A Dark Matter by Peter Straub

Author:Peter Straub
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Psychic trauma, Nineteen sixties, Horror, High school students, Rites and ceremonies, Fiction, Suspense Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Horror fiction, Madison (Wis.), Good and evil
ISBN: 9780385516389
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-01-12T07:51:17+00:00

“There was a huge student protest that turned into a riot on that same day?” I burst out. “How come this is the first I ever heard of it?”

“Hell, man,” Olson put in, “there were protests and demonstrations and riots all over the place in those days. It just slowed us down a little. No big deal. Even the Capital Times didn’t say much about it. Like two paragraphs.”

“Because the Cap Times wanted to downplay everything antiwar, don’t you get it? You guys were in such a bubble, you didn’t notice that things were falling apart all around us, and you didn’t care that we wound up being way, way off schedule!”

“What schedule?” Olson looked genuinely puzzled.

“Aah! Why do I put up with you?” Meredith yelled. A door opened, and Vardis Fleck’s gleaming head poked through the gap. His mistress waved him away.

I remembered a detail from my wife’s grudging accounts of the days spent under Mallon’s spell before the rite in the meadow.

“Yes, the schedule,” I said.

Meredith Walsh swung her tight, furious face toward me and drilled me with an unspoken question.

“You’re talking about the time frame you developed by doing a horoscope of the group. You were supposed to begin by … I don’t remember. Seven-twenty?”

“Exactly,” she said. “Donald, do you remember? He did, and he wasn’t even there! Do you know how much work it is, to work up a star chart and do a horoscope? I did that for free, I did it out of love, and none of you little jackasses took it seriously!”

“Hey, things happened,” Olson said. “You gotta go with the flow.”

“No, you don’t. We were held up by a good ninety minutes, maybe more. By then, things had changed. We weren’t in the optimum position for success anymore. We should have bagged it, we should have called a rain date. We should have gone home to our hovels and waited until I could work out the next time we’d have a chance of success.”

“A lousy hour and a half,” Don said.

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