Read Online Dagon by Fred Chappell - Free Book Online Page A

to talk to me about it. You don’t even know whether you ever will talk to me again. You’re as transparent as a child. Fuck you, just fuck you, Peter Le­land.”
    He turned amazed, his torso jerked around, and she flung at him the cup of coffee. Her face was hot and white, pale as her eyes. She threw it at him with the awkward grace of a ten-year-old boy. —The fierce coffee splashed on his shoulder and side. The cup smashed on one of the tub faucets. Coffee, the dark stain, spread in the water like a storm filling the sky. He could not speak, could not think; could never have guessed her violence. She did not relent. She marched out, again tightly military, not glanc­ing at him. Going away, she held her back and shoulders stiff. She didn’t slam the door, didn’t close it. The cold air of the hall poured in on him.
    He could not speak, he could not smile at her rage. He had never felt less humorous. He got up very slowly and carefully. It was hard to see the chips of the broken cup in the darkened water. He sat poised on the edge of the tub, searching the floor. There lay the slim curved handle of the cup, retaining its identity in a sur­prising manner. He picked his way tiptoe over the floor and put on his underwear and his socks and shoes. Then he felt safer, but no better. He picked up the shards from the floor and dropped them into the toilet; he drained the tub, but let the broken china remain.
    Then he felt that he had nothing to do, he was at a loss. Had it really been so bad, trapped in the chains? He went through, sensing the whole presence of the house about him, and in the kitchen took down cup and saucer and poured coffee. A package of Sheila’s menthol-flavored cigarettes lay on the table and he got one out and lit it. He hadn’t smoked one of this sort since he was twenty years old. The sensation was sur­prising, but not unpleasant. He puffed assidu­ously and felt gratified. He drank the coffee slowly. Then he rose; he felt, rather than heard, Sheila’s movements in the upstairs bedroom. She was readying for bed.
    He went back through the house again, turn­ing out the lights, and he mounted the stairs in the dark, sliding his hand along the solid cool banister. As he went up, it came to him how the things in the house, the furniture, even the stairs and the walls, seemed important to him, seemed to mean intelligible puzzling comments, while things not connected with the house, with his new knowledge—whatever sort it was—did not touch and were unimportant. Even alien, per­haps. What real connection did Sheila have with the house, with his past? With him? The thought felt true, that she was an intruder, nettlesome.
    She lay in the bed with her face turned away from him toward the wall. The bed had a high solid headboard, about six feet tall, and was dark, like almost all the furniture in the house. Her pale head looked small, settled at the bot­tom of the headboard, not larger than a thumb­nail. It would be best not to speak to her. She had left only the lamp on the big dark vanity burning, and by this light he undressed. His body was reflected in the three mirrors. He looked extremely pallid—the lamp was very small and had a clear white shade—but he looked dark too somehow. It was as if his body gathered some of the darkness of the furnish­ings, or as if it had been tinged by the thick obscurity of the attic. Especially about his eyes the shadows stayed, and the eyes too looked dark and liquescent, reflecting only in pinpoints the light of the lamp. He was extremely thin and ribby, as if there were just barely enough skin to cover him. But it all seemed natural.
    He turned off the lamp, went cautiously through the dark to the bed and clambered awkwardly in. The sheets were of coarse cotton, but they felt soothing. He stretched his thin legs and then let them relax, and it seemed he could feel strength draining into them again.