Read Online All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris - Free Book Online
Authors: John Farris
Tags: Horror
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"Dear God, you can't be serious!"
"Nhora, he went directly for Boss, and Nancy. Nancy surely would have died if I hadn't pushed her aside. Here's something else I don't understand: Twice Clipper had the advantage, either time he could have killed me with a stroke. But he acted as if he didn't recognize me. And of course everyone, including Clipper, believed I wouldn't be there in time for the wedding."
"What are you getting at?"
"The second time I was flat on my back on the altar, half-blind from the dust of the plaster that had fallen. The point of his saber was against my collarbone. 'Not you,' Clipper said. 'Not here.' I took him literally, thinking there was some lunatic reason why he didn't want to spill my blood on the altar. The truth is, as far as Clipper was concerned I wasn't there at all . I wasn't an entry in his bloody cotillion program."
"Butâthenâit sounds almost as if he were drugged."
"Or in a psychotic seizure similar to hypnotism. Obviously Clipper intended to destroy every member of the family within his ken. If you'd been in your place beside Boss and NancyâSheer luck we weren't all lined up in that pew waiting for him to come down on us like an angel of death."
"Why?"
"There's no way we'll ever learn the answer to that."
"I'm not so sure. Did he keep a diary?"
"I don't know. Boss encouraged him to."
"All of Clipper's things are in a bedroom on the third floor," Nhora said.
The small guest room under the eaves was chilly. There was firewood in a brass chest on the hearth. Nhora helped to get a fire going. The sound of rain was loud on the roof. We searched Clipper's belongings for the diary we presumed would be there. I felt sickened by this violation of my brother's privacy, though it couldn't matter anymore. But it was late and I was more frightened than I could say of emanations, the unexplained. I was obscurely, conscious of Clipper's haunting displeasure in the room. Despite the fire, Nhora's teeth chattered intermittently, and her hands when I touched them in the course of our search seemed clammy. She tried to smile and hunched her shoulders. I put an arm around her and we paused, not speaking, to catch our breath and take heart.
And we found a diary, under lock and key in a strongbox.
Nhora sat beside me on the bed as I turned pages, each beautifully calligraphic. Clipper's diary was detailed and intensely personal, but in a totally unexpected, shocking way. There was little in these pages of his achievements at school, no thoughts that revealed how he felt about the direction his life was taking. He seldom mentioned Boss, or Dasharoons. Hunting, riding, football were ignored. What he had chosen to write about were his sexual adventures. It was difficult to believe he could have been so active in the two years the diary covered, with such a variety of young girlsâranging from one whom I knew to be just fourteen years old, to mature, for the most part married, women.
As soon as I realized what I would be reading over and over, I tried to close the diary. But Nhora stopped me. "No," she said. "Keep reading. All of it. Don't you see how important it is?"
I didn't see, but we continued to read together. He spelled the Latin words badly, but most of it was couched in readily understandable English. I couldn't keep track of all his conquests. The girls Clipper's age or younger were named and described with scatological relish. They were from all parts of the country: poor black girls from Dasharoons, socialites from Sweetbriar. From some of his accounts it was plain that girls who had resisted him were raped. The compliant ones, those who appeared many times in his feverish chronicle, had been subjected to gross indignities which Clipper apparently believed they enjoyed.
"This is ninety percent fantasy," I said.
Nhora looked queerly at me. "I don't think so. Let's finish it."
"Girls who are not feebleminded could never allow themselves to be smeared
"Dear God, you can't be serious!"
"Nhora, he went directly for Boss, and Nancy. Nancy surely would have died if I hadn't pushed her aside. Here's something else I don't understand: Twice Clipper had the advantage, either time he could have killed me with a stroke. But he acted as if he didn't recognize me. And of course everyone, including Clipper, believed I wouldn't be there in time for the wedding."
"What are you getting at?"
"The second time I was flat on my back on the altar, half-blind from the dust of the plaster that had fallen. The point of his saber was against my collarbone. 'Not you,' Clipper said. 'Not here.' I took him literally, thinking there was some lunatic reason why he didn't want to spill my blood on the altar. The truth is, as far as Clipper was concerned I wasn't there at all . I wasn't an entry in his bloody cotillion program."
"Butâthenâit sounds almost as if he were drugged."
"Or in a psychotic seizure similar to hypnotism. Obviously Clipper intended to destroy every member of the family within his ken. If you'd been in your place beside Boss and NancyâSheer luck we weren't all lined up in that pew waiting for him to come down on us like an angel of death."
"Why?"
"There's no way we'll ever learn the answer to that."
"I'm not so sure. Did he keep a diary?"
"I don't know. Boss encouraged him to."
"All of Clipper's things are in a bedroom on the third floor," Nhora said.
The small guest room under the eaves was chilly. There was firewood in a brass chest on the hearth. Nhora helped to get a fire going. The sound of rain was loud on the roof. We searched Clipper's belongings for the diary we presumed would be there. I felt sickened by this violation of my brother's privacy, though it couldn't matter anymore. But it was late and I was more frightened than I could say of emanations, the unexplained. I was obscurely, conscious of Clipper's haunting displeasure in the room. Despite the fire, Nhora's teeth chattered intermittently, and her hands when I touched them in the course of our search seemed clammy. She tried to smile and hunched her shoulders. I put an arm around her and we paused, not speaking, to catch our breath and take heart.
And we found a diary, under lock and key in a strongbox.
Nhora sat beside me on the bed as I turned pages, each beautifully calligraphic. Clipper's diary was detailed and intensely personal, but in a totally unexpected, shocking way. There was little in these pages of his achievements at school, no thoughts that revealed how he felt about the direction his life was taking. He seldom mentioned Boss, or Dasharoons. Hunting, riding, football were ignored. What he had chosen to write about were his sexual adventures. It was difficult to believe he could have been so active in the two years the diary covered, with such a variety of young girlsâranging from one whom I knew to be just fourteen years old, to mature, for the most part married, women.
As soon as I realized what I would be reading over and over, I tried to close the diary. But Nhora stopped me. "No," she said. "Keep reading. All of it. Don't you see how important it is?"
I didn't see, but we continued to read together. He spelled the Latin words badly, but most of it was couched in readily understandable English. I couldn't keep track of all his conquests. The girls Clipper's age or younger were named and described with scatological relish. They were from all parts of the country: poor black girls from Dasharoons, socialites from Sweetbriar. From some of his accounts it was plain that girls who had resisted him were raped. The compliant ones, those who appeared many times in his feverish chronicle, had been subjected to gross indignities which Clipper apparently believed they enjoyed.
"This is ninety percent fantasy," I said.
Nhora looked queerly at me. "I don't think so. Let's finish it."
"Girls who are not feebleminded could never allow themselves to be smeared
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