Black Angel by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd.

6

Linda was waiting up for him. Without a word, she held him tight and hugged him, and he could feel her tears through his shirt.

“I’m okay,” he reassured her. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

“Oh, but Larry! Your poor mother!”

“I don’t think she really knew what hit her.”

“What were you doing on Van Ness? I don’t understand it.”

Larry went through to the kitchen, took down a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard and poured himself half a glassful. He swallowed almost all of it in three large gulps.

Linda said, “Larry! You’re going to have such a hangover.”

“Thank you for your consideration, my mother died tonight and I have a hangover already.”

“Are they going to charge the truck-driver?” asked Linda.

“What with? It wasn’t his fault. She ran out in front of him.”

“Oh, Larry, I’m so sorry.”

“Sure. Me, too.”

“I haven’t told the boys yet. I thought it would be better, coming from you.”

Larry nodded. He didn’t want to discuss his mother any more. He had thought that—when he got home—he would be able to tell Linda everything that had happened, talk it all out. At least if he started to talk about it, he could begin to absolve himself of some of the guilt. But now he was here, he felt strangely secretive about it; strangely defensive. He still had to work it out inside his own mind before he could tell Linda about it. He believed it himself because he had seen it with his own eyes, but he didn’t feel like persuading Linda to believe it.

He could see everything that had happened tonight in the sharpest of detail. The little girl with pondwater gouting out of her mouth. His mother’s life, vomited up in front of him. His mother’s black coat, dropping empty to the floor. The tractor-trailer, desperately trying to brake. His mother’s blood, his mother’s lungs. Two yellowish balloons, glued to the pavement; like jester’s bladders.

“The best thing you can do is get some sleep,” said Linda, laying her hand on his arm.

“Sure thing,” he told her. He finished the last of his whiskey, and she took the glass away from him and kissed him.

He went to the bathroom and stood on the scales. One hundred and seventy-three. He’d lost thirteen pounds. Samantha Bacon had been right. Lose Weight With The World Beyond.

He washed his teeth. Afterwards, he hesitated, then picked up the nailbrush and scrubbed at the palm of his left hand until it was sore. He stared at it closely. Unless the shadows started moving across it, there was no way of telling whether he had managed to erase the moving pictures or not. Just for good measure, he chafed his hand with a pumice stone, until he had abraded a whole layer of skin, and his hand felt as if it were on fire. Then he went to bed and switched off the light. But he couldn’t sleep. He kept hearing Linda in the kitchen, clearing up the dishes, and the sad lost sounds of foghorns in the Golden Gate.

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