Judas Goat by Gifune Greg F

Author:Gifune, Greg F. [Gifune, Greg F.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781934546802
Publisher: DarkFuse
Published: 2010-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

* * * *

Once back at the cottage, Lenny added more wood to the stove and stoked the fire until he had it going stronger. Within moments the chill had left him and the house was toasty warm. He extinguished one lamp and took the other with him into the living room. Placing the lockbox on the coffee table, he surveyed the room and dark adjacent kitchen. Satisfied no one could be watching him unless they were outside and hidden among the trees, he sat on the couch. Physically, emotionally and mentally spent, he stared at the box. The last twenty-four hours had been so intense it felt like he’d lived a week in one harrowing day. Lenny could feel himself beginning to shut down, and sinking into the comfortable couch only made matters worse. The idea of sleep, of recharging his batteries and clearing his mind so he might approach all this with a good night of rest under his belt was appealing. But he hadn’t slept well in months. Sleep was no longer a means of escape, it was a battlefield. The only things waiting for him behind that veil were twisted dreams and upsetting memories, truth and fantasy entangled and blurred, fingerprints left behind in shadow, smudged across ever-narrowing windows of time and night. And even were he to attempt it, could sleep be a real possibility here, in this place?

Again, the memory of Sheena’s face came to him, her eyes filled with tears.

Night…so many years ago…Sheena sitting on the floor…head bowed…

He tried to shut it out, but resisting only made it stronger.

Lost…she looked so lost and wounded…so vulnerable in her nudity.

“I’m sorry,” he heard himself say, his voice distant and distorted, just barely his own.

“And do you think that absolves you?” she asked.

“I’ve always hoped so. Sometimes I’ve even prayed it would.”

“Do you feel forgiven, Lenny? Do you feel clean?”

Reminded of the long-ago Roman Catholic masses of his youth, he remembered having been an altar boy, and the words priests spoke as he trickled water over their hands in a symbolic gesture of purification. If Lenny listened carefully he could still hear their hushed voices drifting across the arched ceilings of that beautiful old building of wood and stained-glass.

“…wash away my iniquities…cleanse me from my sin.”

Time shifted, and the memories slipped away.

Lenny rubbed his eyes and sighed. What had really happened to Sheena, and why, in death, had she brought him here?

He flipped open the lockbox and began with the notebook.

It began not as a journal but rather a series of fairly straightforward entries from various source materials concerning mirrors and magic. A few pages in, the notes became more extensive, covering the history of mirrors and their relation to magic, myth and spiritualism throughout the ages—The mirror dated back to ancient times…Biblical references labeled them ‘looking glasses’...Man first became fascinated with his reflection in pools of water…The earliest examples of mirrors were fashioned from flattened and polished metals, chiefly copper…In Rome mirrors were often made

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