Read Online Ash Wednesday by Chet Williamson, Neil Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

explode on either side. Drowning. Drowning in blood . He bent down to lift the boy out of the red pool, and his limbs moved slowly, as through a thick jelly. But as his fingers finally touched the yellow-brown shoulders, the head came up of its own accord and turned toward him, the almond eyes glowing, the cheeks and mouth crimson with gore. The nostrils were pulsing rhythmically like an animal's, and between the teeth Brad could see, just disappearing down the bobbing throat, a morsel of what the boy had been feeding on.
    Eating the dead .
    The terror started low in him, at the knees, and moved up with the force of a riptide, and suddenly the boy's eyes were his, and he was looking up at himself, no longer naked, but clothed in khaki. He ignored his own horrified expression and felt a growl form deep in his throat. In another second he had sunk his head into the open wound of the man beneath him, blowing air out through his nose like a diver, and, despite the mind that shrieked at him to stop, began to tear and gnaw with strong white teeth at the slick, gleaming viscera within the bloody cavern. The bubbling increased in volume, rising in pitch, until he realized that what he heard was his own strangled voice trying to shout himself awake.
    He came to consciousness with a start and a sob, striking his head against the headboard in his haste to pull himself erect, as though remaining prone would throw him back into the nightmare.
    Bonnie awoke immediately. He could hear the panic in her voice. "Brad? Brad!"
    He couldn't speak at first, couldn't answer. He tasted the salty sting of blood in his mouth.
    "Brad? What's wrong?"
    "Nothing," he was finally able to say. "I'm all right.—
    "Bad dream?"
    "Uh-huh." He let her put an arm around him and pull him down beside her, but he would not go back to sleep. He was too scared. After Bonnie fell asleep he went into the kitchen and opened a beer. It relaxed him, so he had another. And another. After the third, he thought he could sleep, and he did, dreamlessly.
    From that night on he would not go to bed without having at least thirty-six ounces of beer in his stomach, and sometimes more. He never had the nightmare again that vividly, but traces of it would creep into his mind when sleep took him, making him awaken with a start.
    The temper returned as quickly as it had fled, and Bonnie began looking for excuses to be away from home with the kids on weekends. Left alone, Brad drank harder, and Sunday nights were often times of mental savagery in the Meyers home, Bonnie and the children returning to find Brad drunk and sullen, with perhaps two or three friends from Universal in nearly as nasty a mood. One night Brad suggested that they "pull a train" on Bonnie. She hadn't known what he meant until later, but luckily the others were not so drunk as not to be embarrassed by Brad's offer. The party broke up early that night.
    Brad was not always difficult to live with. At times he was kind and loving. Holidays seemed to bring out his better nature, and he loved going trick or treating with Frankie and Linda Marie, cutting out paper turkeys and Pilgrims to decorate the house at Thanksgiving, trimming the tree, always a live one, and setting up his old Lionel O gauge in the basement at Christmas. There were times when things he would do or say would wrench her heart, and she would find herself wishing that he would never be kind, would always be an unmitigated son of a bitch so that she would not be forced to love him. But when she saw him bending over Frankie's bed, tucking the covers around his fragile shoulders. whispering "I love you, pal" and meaning it, when he pushed the light brown curls back from Linda Marie's sweating forehead on summer nights and blew gently on the girl's face to cool her, kissing her softly before he left the room, when she saw these things, she weakened, and hugged him, and decided to wait a little longer, give him another chance to make up for his last outburst,