The child rose from the tub, and the Dead King started screaming. Sam was wearing a blue jacket. Awkwardly, her hands still cuffed, she unzipped one of its pockets and reached inside. When her hands opened again, they held the remains of the whip-poor-will, its chest opened and its wings cut to reveal the bones inside. It was wet against her fingers, and smelled faintly of lighter fluid.
Blood was now flowing from the sleeves of Cassander’s shirt and the bottoms of his jeans. His face was entirely red, as were his eyes, the whiteness of them lost in the bursting of the capillaries. He was barely conscious, his brain already failing.
But Sam didn’t want him to die, not yet.
She held up the body of the bird, and felt it stir against her fingers as the Dead King passed into it. She climbed from the tub and dropped the delicate remains in the sink. She took the toilet paper from its holder and wrapped the bird in layers of it. Finally, because it was easier than searching with her cuffed hands for the book of matches concealed in her windbreaker pocket, she removed Cassander’s Zippo from his shirt, and used it to set the bird alight.
Behind her, Jennifer appeared, and together they watched as the Dead King, caught in its snare of bones, passed from this world in smoke and fire.
Kimberly Beckman, owner of the Low Mountain Motel, looked up from her chair to see a little girl in a blue jacket standing in front of the reception desk. The TV behind her was carrying a news report about a missing child.
‘Can I help you, honey?’
The girl held up her cuffed hands.
‘My name is Samantha Wolfe,’ she said. ‘That’s me on TV.’
95
Cassander Hobb was still alive when the police reached the motel. He was still alive when they got him to the hospital and put him on life support.
He’s still alive now, if you can call it living.
Parker went to visit him once. Cassander’s eyes were closed. He was being fed through a tube, and the medical staff assured Parker that he was brain dead. In time, his body would follow.
Just as Parker was leaving, Cassander jerked on the bed.
‘What was that?’
‘Spinal cord neurons,’ said the nurse. ‘Reflexes. Have you ever heard of the Lazarus sign?’
‘No.’
‘It’s when brain-dead patients spontaneously raise their arms and drop them again. Scared the living Jesus out of me the first time I saw it happen.’
‘Does Hobb exhibit the Lazarus sign?’
‘Not any more. He just spasms now and again. There’s nothing in there, Mr Parker. He’s gone.’
Cassander’s mind is like an empty house: no furnishings, no decoration, no life. Beyond its windows there is only darkness, broken by flashes of lightning as a stray neuron flares.
A presence moves through the house. It has no form, and no name. It chitters endlessly. It smells of smoke and burnt feathers. It is waiting: waiting for Cassander to die, waiting for him to be reduced to bone in a pauper’s grave.
Waiting, so that it may be reborn.
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to John Lorenzen, regional correctional manager in the Maine Department of Corrections, Division of Adult Services, for his patience in explaining to me the intricacies of the probation system in the state of Maine, but he remains one of the few human points of contact in the research for this odd book. The majority of the background work involved trawling through works of folklore and myth, most of which are namechecked in the novel itself, although Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Frances Larson (Granta, 2014), provided a wonderful guide to concretizing some of the ideas and images that were roiling in my mind as the book progressed.
The band Espers very kindly allowed me to quote from their song ‘Dead King’, which could almost serve as an accompaniment to sections of this book. They also declined to charge a fee, which says a great deal about them. Details of their work can be found at www.dragcity.com/artists/espers.
As always, I’m indebted to Emily Bestler, my editor at Atria Books, and all those who work alongside her, including Lara Jones, and David Brown; and to Sue Fletcher, my editor at Hodder & Stoughton, and Carolyn Mays, Swati Gamble, Kerry Hood, Breda Purdue, Jim Binchy, Ruth Shern, Siobhan Tierney, and everyone at Hodder & Stoughton and Hachette Books Ireland. My agent, Darley Anderson, continues to show remarkable forbearance in the face of an author who is both awkward and a Liverpool fan. Thanks, too, to Clair Lamb and Madeira James and to Kate O’Hearn, writer and friend, for all her hard work in securing clearances for quotes and CDs. Finally, love to Jennie, Cameron, and Alistair.
Also by John Connolly
The Charlie Parker Stories
Every Dead Thing
Dark Hollow
The Killing Kind
The White Road
The Reflecting Eye (Novella in the Nocturnes Collection)
The Black Angel
The Unquiet
The Reapers
The Lovers
The Whisperers
The Burning Soul
The Wrath of Angels
The Wolf in Winter
A Song of Shadows
Other Works
Bad Men
The Book of Lost Things
Short Stories
Nocturnes
Night Music: Nocturnes Volume II
The Samuel Johnson Stories (For Young Adults)
The Gates
Hell’s Bells
The Creeps
The Chronicles of the Invaders (with Jennifer Ridyard)
Conquest
Empire
Dominion
Non-Fiction (as editor, with Declan Burke)
Books to Die For: The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels
John Connolly, A Time of Torment
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends