Read Online The Altonevers by Frederic Merbe - Free Book Online

whereabouts,” Rebecca says with a souring
face, “he didn’t send me. I came on my own”
    “ I'll be fine, as always,”
he says straightens his stack of chips.
    “ Yeah, well my hands are
tied if I get the whisper, so get back to it for you and
me...darling,” Rebecca says sarcastically.
    “ Isn't that something
you’re into anyway?” he laughs.
    “ Ha, always the joker huh,
please spare me the pleasure of having to slay you, will you. Take
care of yourself, you look like a mess.”
    “ What's he gonna do, kill
me,” He laughs.
    “ What about her?” Rebecca
snaps, he stops laughing. Instantly regretting that he's shown his
hand, and knowing that in one action, she knows that he cares, and
telling the resourceful Rebecca that, makes Anna’s life as good
leverage against his. The stone faced Cider is staring the Raveness
right in her big sharky pupils. Rebecca seems absolutely amazed by
what she's seeing, a glint of emotion in the eyes of a man whom she
knows to be a soulless savage, a slayer of men the Altos
over.
    “ Anna?” he says.
    “ Yeah.”
    “ This here is Rebecca. A
sweet young girl who lived high on the hills in a big, nice, house.
She had everything. It was a mansion.”
    “ Oh Shut up!” Rebecca says
scowling.
    “ But one thing, and she
went mad for it. That eternal feeling, of a soul who's made a
terrible choice over a terrible heartache for a boy. Her heart
fluttered like the doves and cardinal's from her yard and garden,
for him only. So timid, meek even, nice this girl was. But the boy
didn’t love the girl, and she felt invisible to him. So what does
she do?”
    Rebecca sighs, and breathes in a
breath of her smoke, Cider pauses for a shot, and Anna's still
gawking at her head with a hole in it.
    “ She went up to the boy
countless times, but one time thinking maybe, hoping, just maybe if
I show him. Tell him how I really feel, that I love him, he'll see
that he feels what I do. As though she would be shining her soul to
him, she thought, and he'll see right through her chest. He was a
good friend of her relative, so he simply didn't see her in that
way, though to her he didn’t see her at all, that he was looking
through her as she broke down and cried, and he walked away. So she
runs home, to her house on the hills with a great lawn and marble
monuments, and a lake and woods as the backyard,” he
says.
    Rebecca sits silently, not even
seeming to breath anymore, reliving her life as he tells
it.
    “ It was a silent spring
day, breezeless. The lake in her yard rimmed by low branches
reaching far over its surface, outlining the still reflection of a
calm sky. Fresh green dewed grass under red and gold fall leaved
trees. Right?”
    “ Continue,” Rebecca
sighs.
    “ She floats in a row boat
broken hearted, rowing to the middle of the water with sorrow
soaked eyes. Crying and staining her white sun dress with tears.
Giving up rowing, she lazily floats for awhile across the still
reflection, staring to the sky. Unable to stop crying and
trembling, she eventually stands, tying a rope to her leg and a
cinder block to the rope. Lifting the cinder block with her left
and with the other hand pointing a gun, belonging to her mother, to
her head while leaning over the boat’s side. Expecting to shoot,
blow the heartache and sink to the bottom of the lake and drown out
of her misery. To disappear completely, becoming invisible to the
world, as she feels invisible to the boy.” Cider pauses, “so young,
and so naive. She doesn’t though, become invisible. Instead she
shoots herself in the head, but doesn’t die right away or even fall
in the water.
    After the pop, she falls flat on her
back as dead weight to the bottom of the boat. Sadly still living,
though paralyzed. What’re the odds of that? The cement block cracks
the boat’s bottom. She stares blankly to the sky as blood gushes
from the side of her nearly brain dead head. Reddening the fresh
water slowly filling the row boat, and