Read Online The Sound of Seas by Jeff Rovin, Gillian Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

movies.”
    â€œJesus, vampires now?”
    â€œActors being intuitive, that’s what an archetype is!” he said. “Please, just answer me.”
    Anita frowned, struggled to focus. “In the park, I guess—­Columbus Park, in Chinatown,” she said. “Weekend tai chi. It looks a little like that.”
    â€œIn what way?”
    â€œFloating hands. You move until they feel like they’re separate from the body, carrying—” Anita stopped as she realized what she was saying.
    â€œCarrying what?”
    â€œAll the energy of your body,” she said. “As if your body and arms no longer exist.”
    Ben nodded. That, like what Madame Langlois was doing, could well be part of the common human experience. It was the same with language: the elements that show up over and over separate valid experience from affectation and trickery, like the need to shout an oath, not just cry out, after hitting your finger with a hammer. These are buried in the human condition though no one knows why or by what mechanism.
    Perhaps they were rooted in Galderkhaan.
    Ben pushed aside the woman’s obduracy, watched her with fresh eyes. Madame Langlois’s shaking subsided; she was slipping into some kind of relaxed trance yet the hand itself seemed to be floating, like a cork in water, the fingers moving in unison as if guided by an outside source. He saw the shadow they cast on the area rug but suddenly noticed the angle of the shadow relative to the fingers was increasing, somehow. It was as if the shadow were hooked like one of the curves on Madame Langlois’s skirt, the base of the finger pointing straight ahead, the tip crooked toward one of the rooms.
    Toward Jacob’s room.
    Anita noticed it too. “Ben!” she said in a loud, insistent whisper. “I don’t care about the academic value of this. You’ve got to stop it.” The shadow grew longer and Anita’s breathing came faster.
    â€œEnok, tell me what’s happening or we must intervene,” Ben said.
    â€œStop her and the snake will move freely among us,” the man warned stoically.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWe do not want that, I think,” Enok said quietly.
    â€œHow do you know that will happen?” Ben demanded.
    â€œI have seen it,” he replied. There was respect for the process in his voice, if not in his expression.
    Either Enok was correct or Anita and Ben were sharing a delusion. The shadow began to wriggle though Madame Langlois’s fingers remained steady. It was not Ben’s imagination, it was not a hallucination, and from Anita’s frightened expression, she was realizing that as well. The darkness of the serpentine shadow seemed to deepen, obscuring what was beneath it, as they watched it crawl along the rug. And there was something else within it: what looked to Ben like glitter, only it was something transitory. There were tiny facets that appeared and reappeared in roughly the same places, the same relationship one to the other as the shadow moved.
    With a back-and-forth motion, the head of the serpent pulled therest of the body toward the hallway, to where Anita had solidly placed herself.
    â€œGet it away,” she warned, choking on the sentence as she spread her arms and legs.
    â€œIt will not hurt you,” Enok said.
    â€œIt’s not me I’m worried about,” Anita said, her eyes fastened on the shape.
    â€œIt will hurt no one,” he insisted.
    â€œHow do you know?” Ben asked.
    â€œThat is not its way,” Enok replied.
    â€œMore double-talk,” Anita said. “If you don’t make her stop, I will!”
    â€œLet it play out a little longer,” Ben said. “We can always take Jacob and go.”
    â€œCan we?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s not solid, Anita,” Ben pointed out. “It doesn’t appear to be noxious.”
    â€œIt looks radioactive!” she said.
    â€œThat’s