The Dead Letters: A Novel - Softcover

Piccirilli, Tom

 
9780553384079: The Dead Letters: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553384074 ISBN 13: 9780553384079
Verlag: Bantam, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Five years ago, Eddie Whitt’s daughter Sarah became the victim of a serial killer known as Killjoy, and Whitt vowed to hunt him down—no matter what the cost. But the police have given up. And Killjoy has stopped killing…and in some bizarre act of repentance has begun kidnapping abused infants and leaving them with the parents of his original victims.

The only clues to Killjoy’s identity lie in a trail of taunting letters. And even as they lead Whitt to a deadly cult—and closer to his prey—he begins to suspect that, like his wife, he’s losing his grip on reality: Sarah’s dollhouse is filled with eerie activity, as if her murder never occurred. As dark forces rise around him, Whitt must choose—between believing that evil can repent…and stepping into a trap set by a killer who may know the only way to save Whitt’s soul.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom Piccirilli is the author of fourteen novels, including A Choir of Ill Children, November Mourns, and Headstone City, all available from Bantam Spectra. He has been a World Fantasy Award finalist and a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


Killjoy wrote:

Words are not as adequate as teeth.

Incisors are incapable of lying. If I pressed them into wax or paper or fish or flesh you would know my meaning, the constraints of form, and every trivial fact there is to be found, distinguished in its context, beyond the obvious. Words are deficient, even impractical, when attempting to convey the substance of true (modest) self. Deed is definition. We are restricted by mind and voice but not in action, wouldn't you agree? That we can never completely express that which is within. That sometimes the very act of feeling isn't enough to encompass all there is to feel. Frenzy is trying to explain your behaviors to yourself. I suspect I have yet a long way to go at the art of becoming human.

Remember Schlagelford's great treatise on the fear of non-existence. He spent some thirty-seven years of his adult life with his left hand clamped to his left thigh (trouserless, of course). Despite his grip cutting off all circulation in that leg until it withered, blackened, and eventually had to be amputated (and the hand, no more than a frozen talon, had grown useless, and continued to squeeze the phantom limb), at which point he gripped his right thigh with his right hand and had to write his last major work, The Season of Femoral, with quill champed between adequate teeth, still he was content.

Satisfied in his knowledge of personal existence in a world without enough promise or structure.

Do you ever feel that way, Whitt?

There are orange sneakers on the gelded man in the corner.

Which do you prefer? Writing or biting?

The season of femoral begins again.

Do your hands shake?


The mama cultist told Eddie Whitt about the dead ballerina, a god named Mucus-Thorn-In-Brain, and the starving baby that had been stolen out of the back room.

She and her two lumbering middle-aged sons smiled at him. Whitt tried to smile back but the muscles in his jaw were so tight that he barely managed a grimace. It got like that sometimes, when he was forced to hold himself in check. Luckily these people were so caught up in their own mania that they hardly even noticed him while they prattled on incessantly. They gave him a cup of herbal tea that smelled like turpentine and he left it on the scratched table in front of him.

Except for the murders, they were about the same as any other cult members he'd met. Considering his narrow range of interests and social obligations, he'd actually met more than his share. Whatever the hell a man's share of cultists should be in this world.

The woman, Mrs. Prott, who introduced herself as the High Priestess of the Cosmic Knot, spoke with near-hysterical excitement about a new god being born in the back of her son Merwin's heart. Merwin, who had awful surgical scars covering his forehead, grinned stupidly and petted his chest like he was stroking a luscious woman's hair.

The other son, Franklin, was blind and kept flexing his hands like he wanted to leap out of his chair and tear something to pieces.

Whitt feigned interest in Mrs. Prott's sermon and looked at her star charts, notes, magazine articles, and photographs of the multitude of people who played some role in her ever-widening tale of religion, murder, and secret government experiments. She kept tapping a spot between her eyes, saying they'd shot her there and her brain had leaked out, which was why she sometimes got mixed up. Whenever she said the word "government," Merwin would stop stroking his invisible lover's hair and thump his head.

This house had been the dumping ground for members of the group for years. Whitt got up and wandered around while the woman talked, rifling through stacks of newspapers dating back three, four years. He saw himself on the front page of more than one, laid out mostly in the open, as if waiting for him.

A metal shelf unit held two dozen upside-down mason jars, each sealed with contact cement and sprinkled with a handful of salt. Words, possibly names, were scrawled in black marker on old yellow masking tape: Hogarth. Pedantry. Airsiez. Colby. Terminus. Kinnick. Insensate. Testament of Ya'al. Ussel. Dr. Dispensations. O'Mundanity.

She kept on preaching. It threw him off a bit, this lady's willingness to discuss such matters so openly, in her strange manner, as though she were telling only basic, incontrovertible truths. Speaking in a happily lilting voice, like she was overjoyed to find someone who actually had interest in her life, no matter why. Whitt nodded like an idiot and she nodded back. Was it only loneliness that drove people to such extreme acts?

"And she came to you for help," he said, sitting down again, trying to keep Mama on topic. "The ballerina."

"For the truth, yes. And for love. Everyone, always in such need of love. You see, she also had quite the nervous disposition. Emotionally she'd been tormented by her parents, who never responded to her with affection of any kind. They merely drove her ever more forcefully toward the perfection of her dancing. Into the arms of boys. That's what the child was. A symbol of her desperation."

"And you murdered her," Whitt said.

Telling it while fluttering her hand at him as if he were absurd, so silly. "What do you mean? Who?"

Whitt forced his breath out in a stream that blew ripples across the stinking tea. He remembered to make the effort to smile again. "The ballerina."

Head eased back, Franklin rolled his blank eyes up and let out a guffaw. It came from down low in his belly and the depths of his hate. Whitt wanted to hear what the guy's voice sounded like, but so far Franklin refused to make any comment beyond that sick laughter. If any trouble started, Whitt would take out the blind guy before anybody else.

Mrs. Prott said, "Oh yes, that one. The dancer."

The first thing you saw when you looked at Mama Prott was the jiggle of turkey neck. Even when she wasn't turning her head, that neck still flapped, vibrating with her breathing, always catching your attention. Whitt couldn't get over it.

The woman boiling with gaiety, heavy and earthen. She was someone you wanted to hug, really. Her expensive, chic clothing was mismatched and too tight. He figured she'd stolen them from ladies with taste in order to pretend she had some fashion sense herself. Lots of jewelry, most of it fake, but some pieces worth more than this shit hole's entire mortgage. She wore men's wedding bands on both thumbs.

Franklin's hands opening and closing in perfect timing to Whitt's pulse.

Mrs. Prott smiling, her teeth dark and crooked. "Well, no one actually killed her. You cannot destroy that which is obdurate. Insensible. You can only transform it. She wasn't human." Doing the fluttery finger thing again. "She was other, and the purifying light of Mucus-Thorn-In-Brain struck her down when she tried to steal my breath one morning."

"I see," Whitt said.

"She climbed on top of me while I slept and tried to kiss me so she could steal the soulwind from my lungs. You can't call it murder to set right the karmic cosmic wheel again."

"I thought it was a knot."

"A knot that spins and spins like a wheel across the great ecclesiastical galaxy."

"Okay," Whitt said. "So what happened to her?"

"The only way to defend ourselves from a soulthief is to stab it thrice in the heart, with the point of the blade aiming north. Then the throat must be cut so its evil incantations will dribble to the floor instead of being raised to the cosmic masters. This is the transformation that must take place. Conversion....

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553384074
ISBN 13 
9780553384079
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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