Downward to Darkness by Brian McNaughton

Author:Brian McNaughton [McNaughton, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Horror
ISBN: 9781587152597
Google: 2log-47_mIwC
Amazon: 1587152592
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2000-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Eight

Frank was suspicious of his euphoric mood, but not even the most vigorous self-analysis could dispel it. Disaster was a word pitifully inadequate to describe the Hallowe'en party. Disaster had stumbled upon the heels of disaster. Any one of them, taken by itself, might have driven a lesser man to suicide. Yet here he stood at his easel, swept up in a creative frenzy and all but laughing out of sheer high spirits and self-satisfaction as he worked.

The work was difficult, perhaps the most difficult he had ever undertaken, but he felt eminently capable of doing it. He had spent almost all of Sunday trying every conceivable combination of his Winsor Newton oils before he had hit upon a simple blend of burnt umber with cadmium orange to create the precise shade of her dark-red hair. The certainty that he had achieved perfection in this one small thing was enough reason for euphoria.

Balanced against that little triumph was the fact that he had lost his most important magazine connection, and perhaps a few others. It didn't seem to matter very much. He had wasted far too much of his life on commercial hackwork anyway. It was long past time that he did something he wanted to do—something he urgently needed to do. Losing Roberts had most likely been a blessing in disguise, a much-needed kick out of a comfortable rut.

Thinking about Roberts came close to souring his mood, but not even the memory of that disgusting incident could fully quell his high spirits. Trying hard to remember the details, his attitude was more accurately one of bewilderment than disgust. He couldn't remember having drunk all that much, but he must have drunk himself into a truly psychotic state in order to confuse a voluptuous young woman with that creature. Even in bed he had been deceived, although the details of their dalliance were mercifully dim. He did recall that he'd actually been screwing him when the lights crashed on and he came to his senses. No, he couldn't say that he'd come to his senses, not even then, because he'd reacted by trying to bash poor Roberts into a pulp. The final irony was added when Howard Ashcroft, who had been asked to the party only for his value as a loony conversation-piece, had restrained him and talked him back to a semblance of rationality.

And Patrick—what kind of evil vibrations had been charging the air that night? It was reprehensible that he should have hit Roberts; it was an uncharacteristic reaction and, all things considered, an unfair one; however, in his younger days, he had struck other men. But as far as he knew, Patrick had never hit anybody in his life. He would have been willing to bet that he was incapable of it. Yet he had not only hit somebody, he had put him in the hospital in a coma. He had learned of that this morning, when somebody named Curtis had called and babbled about a lawsuit against him and his brutal monster of a son.

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