Read Online The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors by Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan
Tags: United States, General, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories, Genre Fiction, Anthologies & Literary Collections, Anthologies, Anthologies & Literature Collections
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cemetery was utterly unthreatening. By trial and error she found the little bench, cracked in the middle and overgrown by weeds. The fountain was empty, clogged with years of vegetation. Too bad. She would have enjoyed this place of reflection.
She picked her way along the unkempt path until she stood in front of the Taite family plot, as she had last night. There was the grave, nearly hidden by brush. The Improbable lay before her, lighting the way to the Impossible. Christopher Standish Taite, aged forty-four, date of his passing a year after Wallyâs. No cause of death written in the ledger, no words of affection or praise carved into the tombstone.
Of course not.
But beside his name in the ledger Father Dean had inked a small St. Andrewâs Cross.
Amanda wondered who had killed him. Terryâs family? The other Taites? Some unknown member of the church, determined to equalize the balance? The one thing she knew for sure was that the last hereditary thurifer had not taken his own life, or he would not be buried here. Trinity and St. Michael was a stickler for excluding suicides.
Odd how one could grow so tangled in theology that justice became inverted. Wally rested in unhallowed ground. His uncle rested here.
Uneasily.
Repentant, but not seeking forgiveness; seeking instead to restore Trinity and St. Michael to what it had been before the wave of violence unleashed by his sin.
Amanda understood what the suffering Christopher Standish Taite did not, that you could move only forward in time. The church could never be what it had been in his lifetime. It could only be something new. But the traditions would help. Of that she was now sure.
She would have to find Wallyâs grave. It should not be that hard. She would find his resting place and pray to God to have mercy on his soul. But that would come later.
Amanda had carried the thurible from the Lady Chapel. She lit the coals, sprinkled incense from the boat, and murmured a blessing. She censed the graves before her. The cemetery was large, and the work would take her all year. No matter. She knelt in the grass, opened the book Christopher Taite had given her, and began chanting aloud the Litany for the Dead.
Me & Mr. Rafferty
LEE CHILD
I CAN TELL what kind of night it was by where I wake up. If Iâve been good, Iâm in bed. If Iâve been bad, Iâm on the sofa. Good or bad, you understand, only in the conventional sense of the words. The moral sense. The legal sense. Iâm always good in terms of performance. Always careful, always meticulous, always unbeatable. Letâs be clear about that. But letâs just say that some specific nighttime activities stress me more than others, tire me, waste me, leave me vulnerable to sudden collapse as soon as I step back into the sanctuary behind my own front door.
This morning I wake up on the hallway floor.
My face is pressed down on the carpet. I can taste its fibers on my lips. I need a cigarette. I open one eye, slowly, and move my eyeball, slowly, left and right, up and down, looking for what I need. But before we go on, letâs be clear: However haltingly you read these words, however generously you interpret the word slowly , however deep and 16-RPM and s-l-o-w your voice, however much you try to get into it, you are certain to be racing, to be galloping insanely fast, to be moving close to the fucking speed of light , compared to what is actually happening in terms of my ocular deployment. The part with the eyelid alone must have taken close to five minutes. The eyeball rotation, four points of the compass, at least five minutes each.
A bad night.
I am pretty sure I have a fresh pack of cigarettes on the low table in the living room. I concentrate hard in that direction. I see them. I am disappointed. Not a fresh pack. An almost-fresh pack. A pack, in fact, in the condition I like least: recently unwrapped, the crisp little cardboard lid raised up, and one cigarette missing
She picked her way along the unkempt path until she stood in front of the Taite family plot, as she had last night. There was the grave, nearly hidden by brush. The Improbable lay before her, lighting the way to the Impossible. Christopher Standish Taite, aged forty-four, date of his passing a year after Wallyâs. No cause of death written in the ledger, no words of affection or praise carved into the tombstone.
Of course not.
But beside his name in the ledger Father Dean had inked a small St. Andrewâs Cross.
Amanda wondered who had killed him. Terryâs family? The other Taites? Some unknown member of the church, determined to equalize the balance? The one thing she knew for sure was that the last hereditary thurifer had not taken his own life, or he would not be buried here. Trinity and St. Michael was a stickler for excluding suicides.
Odd how one could grow so tangled in theology that justice became inverted. Wally rested in unhallowed ground. His uncle rested here.
Uneasily.
Repentant, but not seeking forgiveness; seeking instead to restore Trinity and St. Michael to what it had been before the wave of violence unleashed by his sin.
Amanda understood what the suffering Christopher Standish Taite did not, that you could move only forward in time. The church could never be what it had been in his lifetime. It could only be something new. But the traditions would help. Of that she was now sure.
She would have to find Wallyâs grave. It should not be that hard. She would find his resting place and pray to God to have mercy on his soul. But that would come later.
Amanda had carried the thurible from the Lady Chapel. She lit the coals, sprinkled incense from the boat, and murmured a blessing. She censed the graves before her. The cemetery was large, and the work would take her all year. No matter. She knelt in the grass, opened the book Christopher Taite had given her, and began chanting aloud the Litany for the Dead.
Me & Mr. Rafferty
LEE CHILD
I CAN TELL what kind of night it was by where I wake up. If Iâve been good, Iâm in bed. If Iâve been bad, Iâm on the sofa. Good or bad, you understand, only in the conventional sense of the words. The moral sense. The legal sense. Iâm always good in terms of performance. Always careful, always meticulous, always unbeatable. Letâs be clear about that. But letâs just say that some specific nighttime activities stress me more than others, tire me, waste me, leave me vulnerable to sudden collapse as soon as I step back into the sanctuary behind my own front door.
This morning I wake up on the hallway floor.
My face is pressed down on the carpet. I can taste its fibers on my lips. I need a cigarette. I open one eye, slowly, and move my eyeball, slowly, left and right, up and down, looking for what I need. But before we go on, letâs be clear: However haltingly you read these words, however generously you interpret the word slowly , however deep and 16-RPM and s-l-o-w your voice, however much you try to get into it, you are certain to be racing, to be galloping insanely fast, to be moving close to the fucking speed of light , compared to what is actually happening in terms of my ocular deployment. The part with the eyelid alone must have taken close to five minutes. The eyeball rotation, four points of the compass, at least five minutes each.
A bad night.
I am pretty sure I have a fresh pack of cigarettes on the low table in the living room. I concentrate hard in that direction. I see them. I am disappointed. Not a fresh pack. An almost-fresh pack. A pack, in fact, in the condition I like least: recently unwrapped, the crisp little cardboard lid raised up, and one cigarette missing
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