Voices in the Dark Read Online Free PDF

Order.’
    Leo considered the question, his cigarette halfway to his mouth, then shook his head.
    ‘Why not?’ I said.
    He sighed. In the half-light he looked very old; the grey hairs on the sides of his head showed unforgivingly.
    ‘Why not?’ I said again.
    ‘Because I don’t think Aldebaran is dead.’
    He spoke so quietly that I thought I had misheard him. ‘What?’ I said, but he got up and began shifting boxes around without meeting my eyes. A crate of books slipped and went thundering to the floor. We both bent to pick them up.
    ‘This shop!’ he said. ‘It is getting out of hand.’
    ‘Papa, tell me what you just said.’
    He ran his hand over his face. ‘I just can’t see him as dead. I don’t know how, but I can’t see it. I did, after the funeral, but I’ve lost all certainty now. Anselm …’ He shrugged, and I knew by his carelessness that he was getting to the most important point. ‘I have these dreams.’
    I tried to see into his face, but he kept his eyes lowered. ‘What about?’ I said.
    ‘The past or the future – I can’t tell. Aldebaran is in some of them.’
    ‘But maybe …’ I hesitated. ‘Maybe he is still living.I mean, in another place but still watching over you.’
    Leo shivered and ran his hands over his arms as though to warm them. ‘We had better finish this and get to bed,’ he said.
    We began shifting the piles of old things, though tomorrow was Sunday and we would not have to open. Upstairs I could hear my mother and Jasmine’s voices. ‘How was trade this evening?’ I said to drive out the silence that lay between us.
    ‘No one came in,’ said Leo. ‘You saw yourself.’
    ‘What did we take today?’
    ‘About four hundred.’
    ‘It’s not so bad.’
    ‘It is not good either,’ said Leo. ‘Not really. And I had Doctor Keller here again while you were out talking to Michael.’
    The doctor was our landlord and fond of making unexpected visits. ‘What did he want?’ I said.
    ‘Just to look around. What does he ever want?’
    ‘I’m sure Jasmine kept him entertained.’
    He smiled. Leo’s smiles were hard-won and faint, the more so since Aldebaran was gone. He picked up a box of books and set them down on the counter. ‘Mr Pascal gave me these,’ he said. ‘Maybe they aren’t worth anything. Have a look – tell me what you think.’
    I turned over the pages of the book on top. It was an adventure story by a John Sebastian Urquhart, printed in fancy type. ‘Jasmine might like it,’ I said.
    ‘Yes. As long as there are pirates and violent deaths and a villain with a glass eye.’ Leo smiled and then shivered again, as though a draught had passed over him. He bent his head over the box and began examining the other books.
    ‘Papa,’ I said, ‘did you ever open that book Aldebaran left you?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Maybe you should,’ I said. ‘Maybe it would help. If Aldebaran was trying to tell you something, it would be in that book, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘It just seems to me that’s how he thinks.’
    I had expected him to argue. But he only nodded and went upstairs. I heard him go heavily across the living room. He paused for a moment, then came back down. ‘Maybe there is some clue in it,’ he said. ‘Maybe you are right. At least it might set my mind at rest.’
    ‘Open it, then.’
    His hands shook. I leaned over his shoulder as he took off the paper. Onto the counter fell a battered hardback, with the gold type on the cover nearly worn away. He turned up the dial of the lamp, and I made out the title:
The Darkness Has a Thousand Voices
, and under it ‘Harlan Smith’.
    ‘Harlan who?’ I said.
    ‘I don’t know. I have never heard of him.’
    ‘Did Uncle write in it?’
    Leo fanned out the pages carefully and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
    It was not what I had expected, and I saw now why Leo had not opened it. The book was a disappointment. It did not alter the fact that Aldebaran was gone,