Read Online Ghosts of Chinatown by Wesley Robert Lowe - Free Book Online Page B

Everything is fine and there is no pain, no stains on his hands.
    All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. It’s the echo from the mind’s recesses from so long ago.
    He buries his face into his hands. “Why? Why?”
    The truth is, Todd suspects the answer and much as he’d like to leave this place, this city, there is something compelling him to stay, something he has searched for for years and something he thinks he will find soon.
    The truth.
    He slowly pulls his hands off his face, then rubs his fingers against his palms, all the while staring at his hands.
    He whimpers, “The dead are dead, aren’t they?” His teeth start chattering. “You’re dead, right? Right?”  
    He muses, his mind on Jasmine… again. He’s almost positive that he did not have anything to do with her death, yet there’s a little voice that speaks to him every now and then. “Todd, why did you do it? You could have stopped, you should have stopped but you didn’t.” He feels a crushing guilt but at the same time just doesn’t believe that is was him.
    Except there are the images of Jasmine that have followed him around the world. No matter where he is, no matter how remote the village, no matter how large the city, somehow her image comes back. The mind is the devil’s playground. Is it her or is it his guilty imagination or is it his desperate longing for a woman that he still loves?
    There’s no answer as he takes the few steps back to the living room and sits at the piano, grabbing the open bottle of the illegal liquor. He has no enjoyment as he lifts the bottle over his head, pouring it directly into his mouth, draining every remaining drop.  
    He blinks at the bloodied piano, then gapes as the child's ball rolls across the room and right through the wall. He staggers to the wall where the ball went through and feels it—the wall is solid.
    World spinning dizzily around him, Todd stumbles into the bedroom, then collapses onto his bed. He whimpers, “No, no...”
    He passes out, releasing a huge grunt. His is not the calm, deep, rhythmic sleep of the innocent but the fitful restlessness of the damned. Only the alcohol gives reason for his moments of slumber and there is uneven, heavy snoring.
    There is the sound of a door creaking open ever so quietly but Todd is so out of it, he’s not even aware that it happened.

    ***

    In the kitchen, Cam noiselessly enters, brandishing the Tibetan blade of death. He slaps it silently against his palm as he treads lightly across the floor. This is a man who is used to taking life. He knows the inherent dangers and risks but then there is the thrill of the chase, the euphoria of the kill.  
    Crossing the hallway to the bedroom, Cam twirls the knife with the ease of someone who is totally familiar with the weapon as he treads softly, stopping as a mouse scoots in front of him. He grunts a silent grunt. For all the better mousetraps that have been invented since the days of creation, none have succeeded in annihilating these miserable rodents.
    Cam silently resumes his steps and slips into Todd’s bedroom and stands at the entrance, where he sees Todd tossing, turning, rolling onto his back... then finally onto his stomach.
    Finally Todd curls himself up into the fetus position at the edge of the bed.  
    Shaking... shuddering... stopping.
    Cam approaches silently and stealthily toward Todd, stopping at the side of the bed. There is frustration in his eyes as he hovers over the pianist in his fetal position. Frustration yet knowledge that there is a job to be done.
    Cam drives the knife toward Todd’s head but at the last possible moment, a hand pushes the knife into the wooden bed frame, an inch from Todd’s head.
    Cam looks up and sees Jasmine. “What the hell are you doing?”
    Jasmine hisses at Cam. “No! What the hell are you doing?”
    “Shit, you just about polished him off.”
    “Me? I saved him. You drove the knife.”
    “Yeah, and I aimed six inches away