A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle

Author:Lisa Tuttle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2019-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

NEED

After ballet, Corey liked to walk home through the cemetery. The grounds were large and well tended and offered the visitor a wealth of picturesque monuments and sentimental gravestone inscriptions, some of them dating back before the Civil War. There were columns, slabs, and spheres in abundance of the pinkish marble that was quarried locally, and among the mausoleums built to look like temples, chapels, and houses was one defiant pink pyramid.

The walk through the cemetery, like the ballet class that preceded it, was one of the few things Corey enjoyed, something she did because she wanted to and not because she was expected to or thought she should.

On this October afternoon, crunching through the dead leaves and breathing in the crisp, autumn-scented air, Corey felt pleasantly tired, and looked forward to reaching her apartment where she could have a cup of hot tea and some sandwiches before settling down to write her usual evening letter to her fiancé.

But although she looked forward to those simple things, there was also pleasure in being able to delay them. With no one waiting for her and no schedule to follow, there was no reason to hurry back. It was a beautiful day, and she knew she had at least an hour before it would begin to get dark. So she turned aside from the main path and wandered the sloping, uneven ground among stone angels and headstones until she came to her favourite spot, discovered on a previous walk.

This was a bench beneath a large old oak tree with a view of a cluster of elaborately carved tombstones all commemorating various members of the Symonds family, and a statue of a gentle-faced young woman holding a baby, with a second child clutching at her stone draperies, half turned as if looking longingly at the graves.

‘It’s as if she were saying, “Why did you abandon me, and leave us here alone?” ’ said a voice behind her.

Corey jumped up and turned to see a young man in a bright blue windbreaker. He had a pleasant, rather weak-looking face, and seemed about her own age.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘I thought I was alone. I didn’t hear you walk up,’ she said, and realised she had pressed one hand against her heart; she let it drop, feeling embarrassed.

‘And in a cemetery . . . I don’t blame you for being frightened.’

‘I’m not,’ Corey said. ‘I was just startled, that’s all. I like cemeteries. I like this one, anyway. It’s peaceful. I often walk here.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I do, too. I spend a lot of time here. I’ve seen you, although I don’t suppose you ever noticed me. I’ve seen you, always by yourself, and I suppose I got to thinking that I knew you. That’s why I came up and spoke like I did. It was stupid of me, and rude – I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, really, I understand,’ Corey said. ‘You don’t have to keep apologizing.’ He gave off such an aura of unhappiness and unease that she felt obliged to try to lessen it.

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