The Children's Home by Charles Lambert

Author:Charles Lambert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2016-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

in which Trilby and Pate return to the house

A few weeks after that, when the weather had turned for the worse, Trilby and Pate came back. They weren’t alone this time. Morgan was wandering from his bedroom along the hall upstairs when he heard noises outside; engines being turned off, voices; he hurried across the landing to one of the windows that overlooked the drive. There were two black cars, both armored, and a group of men beside them, among them Trilby and Pate. One of the men he didn’t recognize had opened the back door of the larger car and was letting out a pair of dogs on leashes. For a moment he saw his mother’s wolfhounds before him as the two gray dogs tugged towards the house, their mouths open; the stronger of the two began to bark and was whipped across the haunches with the loose end of a leash. Trilby and Pate were in suits, as they had been the first time, but the other men, five of them, were in a sort of uniform that meant nothing to Morgan, olive-green trousers and jackets, heavy boots, belts; one of them was black with ringlets of oiled hair to his shoulders, the others had blond hair shaved almost to the scalp. They all wore slim metal batons dangling from their waists. Hardly breathing, Morgan watched Trilby take off his hat and wipe his forehead on his sleeve before replacing it. When one of the uniformed men glanced up towards the house, Morgan darted back from the glass; he was shocked to realize that, for minutes together, he had forgotten how he looked. Had he been seen by them? he wondered, his heart beating fast. He stood there, trying to calm down. When he heard a noise behind him, he knew that he would find David.

The boy was holding something out to him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, walking towards Morgan. He seemed to have grown in the last few days; not just taller, but older. He looked now like a young adolescent, slightly ungainly, his wrists and ankles too thin for the rest of him. He reminded Morgan of the Doctor, of how the Doctor might have been as a teenage boy, and also of himself; he had Morgan’s beauty. Then Morgan saw what he was being offered. He shuddered.

“Where did this come from?” he said.

“That doesn’t matter now. Put it on,” said the boy in a low flat voice, as though he were talking in his sleep or reading from a card. His eyes were fixed on Morgan’s.

Morgan took hold of the hollow face, which felt as though it were made of flesh-colored wax and weighed almost nothing, and lifted it rapidly to his own. For a moment he could see nothing; he must have closed his eyes as the face approached, its inner side towards him. His hands were brisk and eager as they pressed the cool wax to the wounds and to the part of him that was healthy, without distinction.

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