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their faces for deceit, but he found none there.
They waved at him with their torn fingers and tattered clothes, smiled
with their unshaven, greasy jowls. The women with dark eyes beckoned,
the stoic men with their oily hair and heavy smell gestured invitingly.
He recognized the lady who lived across the street from him, the man
from two houses down.
He thought he saw his parents near the center of the crowd and slowly
pushed into the mass of bodies, seeking them, wanting to talk to them.
It had been a long time. He wanted to tell them how he was doing, share
his thoughts, ask for advice. He needed them now.
The mass of bodies moved rhythmically as he pushed to its center, seeing
his father's face here, the back of his mother's head over there, just
out of reach. He was feeling better now, more satisfied. He felt
certain he would get his own streetcorner. Surely they owed him that?
In Darkness, Angels
Love is an emotion with which writers have a field day because of its
complexities, its simplicity, and the joy and anguish it causes in any
given person, on any given day, at any given moment-more often than not,
both at the same time. There are, however, darker sides to this
emotion, which cause it to produce more personal fears, more darknight
terrors, than any other emotion.
Eric Van Lustbader is the author of many bestselling novels, including
The Ninja and Sirens, and his latest is Second Skin.
if I had known then what I know now.
How those words echo on and on inside my mind, like a rubber ball
bouncing down an endless staircase. As if they had a life of their own.
Which, I suppose, they do now.
I cannot sleep but is it any wonder? Outside, blue-white lightning
forks like a giant's jagged claw and the thunder is so loud at times
that I feel I must be trapped inside an immense bell, reverberations
like memory unspooling in a reckless helix, making a mess at my feet.
If I had known then what I know now. And yet. . . .
And yet I return again and again to that windswept evening when the
ferry deposited me at the east end of the island. It had once been, so
I had been told by the rather garrulous captain, a swansneck peninsula.
But over time, the water had gradually eaten away at the rocky soil
until at last the land had succumbed to the ocean's cool tidal embrace,
severing itself from the mainland a mile away.
Of course the captain had an entirely different version of what had
transpired ." It's them folks up there," he had said, jerking his sharp
unshaven chin toward the castle high atop the island's central mount ."
Didn't want no more interference from the other folks here
abouts." He gave a short barking laugh and spat over the boat's side .
"Just as well, I say," he observed as he squinted heavily into the last
of the dying sun's watery light ." Them rocks were awfully sharp." He
shook his head as if weighed down by the memory ." Kids were always
darin one another t'do their balancin act going across, down that long
spit o land." He turned the wheel hard over and spuming water rushed up
the bow of the ferry ." Many's the night we'd come out with the
searchlights, tryin to rescue some fool boy'd gone over."
For just a moment he swung us away from the island looming up on our
starboard side, getting the most out of the crosswinds ." Never found
em, though. Not a one." He spat again ." You go over the side around
here, you're never seen again."
" The undertow," I offered.
He whipped his ruddy windburned face around, impaling me with one pale
gray eye ." Undertow, you say?" His laugh was harsh now and unpleasant
." You gotta lot t'learn up there at Fuego del Aire, boyo .
Oh, yes indeed!"
He left me on the quayside with no one around to mark my arrival. As
the wide-beamed ferry tacked away, pushed by the strong sunset wind, I
thought I saw the captain raise an arm in my direction.
I turned away from the sea. Great stands of pine, bristly and dark in
the failing light, marched upward in majestic array toward the castle
high above me. Their tops whipsawed, sending off an odd melancholy
drone.
I felt utterly, irretrievably alone and for the first time since I had
sent the letter I began to feel the queasy fluttering of reservations.
An odd kind of inner darkness had settled about my shoulders like a
,,mlture descending upon the flesh of the dead.
I took a deep breath and shook my head to clear it. The captain's
stories were only words strung one after the other-all the legends just
words and nothing more. Now I would see for myself After all, that was
what I wanted.
The last of the sunset torched the upper spires so that for a moment
they looked like bloody spears. Imagination, that's all it was. A
writer's imagination. I clutched at my battered weekender and continued
onward, puffing, for the way was steep. But I had arrived at just the
right time of the day when the scorching sun was gone from the sky and
night's deep chill had not yet settled over the land.
The air was rich with the scents of the sea, an agglomeration so fecund
it took my breath away. Far off over the water, great gulls twisted and
turned in lazy circles, skimming over the shining face of
the ocean only to whirl high aloft, disappearing for long moments into
the fleecy pink and yellow clouds.
From the outside, the castle seemed stupendous. It was immense,
thrusting upward into the sky as if it were about to take off in flight.
It was constructed-obviously many years ago-from massive blocks of
granite laced with iridescent chips of mica that shone like diamonds,
rubies and sapphires in the evening's light.
A fairy tale castle it surely looked with its shooting turrets and
sharply angled spires, horned and horrific. However, on closer
inspection, I saw that it had been put together with nothing more
fantastic than mortar.
Below me, a mist was beginning to form, swiftly climbing the route I had
taken moments before as if following me. Already the sight of the quay
had been snuffed out and the cries of the gulls, filtered through the
stuff, were eerie and vaguely disquieting.
I climbed the basalt steps to the front door of the castle. The span
was fully large enough to drive a semi through. It was composed of a
black substance that seemed to be neither stone nor metal. Cautiously,
I ran my hand over its textured surface. It was petrified wood .
In its center was a circular scrollwork knocker of black iron and this I
used.
There was surprisingly little noise but almost immediately the door
swung inward. At first I could see nothing. The creeping mist had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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