Dreadful Skin by Cherie Priest Read Free Book Online Page B

one hand on its back. “It’s easier to tell the truth in allegory and riddles though, don’t you think? Jesus did it, with his parables.”
    “Like the Good Samaritan.”
    “Indeed—just like that one. Do you think there was ever a real man, injured beside the road? Or might he have invented it to convey a point?”
    “I’m sure I can’t say. So tell me a parable, then. Make me understand what sets us all on edge tonight, and why you think poor Jack is taking it with such difficulty.”
    I thought she’d sit again, but she did not—she simply leaned herself forward against the chair.
    “All right. Let us say, then, that there are two men in jail, awaiting execution. In eight hours they will be hanged. One man asks for a clock, so that he may be reminded of how much time is left. He takes comfort in watching the time pass—telling himself, ‘Now I have three whole hours left to live, and I will appreciate these three hours.’ Or, ‘Now I have a whole hour left to live, and I will appreciate this hour.’”
    “What about the other man?” I asked.
    “The other man asks for a clock as well, but he is told that there is only one—and it’s already been given to the other prisoner. Without the clock to judge by, the other prisoner is agitated and confused. He’d rather see the time crawl by and know how much is left to him; without the clock, he drives himself mad wondering how long he must wait for the hangman’s noose. Because he cannot stand the wait, he fashions his own noose from the bedsheets and hangs himself before the executioner can arrive.”
    “I think I see. That’s quite a morbid parable you’ve spun for me. Am I to gather that your mythic clock is the weather?”
    “You would be quite clever to surmise as much, yes. Some of us—it helps us to gaze up and know . But when we can’t….” Her voice ran out of air and she let the thought hang.
    “I wish I understood better what you were trying to—” I began to press her further, but I was cut off by a most ferocious and terrifying sound.
    It echoed loud through the boat, in that omnipresent way that refuses to tell you where the source originates. We both jumped, startled and afraid, as it pealed and rang and roared. I clapped my hands over my ears, but the nun held her ground—eyes narrowing and hands clamping up tight into fists.
    The kitchen girl, Laura, came running in, hands over her ears also. The sound—it wouldn’t stop! It followed her and surrounded us, filling the room and the decks and the sky.
    The girl looked at us and we saw our own fear reflected there in her round, brown face. “It’s nothing,” I tried to tell her—I didn’t try to tell the sister, though. She was already steeled against it. “It’s only the mud drums. They’re blowing out the mud drums down below, by the boiler. It makes a sound, it’s terrible, I know. But you hear it sometimes when you ride these things a long time.”
    “I know what the mud drums are you fool-headed man,” she told me—in a panic, forgetting her place, I’m sure. “I’ve heard them before and I know what they mean. But this ain’t that, and you know it sure as I do.”
    We were shouting to each other. We had to. The hoarse, unending blast was filling us and swallowing us whole. It was drilling into my skull, past my ears and under my scalp, into the meat of my brain.
    There was thunder, too—though you could hardly hear it.
    Sister Eileen released her death grip upon the chair and fled the room with a determined sort of stride that I would not have cared to interrupt. I called after her anyway, because it seemed that someone must. “Sister—stay here. Stay with us.”
    She paused in the doorway, one hand grasping the frame as if to hold herself in place while she spoke. “You stay here—both of you. Get into the galley and stay close together. Get the cook, too. Wake him up. I’ve seen him, he’s a big man, like you—Christopher. Grab the biggest knives