The Prophet of Yonwood Read Online Free PDF Page B

done. It was more than a soundproof room: it was also a strange and beautiful room, almost like the inside of a tent, with its carpeted floor and walls hung with blankets. It glowed with patterns and colorsfaded blue and faded red on the floor, rose and lavender, pale green and gold on the walls. The light was dim now, because theyd covered some of the windows, so they brought up a lamp with a parchment shade from one of the rooms below, and more cushions for the window seat, and another rocking chair.
    If only we could make a fire in the fireplace, Nickie said, this would be the coziest room in the world.
    Its real nice, Amanda agreed. Otis might chew these rugs, though.
    Ill buy him some toys, Nickie said. You can teach him to chew those instead. She bent down and rumpled Otiss ears. Now, she said, Im going to start looking through stuff.
    Looking through what?
    Everything in the house. I want to see it all, Nickie said. Have you noticed any scrapbooks while youve been here? Or diaries, or photograph albums?
    Amanda pondered. Maybe in the front parlor cabinet, she said.
    So Nickie went downstairs, filled a box with stuff she found in the parlor cabinets, and took it back up to the nursery. She and Amanda sat on the window seat beneath a lamp and looked through it. A great deal of it was boring: old packs of bent playing cards, a calendar from 1973, a photo album containing eighteen faded photos, every one of them of a black cocker spaniel. But there were also some old letters, someNational Geographic magazines, and quite a few albums with pictures of people. Jammed way in the back, she found three very old-looking cards with black borders. They were from different people, but all of them were dated 1918, and all of them, in old-fashioned handwriting, said more or less the same thing: We send heartfelt condolences for your tragic loss. What was the tragic loss? she wondered. None of the cards said.
    Hey, I thought of something else youd probably want to look at, Amanda said. Ill go get it.
    She went downstairs and came back up in a minute with a little brown notebook. The old man wrote in this sometimes when I was taking care of him, she said, handing it to Nickie.
    Nickie opened the notebook. Her great-grandfathers name was written inside the front cover: Arthur Green. She leafed through it. It looked more like a series of jottings than a real journal. Hed made the first entry at the beginning of December, just a couple of months ago. It said:
    12/7 Some odd experiences lately. Might be my failing mind, but might not. Will note them down here.
    Interesting, Nickie thought. She put the notebook in the Stuff to Keep pile. Shed look at it later.
    Otis, in the meantime, chewed quietly on a chair leg. By the time they realized it, he had made some rather deep tooth marks. Fortunately they were on the back leg of the chair and didnt show too much.
    Amanda took one of theNational Geographic magazines and leafed through it. Oh, Lord, look at this, she said. She held out the magazine, open to a picture of a volcano erupting, with flames and billows of black smoke. This is kind of like what the Prophet saw.
    Who?
    The Prophet! said Amanda. Althea Tower! You havent heard of her? Shes famous! Everybody in this whole town follows her! Or just about everybody.
    Why do you call her the Prophet?
    Because she is one, said Amanda. She propped her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. She spoke in the hushed voice people use for imparting awesome information. She saw the future in a vision.
    What did she see? asked Nickie.
    Well, she couldnt exactly tell, because it was so awful it made her sick. She could only give hints. Like she said fire a lot, and explosions. It musta looked sort of like thisAmanda tapped her finger on the volcano pictureexcept all over the world. Anyway, she took to her bed and shes been there ever since.
    Thats amazing, said Nickie. But I dont understand. What did it mean? Was it like a bad dream?
    It wasnt adream,