The Cypress House by Michael Koryta

Author:Michael Koryta [Koryta, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, FIC031000
ISBN: 0340998261
Google: ElatLhjye0UC
Amazon: B00495ZCPK
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-24T06:00:00+00:00

33

IT TOOK HIM LONGER to tell it than he expected, and he was strangely nervous recalling the events, went through three cigarettes before he was done. Rebecca just listened. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t even give a murmur or a shake of the head as he spoke, never broke eye contact.

He told her about the way it had looked out there in the street, the wind blowing dust over the blood and Edwin Main with his coat flapping around him like some old-time gunslinger and the sheriff with his hat in his hands, and then he finished his last cigarette and put it out and it was quiet for a moment.

“So what happened then?” she asked eventually. “Who took you in?”

“Nobody took me in. I left.”

“Left?”

He nodded. “Worked in a mine for nearly a year, lived in a boardinghouse. The war was on in Europe, but we hadn’t stepped in yet. I figured I’d try to enlist. I was too young, but I lied about it and they let me in. Wasn’t a hard thing to do. After the mines, I didn’t seem much like a boy anymore.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen when I enlisted. I was almost nineteen before we started fighting, though.”

“You’ve never been back?”

“Hell, no. What’s there for me?”

She thought about it for a moment and then said, “This is what you meant when you said we were kindred.”

“Yes.”

“At least I didn’t have to see it happen,” she said. “But somehow that doesn’t seem much comfort.”

“I’d expect not.”

Out in the darkness the waves broke over the sand and insects trilled and there was the sound of something banging in the wind down by the boathouse.

Rebecca said, “How long was it before you realized he was right?”

Arlen frowned. “Pardon?”

“Your father. What he said about you having the gift.”

Arlen shook his head slowly. “He wasn’t right. I can’t speak with the dead, and neither could he. The man was crazy.”

“But you see warnings of death. You have for years.”

“That’s different.”

She pulled her head back. “How?”

“Nobody’s talking to the dead,” he said. “They can’t be talked to. They’re gone, Rebecca. Anyone who says anything else is as crazy as my father was.”

“So you don’t believe what he said about the dead woman.”

“No.”

“Then why would Edwin Main have shot him?”

Arlen felt a swelling of frustrated anger. There were a handful of reasons he’d never told the story, and this was one of them. He didn’t need some outsider telling him the crazy old bastard could have been right. Because if he had been… if he had been…

“Edwin Main was enraged,” Arlen said, “in the way any man might be after hearing the sort of story my father told. He reacted out of rage.”

“Was he arrested for shooting your father?”

“No.”

“But your father was in handcuffs! It was cold-blooded—”

“He was provoked,” Arlen said. “That’s what the sheriff ruled. Nobody argued.”

“I can’t understand how someone who’s had your experiences would be unable to believe in the possibility of what your father claimed,” she said.

“It’s a league of difference.

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.