Lightfall
Paul Monette
Language: English
Pages: 280
ISBN: 0380810751
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A strange urge drives Dr. Iris Ammons to leave her home and travel to a small California town, where she comes under the influence of a weird evil power. A modern epic of terror steeped in centuries of evil.
he said quite kindly, almost as if to apologize. “I expect what they’ll try to do is find some way to follow me.” “To prison? I don’t understand.” “Well, of course you don’t. This is all for them.” There was a moment when the lawyer might have saved himself, being as Michael turned so slowly. Perhaps it was still night enough to be nothing but a dream. The one man looming above the other, the arc of the knife, the gesture that drove it—the whole tableau so perfectly attenuated, Michael might
shot over it. Michael drove slowly across. On the island side he entered a rolling plain where the straw grass rippled in the cold sea air. The road ran switchback up the rise to an empty crest that Michael knew would outlook miles and miles of open water. He drove forward with a mounting sense of calm, as if something deeper than memory were pulling him out of the path of time. He gained the high ground and braked on the edge at the top of the rise. His face lit up with a strange delight. The
elbow on the mailbox, slouching there and seeming to appraise him. “Maybe I’m not as far behind as I think,” said Iris mildly. “All I know is, we’re in it together. That much I can feel.” Then she dropped her voice and spoke in a thrilling whisper, daring him to join her: “You can feel it, can’t you, Michael?” A throb of rage rose in his throat, like a cry that only waited for a stab of pain to burst it. He squeezed the flowers so tightly in his fist that the stems went to jelly and slimed his
above the sink she saw a dozen jars of pickles, mincement, honey, plums, the weight of which stood ready to see them through to spring. Though everything in her shrank from him, though voices scored and choked her, Iris knew the truth now. All these forces, whatever they were, had thought to make her give him up beforehand, so she’d run from here unburdened by regret. They didn’t want her sorrowing for Tim. But she had won this one concession from the darkness: now they knew she would not kill
gleamed yellow and stared straight at her. Its fur was striped like a tiger. “But I love you,” she said, and forced herself to look him in the eye. He tilted his head as if to hear her better. Then he sighed and seemed uncomfortable. Perhaps he thought she was lying. Really, she wasn’t. It was just— “Maybe so,” he said carefully. “But you probably wish you didn’t.” “Why?” He shrugged. “I guess because you think I’m not going to make it.” It wasn’t what she expected, and she shied away from