Dividing Earth: A Novel of Dark Fantasy by Troy Stoops Read Free Book Online

top of the stairs, he tucked his head in and crawled to the left. He felt like a tight rope performer, there being only one cross beam safe to travel on. Pink insulation puffed all around it. Ten feet in, he came upon a stack of boxes. The first was huge. The word Electrolux ran from the left to right corner. He clapped his hands on top, attempted to hoist himself up, but his forehead smacked into a beam and he lost his balance. He tried to right himself, using the box for support, but it failed him, and the box toppled into the lake of insulation. He cursed, hoping it wasn’t heavy enough to fall through the pink mess and break though the ceiling below. But the insulation supported the box. Sweat crept into his eyes, stinging. He kneaded his knuckles into them, blinking madly.
    When they cleared, he saw the box that would change everything. It was small, about half the size of Electrolux . He crawled to it, careful not to run his head into another beam. Feeling along the top, he was happy to find it wasn’t taped shut. He nearly stuck his hand in blindly, but thought better of it; instead he pulled it closer. Could be a nest of spiders in an open attic box , he thought. Inside, surrounded by packing popcorn, were two stacks of books bound by lace. He immediately imagined his mother’s hands looping the lace around the books, drawing them into bows. He took one of them out, untied the lace, opened the cover. “Oh my God,” he said. It was the first volume of his mother’s diary, dated June of 1955. She would have been eight, perhaps nine. His eyes stung again, but now not with sweat. “Hey, Mom,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
    * * * * *
    Robert ran his finger along the spines of the fifteen volumes. He pulled one out, crept through a couple of pages. His mother had been possessed of a wonderful imagination; these weren’t diaries, not exactly anyway, but were some sort of mythical interpretation of her life. At least that’s what he hoped they were, because if she had actually believed she’d been born in 1802 and had been orphaned in a frontier town in the late 1860’s, well then his late mother’s illness had consisted of more than cancer. But he loved books, as she had, and as a literary man he believed her diaries evidence of a metaphorical mind. Her descriptions of a lonely life on the plain, as an underground bartender in speakeasies during prohibition, and as a woman awaiting her knight were lovely, ripe explanations of the feelings that had gripped her during the dark years she had been shuffled from foster home to foster home; her narratives about a race of witches, not quite human, who lived abnormally long lives could be nothing more than an abstraction about the feelings of separation she must have felt, having grown up without a family.
    Robert shook his head. He’d gone over and over her diaries and just when he thought he understood them, along came a night like this one. Who knew?
    Back in the kitchen, he poured another whiskey and ginger ale and snapped it back. After another swig, he capped the bottles and headed for bed.
    * * * * *
    That night the dream he’d been having Saturday morning repeated: A crimson, purged sky, angry as a wound. Streaked with purple and orange ribbons, it appears opulently full, almost pregnant. And there, off in the metallic distance, a strange silhouette, black amidst the colors. A winged beast disappears into a gray-white cloud.

Chapter Five: Mary and Grady
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    The dream breaks over Mary like a wave: She stands on a desolate beach; a lazy tide reaches a few feet inland, licking her heels; the sand, brilliantly white in the mid-morning sun, is like brick under her feet; before her, pink and white foliage lay shaded under the towering pines; and at the opposite end of the beach, a pale figure waves.
    * * * * *
    When she awoke, she was afraid to move. She began counting ceiling tiles but was unable to get past three. Her immobility seemed more condition than