The Darkening Dream Read Online Free PDF

something ritualistic, even Christlike, about this killing. The body lay there, pale shoulders twisted, rib cage protruding, arms extended, macabre. He tried to watch Sarah without looking directly at her. First she talks about the fall of Constantinople, then stigmata?
    Anne shivered despite the bathhouse air. “Alex, can I borrow your jacket?”

    An hour later, Alex heard a siren, followed by the distant growl of an automobile. Sam arrived not long after, accompanied by two men in uniforms and a third in a dark suit.
    “Inspector George Finn,” said the gentleman in the suit. He looked back and forth between the brush pile and the body itself. “One of you removed that?”
    “I did,” Alex said. “Only a leg was showing, and I thought it best to make sure he was dead, not merely injured.”
    The inspector nodded. “From the look of him, since yesterday or last night. Rest assured, we’ll get to the bottom of this. One of you mentioned you knew the boy’s name?”
    Anne said, “It’s — I mean he was — a friend of my younger sister, Charles Danforth. He even visited our house yesterday.”
    “I’ll need more details on that,” the inspector said. “Do you know where he lived?”
    Anne shook her head.
    “There are Danforths about a mile from here, sir,” one of the officers said. “I think they have a son about this age.”
    “If you know the house,” the inspector said, “take one of the motorcars and head on over. Don’t mention anything about a death. If they have a son, and he’s missing, ask them to come to the station at…” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Five o’clock. That’ll give us enough time to document the scene and bring the body downtown. Please try to be tactful.”

    After the police released them, they walked quietly back to the horses. Bucephalus bit playfully at Alex’s shoulder when he adjusted the bridle. Yesterday, he would have considered the stallion his only friend.
    The picnic earlier had been great fun, and he’d even enjoyed losing thirty cents to Sam. He hoped the disturbing turn of events at the pond wouldn’t sour his new fellowship. The fates could be cruel, tempting the starving man with a feast and then snatching it away just as he approached the table.

Seven:
    School Days
    Salem, Massachusetts, Monday, October 20, 1913
    A LEX ROSE ABOUT AN HOUR before the sun. Grandfather’s intermittent sleep wasn’t predictable but his predawn activity never varied, making this quiet window of time the only one the three bachelors consistently spent together.
    He wound through the maze of staircases and twisty corridors that honeycombed his new home. Built by some mad baker-turned-architect, its gothic revival style and turret-like tower lent it a haphazard appearance not unlike a giant gingerbread house. To this Grandfather had added his own taste for the baroque, a hodgepodge of medieval trunks and benches juxtaposed with Viennese and Venetian cabinets — all undercut with dizzying non-figural carpets. Dark portraits of dour old men and dying saints scowled down from ornate framed perches.
    In the breakfast room, Alex found the usual morning fare: olives, feta made fresh with milk from Dmitri’s precious goats, and a plate of deep-fried dough balls drizzled with honey. He snagged one of these treats and a slab of the white cheese, stuffed them both into his mouth, and enjoyed the contrast of sweet and salty. The high whistle and wonderful aroma of brewing coffee drew him into the kitchen.
    Dmitri was taking the pot off the stove with a rag. The Albanian was closer to seven feet than six, and Alex wouldn’t hazard a guess as to his real age. In the fifteen or so years he remembered, perhaps Dimitri’s unruly black beard and banana-sized mustache had taken on a bit more white, and certainly his huge frame carried twoscore more pounds, but he didn’t really look any different.
    Seeing Alex enter, he plucked a porcelain coffee cup out of a cabinet with an