The Lunatic's Curse Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ambrose often asked himself as he watched Hooper smiling day and night (not that he could tell the difference between the two in here). He
could not deny that this blithe fellow had kept him from giving up for a long time. But these last few days he had felt a change. He was ill. His whole body ached, his head throbbed and he was
growing weaker, racked with terrible cravings. He felt as if he had reached the end of his powers of endurance. He looked at Hooper. He was hardly any better off, not a pick of meat on his bones.
He laughed to himself. They truly were a revolting pair.
    ‘Ah, don’t be like that, Ambrose,’ cajoled Hooper softly. ‘Never say never! Eh? What would young Rex think if he knew that his father was about to give up?’
    At the mention of his son’s name Ambrose made an effort and sat up. Hooper, a short, red-elbowed man with bushy eyebrows, was proffering a bowl of what could only be described as mud
soup.
    ‘What’s in it?’ he asked.
    ‘Who knows?’ laughed Hooper. ‘No meat, I’ll wager, but it don’t taste that bad.’
    Meat! The very thought of it caused Ambrose to quiver violently. He cradled the bowl awkwardly with his left arm and took a spoonful, and resisted the urge to spit it out. Then he took another.
Revolting as it was, his starved body craved nourishment and he ate without stopping. A mouse crept out from the corner and looked at him but he kicked it away. Hooper grabbed it. ‘Something
for later,’ he said, and broke its neck.
    Hooper then pulled from his pocket a piece of ragged paper-thin cloth, upon which was sketched a blurred but complicated diagram. ‘What about the escape plan?’ he said. ‘You
know, your Perambulating Submersible?’
    My Perambulating Submersible, thought Ambrose with a smile. Hooper actually believed it was viable. Ah, well, he wasn’t going to disabuse him of the notion. The ‘idea’ was a
boat that walked underwater. Hooper, having been a competent draughtsman prior to being declared insane, had very carefully drawn it (guided every step of the way by Ambrose) using a fingernail he
had bitten to a point. Ambrose didn’t ask what Hooper had used for ink: he knew. His sensitive nose could smell the blood, old and dried as it was. To take his mind off it he scooped up
another large spoonful of the soup.
    The underwater boat might be real but the escape was merely a fantasy – at least to Ambrose – to while away the hours. Hooper, however, had taken to it with such fervour that now he
really did believe it was possible and he pored over the design for hours every day suggesting changes and refinements. Ambrose secretly was really very pleased with it. In truth it was an idea he
and Rex had been working on long before his present misfortunes. But they had not pursued it – Acantha had put paid to that.
    ‘Ah, Rex,’ murmured Ambrose, ‘what a great invention it would have been! And you, you held the key!’
    ‘We’ll build it,’ said Hooper excitedly, ‘and cross the lake floor, like a giant crab, and then we will be free.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ambrose encouragingly; he didn’t have the heart to point out the many, many flaws in the great escape plan.
    Ambrose finished his soup and lay back down. Hooper’s optimism was in direct contrast to his own crushing feelings of sadness and despair. He had only survived this long by eking out his
hope, but hope was not a limitless resource. Now he was resigned to never seeing Rex again. He thought of Acantha, although he didn’t want to, and spat with disgust on the floor. He lifted his
crippled left arm, looked at it with regret then let it fall. His heart became as rock. What a fool he had been, blinded by love, to trust her. He could see it now, her shy smiles and her fluttering
eyelashes, and all the while she was conniving against him, with that evil monster Cadmus Chapelizod. Ugh, the whole business made him feel sick. And the irony of it all was that at that