Dying Breath. Wendy Corsi Staub

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ does her best to zero in on the image inside the girl’s head.

      Come on, let me see.

      Slowly, it takes shape: a two-story frame house, the architectural style harkening a child’s crayoned drawing: a door centered between two shuttered windows on the first floor, three more windows above on the second, and an A-line roof with a brick chimney on one side.

      The roof is gray-black shingles. The clapboards are white. The shutters are black.

      Towering maple tree sentries guard the front yard.

      There are hundreds of thousands of houses like it throughout the Northeast.

      That’s where it is, Cam is certain—somewhere here in the Northeast. Not right here in Montclair, though. Maybe not even in New Jersey. New York? Pennsylvania? Delaware?

      Where is the girl’s house, dammit?

      Wait, there’s something to the right of the door, beneath the brass, lantern-style light fixture.

      It’s a house number…42!

      But 42 what? What’s the name of the street? Where is it? Show me!

      Helpless, Cam can only watch the image give way to the girl herself again. She’s curled in a fetal position in the shadow of a wall, rocking back and forth.

      The wall appears to be made of rock, the floor of dirt. She’s in some kind of cellar.

      Cam zeroes in on the girl’s face, memorizing her features, watching her bite her trembling lip, wishing she would open her eyes.

      Then, miraculously, she does, as if on cue. Her tear-flooded pupils, Cam sees, are a light hazel shade. Her lashes are sandy, barely visible.

      She’ll need mascara when she grows up, Cam finds herself thinking idly…

      Then, if she gets to grow up.

      A familiar wave of hopeless, helpless panic is beginning to take hold.

      Here is Cam’s own panic, mingling in her gut with the child’s primal fear that even now remains tempered by a wisp of naive hope.

      But Cam knows better.

      Breathe. Focus, she tells herself. Focus on that girl. You can’t help her if you don’t focus.

      Look at the stone wall, the dirt floor…

      Look! What else is there? Where is she?

      Wall, floor—there are no other details; there’s nothing more to go on.

      She’s in a basement of some kind. Where?

      It, too, feels as though it’s located someplace in the Northeast.

      Yes. And not far from the house with white clapboards and black shutters.

      More. You need more. What else? Don’t just look. Smell.

      Musty. Damp.

      Listen…

      There’s water nearby. Moving water.

      Cam can hear it rushing; there’s some kind of current. A creek? A stream? A river?

      She strains for something more, and gradually, she hears it. But not water.

      A faint, rhythmic sound reaches her ears. A sickeningly familiar sound…

      What is it?

      As it grows ominously louder, she sucks in her breath and the smell hits her. The recognizable organic smell of soil. Rich, damp soil, pungent, black, and crumbly.

      She begins to comprehend, and new dread sweeps through her.

      Oh, Lord.

      Lord help that child.

      It’s a shovel; that’s what she’s hearing.

      Every dull, clanging thud seems to slam painfully into Cam herself.

      Somebody’s digging, not far from the girl, maybe somewhere above her.

      Who are you? Cam demands of the person whose hands clench the wooden handle. Let me see your face, dammit.

      The shovel merely continues to dig, and all she can see are gloved hands.

      They dig, and all the while, the little girl is huddled somewhere nearby, rocking, crying, trying to catch her breath, missing her white house with the black shutters, missing her parents…

      Mommy…

      Daddy…

      Show them to me, Cam calls silently. I need their names, or at least to see their faces. Something. Some detail. Some clue as to who they are; who you are.

      But the child is too distraught for coherent thought; her mind fraught only with frantic, fragmented images. Every breath she takes sounds increasingly strangled, as if she’s struggling for air.

      Mom!

      Daddy!

      I need you!

      The terrible sound of her breathing is becoming more labored with every inhalation. Cam senses that she’s running out of time.

      Who else, sweetie? Who else is there? Mommy, Daddy, Grandma…just give me a name. A street. A town…Please.

      Please keep breathing. Please hang in there.

      Dammit. Cam would give anything to actually make herself heard this time…

      This time?

      She’s felt this way every time.

      But, of course, it’s never happened.

      In all those years, she could only helplessly observe unsettling scenes like the one now unfolding in her mind’s eye. She was no more able to interfere in the action than a viewer of a movie can alter the plot.

      Perhaps it’s human nature to try anyway. To attempt the impossible and permeate the translucent one-way veil that separates Cam’s world from this troubled stranger’s.

      Give me a name, please, a sister, a brother, a pet…anything. Anything more specific than Mommy…Daddy…

      The vision is fading already.

      “No,” Cam whispers, “please…wait…”

      But the image of the child has already dissolved.

      Lingering in Cam’s head is an awful, shuddering gasp for air.

      Moments pass.

      Another gasp.

      Then a terrible, deadly silence.

СКАЧАТЬ