.”
    Sam snorted. “I don’t suppose it’ll take that long.”
    They watched him sprint off in the direction of the horses.
    Alex stepped toward the body. “Let’s see what we have here.” He leaned down to clear brush off the remains.
    “What’re you doing ?” Sarah said. The deceased belonged to God now — and the police.
    But she spoke too late. Alex heaved the tangled ball of vegetation off the cadaver and to the side. Anne gasped.
    The body of a boy lay naked in the dirt, belly up, covered only by a few remaining sticks and leaves. His eyes stared at the sky, his face frozen in bewilderment. His skin was bluish-white. One arm was twisted behind his back, the shoulder bulging unnaturally. On the opposite side his mangled knee was twisted, lending him a ghastly diagonal symmetry. Gashes scarred his wrists and ankles, and a deep gouge split the side of his torso. There was surprisingly little blood, though flies buzzed about the wounds, crawled in and out of his nostrils and mouth.
    Oh, God. The crust of blood around his lips made Sarah think of Judah. In those last months, when the consumption had all but eaten him from the inside, she would sit by his bed and hold a damp cloth to his bloody mouth as he shuddered and coughed his life away.
    Anne whimpered nearby.
    “I think it’s Charles,” she whispered.
    Sarah forced herself to look at the face. She’d met Charles only that once, yesterday, and the dead boy’s face looked different — like a wax mannequin’s — but it was him, at least the material part of him. His soul, she hoped, had moved on to some better place.
    The slow tone of the mournful horn rose out of nowhere to sound in her ears. Charles’ lifeless face lifted slightly, his right eye winked at her, and he raised an arm to point at a leafless tree glistening with black wetness in the warm afternoon sun. Blood slicked the trunk and roots.
    Sarah jumped back. The little shriek that passed her lips sounded like someone else’s.
    “Are you all right?” Anne’s voice severed the horn blast.
    She looked around. Sunlight streamed in through the thick foliage to dapple the unstained bark of the mossy tree. The startled birds resumed their songs and Charles’ ashen body lay still on the leafy dirt.
    She wasn’t crazy. But she should have warned him yesterday. Somehow, for some reason, God had sent her a sign, and she hadn’t listened.

Six:
    Paradise Lost
    Near Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday afternoon, October 19, 1913
    A LEX SHIFTED HIS WEIGHT from one foot to the other. It seemed inappropriate to comfort the girls — he had, after all, only met them today. He tried to distract himself by studying the body again, eyes drawn repeatedly to the boy’s nearly hairless manhood, lying there like a pallid little worm. Sarah and Anne had likely never seen any man naked, and certainly none like this one. He pulled a silk handkerchief out of his vest pocket, unfolded it, and draped it across the organ in question.
    “Thank you, Alex,” Anne said. “I feel so bad for his mother. Who could’ve done something so horrible?”
    Alex had seen his grandfather dissect enough crimes to make an attempt at an explanation.
    “The body was concealed, and someone wrenched that leg and arm with tremendous force. It’s possible he had a machine accident and someone dumped him here.”
    He didn’t really think it was an accident, and he was far less calm than he appeared. Anne’s screams had triggered one of his old memories: a woman wailing, her shadowy face illuminated by firelight. Knowing that to chase the image into the labyrinth of his mind would only lead to a headache, he forced his thoughts elsewhere.
    “It wasn’t a machine,” Sarah said. “Look at the wounds on the wrists and ankles, the big slash on his torso.” She paused for a second. “Could they be stigmata?”
    Could she be right? There was