Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3 by Michael Kelly

Author:Michael Kelly [Kelly, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780995094918
Amazon: 0995094918
Publisher: Undertow Publications
Published: 2016-10-10T22:00:00+00:00

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I suppose I was hanging about in my dear mother’s care for at least three weeks on that occasion; and, whatever the reason, I have to admit that I did not dream of Clarinda again. In fact, I did not resume dreaming about her for nearly a year, though ever since then I have done so frequently, and glad I am of it.

Some time during the three weeks, I had a letter from a firm of solicitors. I knew about them. They were Bream & Ladywell’s solicitors. Clarinda, raised in finance and in disaster, had not omitted to make her will; and she had left me £100 and a little box from Goa, whence, as she had told me, her real family had long ago come, for all her pale hair and fragile frame. I hardly knew what to think. But not even that incident made me dream again of Clarinda; not yet awhile.

However, there was something else that happened; something that would have given anyone a turn. Among other things, it showed how swiftly the word could get about, and not only the mere word.

As the days passed, I had taken to strolling about the local roads and woodlands, partly because my mother said it would be good for me and I wished to please her, partly in order to think hard about what it would be best for me to do next in my life. It was November now, with snow imminent but never quite falling, and my mother wrapped me up so tightly that I could hardly have strolled at all if I had not each afternoon surreptitiously discarded the half of it in my father’s small, disused shed before I set out.

I had to stroll alone. My mother’s friends were elderly, and of course the youth of the district were normally hard at it during my strolling hours, when they were not laid up themselves. My father liked only precise and purposeful activity, as on the Cowholt golf course, or in the Coolins. My mother could not go out for long, as my father, like many men in retirement, did not like it. Fortunately, I had no objection to strolling alone. I took it that I could think better.

The immediate neighbourhood was made up of huge houses, in many different styles, which people could no longer afford fully to maintain, so that they were two-thirds shut up, or which had already been divided and sub-divided, or sold out to the bureaucrats. One of these, six or seven houses down the hill from Scarsdale, and on the same side of the road, was a particularly fine edifice in the Dalmatian style, or perhaps the Illyrian, which seemingly had never been occupied at any time during the short period I had known the district. The crenellations were crumbling, and the elaborate stackpipes parting from their ornamental cramps. Such desolate structures were also a common feature of the area by that time: no-one quite knew what was happening to them.

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