Read Online The Horses of the Night by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online

she stayed with an elderly sister in Daly City, a woman who, ever since a fall down her front steps, was afraid to live alone. Collie’s quiet courtesy did not make her seem meek. It made her, quite the contrary, seem stately and careful. “I know this place will look as lovely as all the others,” she said, switching from a whisper to a beautiful alto. “All your work turns out so lovely.”
    When she was gone, I wished she had stayed on for a few minutes. I like to be around people like Collie, people with experience and deep feelings, and I sometimes find myself wearing solitude like borrowed, confining clothing. I adjusted the drafting table. The pencil made a satisfying whisper on the paper. The paper was the watermarked laid I bought by the kilo in Paris, and the hard-lead pencil soon lost its fine point as I roughed-in a sheaf of what I imagined would be asters, purple asters when I touched them up with watercolor.
    Fern called just as I replaced the receiver. “There’s a light in the house, upstairs, and another one on in what looks like the bathroom.”
    â€œSo he’s home.”
    â€œSomeone is.”
    â€œThat’s fine,” I said. “That’s all I really need to know.”
    â€œHe’s burning something in the fireplace.”
    â€œThat’s what fireplaces are for.”
    â€œPaper.”
    I knew as well as Fern that newsprint and old letters smell different from applewood.
    I called Blake, and there was no answer.
    There was something wrong. I drew for awhile to give myself something to think about.
    At last I threw down the pencil impatiently. I pushed redial again. No one answered. Now I was more worried than ever.
    I nearly called my brother, Rick. My younger brother and I had a friendly but distant relationship, one that allowed him from time to time to call me to complain about alimony or his latest mechanic’s bill, and it allowed me to hear someone lively, someone who reminded me of my father, if only in the timbre of his voice, his chuckle, and our shared memories.
    I pushed redial again, persistent, faithful. Blake had always engaged a housekeeper. Surely he had a secretary. Nobody’s phone simply rang and rang anymore. Something else always happened, a person or a machine took over to record your message.
    I put down the phone and tilted my head, listening.
    I wonder what it was that made me sense that the house was no longer empty. Collie must have slipped back, I told myself, remembering her sweater, or, as she would put it, her “jumper.” Or Nona—surely it was Nona—dropping by on the way back from the airport.
    There was someone in the house.
    Someone downstairs.
    I stood, and the chair I had designed behaved as it was intended to, scooting on its silent rollers, rebounding soundlessly off the wall. Nona called it my mosquito chair because it floated so lightly.
    How transparent a voice sounds when it is trying to sound confident against the dark. I called for Collie, and then for Nona. My shadow fell before me. Floors were solid redwood from the Russian River, except for the study, which was floored in koa wood from Hawaii.
    There was no question. I was not alone in this house.
    I stood at the top of the stairs, in the bad light, then, slowly, sliding one hand along the almost imperceptible dust of the banister, began to make my way down. The stairs were one part of the house that did not creak. Some craftsman in the 1880s had determined that this would be the masterpiece of stairways, wooden pegs so tight-fitted they did not give, except for that very slight flex that all wood has, that property that keeps it from breaking.
    It was not a person. It was a creature of some sort. There was the sound again. A fluttering, a big lift and fall, something flying. It was the sound of a bird, very big. Not like one of the African grays my cousin had kept in Santa Barbara. This was a very large winged creature, feathered