The Howling Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

then returned to the living room and put a record on the phonograph.
    When Robert went upstairs, she smiled at him.
    He lay still in the bed. The swamp wind was slamming shutters and creaking boards throughout the house, so he could not sleep. From a broken slat in his own shutter, moonlight shredded in upon the room, making of everything dark shadows.
    He watched the moonlight and thought about the things he was beginning to know.
    They frightened him. The books--The pictures of the people who looked like him and were called boys, and who looked like Miss Gentilbelle and were called girls, or ladies, or women .
    He rose from the bed, put his bathrobe about him, and walked to the door. It opened noiselessly, and when it did, he saw that the entire hallway was streaming with dark, cold light. The old Indian's head on the wall looked down at him with a plaster frown, and he could make out most of the stained photographs and wrinkled paintings.
    It was so quiet, so quiet that he could hear the frogs and crickets outside; and the moths, bumping and thrashing against the walls, the windows.
    Softly he tiptoed down the long hall to the last doorway and then back again to his room. Perspiration began to form under his arms and between his legs, and he lay down once more.
    But sleep would not come. Only the books, the knowledge, the confusion. Dancing. Burning.
    Finally, his heart jabbing, loud, Robert rose and silently retraced his footsteps to the door.
    He rapped, softly, and waited.
    There was no answer.
    He rapped again, somewhat harder than before; but only once.
    He cupped his hands to his mouth and whispered into the keyhole: " Drake! "
    Silence. He touched the doorknob. It turned.
    He went into the room.
    A large man was lying across a bulky, posterless bed. Robert could hear the heavy guttural breathing, and it made him feel good.
    "Drake. Please wake up."
    Robert continued to whisper. The large man moved, jerked, turned around. "Minnie?"
    "No, Drake. It's me."
    The man sat upright, shook his head violently, and pulled open a shutter. The room lit up.
    "Do you know what will happen if she finds you here?"
    Robert sat down on the bed, close to the man. "I couldn't sleep. I wanted to talk to you. She won't hear--"
    "You shouldn't be here. You know what she'll say."
    "Just a little while. Won't you talk a little while with me, like you used to?"
    The man took a bottle from beneath the bed, filled a glass, drank half. "Look here," he said. "Your mother doesn't like us to be talking together. Don't you remember what she did last time? You wouldn't want that to happen again, would you?"
    Robert smiled. "It won't. I don't have anything left for her to kill. She could only hit me now and she wouldn't hit you. She never hits you."
    The man smiled, strangely.
    "Drake ."
    "What?"
    "Why doesn't she want me to talk to you?"
    The man coughed. "It's a long story. Say I'm the gardener and she's the mistress of the house and you're her. . . daughter, and it isn't right that we should mix."
    "But why?"
    "Never mind."
    "Tell me."
    "Go back to bed, Bobbie. I'll see you next week when your mother takes her trip into town."
    "No, Drake, please talk a little more with me. Tell me about town; please tell me about town."
    "You'll see some day--"
    "Why do you always call me 'Bobbie'? Mother calls me Roberta. Is my name Bobbie?"
    The man shrugged. "No. Your name is Roberta."
    "Then why do you call me Bobbie? Mother says there is no such name."
    The man said nothing, and his hand trembled more.
    "Drake."
    "Yes?"
    "Drake, am I really a little girl?"
    The man got up and walked over to the window. He opened the other shutter and stood for a long while staring into the night. When he turned around, Robert saw that his face was wet.
    "Bobbie, what do you know about God?"
    "Not very much. It is mentioned in the George Bernard Shaw book I am reading, but I don't understand."
    "Well, God is who must help your mother now, Bobbie boy!"
    Robert's fists tightened.