Dead of Winter by Kealan Patrick Burke

Author:Kealan Patrick Burke [Burke, Kealan Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror, +IPAD, +UNCHECKED
Amazon: B004GHN5YG
Goodreads: 9933459
Publisher: Kealan Patrick Burke
Published: 2010-12-14T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

This is insane.

Jake bowed his head against the wet white kisses the sky drove into their faces. Already his skin felt numb and sore, his nose wet and dripping, knees raging with the agony of battling through the ankle-deep drifts that hunkered against the light like protective mothers.

The buildings on both sides of Brennan Street stood like monoliths, fringed with snow and twinkling with the ice that bejeweled them. In some, dim yellow light hugged the frosted windows; in others there was no light at all. Vehicles hunched against the curbs wore scaled skins of white. For such a change in the costume of the earth, noise was expected, but it was as if silence itself fell in shreds from the darkness above.

Lenny was a rail-thin silhouette against the gathering of lights at the head of Brennan Street, his stride purposeful, shoulders tight, hands jammed into his pockets, breath pluming.

Jake squinted, hobbling through the packed snow as fast as he could bear it, praying his knees wouldn’t quit on him. The thought of ending up face down in that cold fluffy mold was enough to send shivers rippling through him. “Lenny, slow down,” he called at one stage but his cry went either unheard or unheeded.

Lenny moved on, Jake struggling to keep up and wondering, as he guessed his friend was, what the hell Baxter had to report and what he’d do when he found they’d left the house rather than wait.

He prayed Joanne was all right, though a selfish part of him, a mindless, insensitive creature he kept locked away in the foulest recesses of his subconscious, yearned for her to be dead, so Lenny could share in his suffering. So he would no longer have to face the nights alone. Lenny’s advice was good, but it welled from a shallow pond in which his friend had never washed, a source that sprung from sympathy, not empathy.

Only through his own loss could he understand Jake’s and then, they could help each other through the dark.

Jesus, Jake thought, snapping back to himself, what the hell is wrong with you?

He’d been friends with Joanne almost as long as he’d known Lenny. She was a small, stout woman, full of well meaning bluster but more than capable of adopting an evil temper if it suited her needs. In many ways, she was her husband’s polar opposite and in this case at least, the old saying about attraction held true. Their love was as strong as Jake and Julia’s had been, even if the Quicks' method of maintaining their relationship was to feign indifference towards each other and to trade sarcastic barbs as much as possible.

Remembering that malevolent whisper from the back of Jake’s mind brought a rush of guilt so strong it was almost debilitating and only a quick glance at the seething white mass engulfing his feet kept him moving.

Six blocks did a respectable impression of twelve before they reached Lenny’s house – a small two-story stucco with sagging gutters and a crumbling chimney electric heating made redundant.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.