Night Warriors [2] Death Dream by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812521764
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1988-06-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twelve

John at last sank into sleep. He slept dreamlessly at first, breathing so lightly that when Sister Clare came to check him on her eleven o'clock round, she had to lean over his bed and listen close to his mouth to make sure that he was still alive.

In Solana Beach, California, in his room over Miller's Mini-Market, Lenny stood by the window looking out over the backyard fences toward the ocean. It was only eight o'clock, and he had slept so heavily last night that he didn't feel like going to bed yet.

He had never seen the ocean look so pale and colorless. It was almost white. A coastal fog had been predicted for the morning, and it looked as if it were gathering already.

Lenny was beginning to miss his daddy badly. Mr.. and Mrs.. Miller had been warm and friendly; they had bathed him and fed him corned-beef hash and lent him a Popeye T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts to use for pajamas. But he still yearned to see his daddy's face, and to hear his voice saying, 'Come on, champ, you can do it.'

For some reason, Gil had told his father and mother that Lenny was the younger brother of a college friend of his, whose parents had been urgently called to Mexico because this college friend had been injured in a motorcycle accident.

Lenny didn't know why he had to lie. His daddy had always told him that lying was as bad as homicide: 'When you tell a lie, you murder the truth.' He had to pretend that his name was Sammy Gerber, and that he lived on a road called Manchester Avenue, and that he had a sister called Grace (who was staying with some other family) and a spotted terrier dog called Rasputin.

But Mr.. Springer had arrived at Mr.. Watkins's house early yesterday morning and taken Lenny away, even before Mr.. Watkins had woken up, and Mr.. Springer had told him that he had to pretend to be Sammy Gerber, at least for a little while; otherwise his daddy would get into serious trouble and so would he.

Springer had acted so anxious and so upset that Lenny had done what he was told. But now he had read all of Gil's old Secret Wars comics and watched television for a while, and there was nothing to do but kneel on the checkered blue cover of the bed and stare out the window at the cluttered yards behind the restaurants and stores along the Solana Beach boardwalk, and wish that he were back in Philadelphia.

The sun began to sink toward the sea. Lenny swallowed a lump in his throat, and felt the tears crawling slowly down his cheeks.

John opened his eyes. Yet, strangely, his eyelids were still closed. He could see the room all around him - the fan-shaped shadows that the Venetian blinds threw across the ceiling, the dull gleam of his bedhead and his drip-stand, the picture on the wall of summer fields, printed in bilious green and yellow-ocher.

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.