For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) by Guy Adams Read Free Book Online

of nowhere and pinning them down on the page. This was no different, except this time the muscles he needed to train were not in his hands; it was no longer about translating what he saw through the tip of a pencil, rather it was about recalling with clarity. He imagined a moustache, and focused on each hair, imagined it dark at the root and fading to light grey at the tip. He looked through that imaginary bush to the skin beneath, pricked with follicles like holes for thread. He thought of the skin of the lips, shiny and creased. He imagined the eyes, light grey, filled with filaments and swirls.
    “Much better,” said Veronica, looking at the man who was his newly-imagined father. “You’ll be a master at this in no time.”
    At her prompting, he even showed her the moment of his death, or at least how he imagined it. It was difficult to be precise under the circumstances. They sat on a sack of corn, hiding in the shadows and watching the memory of Arno as he finished unloading his cart of supplies, wiping the sweat of heavy lifting from his brow with the handkerchief his wife had embroidered in happier times. The cloth was scarlet, his initials stitched in white. The treacherous Zeke loomed behind him, spade in hand as his wife looked on from behind the crack of the half-open door.
    Arno wondered if Zeke was still hot from his exertions in the marriage bed, corrupting its sheets with an intruder’s sweat and seed. He supposed it likely. Perhaps it was the intensity of the lovemaking that had brought the strength of conviction to his shoulders and biceps as he hefted the spade and swung it. There was a faint whisper of displaced air, and then a musical clang, the ringing of a dinner gong or a cheap church bell.
    Arno flinched at the sight of it. The face of his imagined shadow contorted in an ugly, unflattering collection of features, puffy and folded. He looked, Arno decided, like a man in the grip of a sneeze so violent it had blown off the back of his head.
    “What a way to go,” said Veronica. “Quick and percussive. There’s a lot to be said for a surprise killing.”
    “I would have rather avoided it,” Arno admitted.
    Zeke the Murderer, spade still in hand, looked around. “Who’s there?” he called, his voice thick with panic.
    “Oh,” said Arno, “he heard us.”
    “Doesn’t matter,” said Veronica, stepping out into the light. “What’s he going to do? Even if he were more than a memory, you can only kill a person once.”
    She gave a scream and jumped on Zeke, tugging at his thinning hair. He dropped the bloodied spade, raising his hands to defend himself. They spun around, Zeke’s boots connecting with the still-twitching body of the man he had just brained, sending them tumbling into the dirt and straw that lined the floor.
    From the doorway, Arno’s wife entered, coming to the aid of her lover.
    Arno, knowing an act of catharsis when presented with one, picked up the discarded spade and brought out its music by swinging it straight at her face. It’s good for the soul, this slapstick of memory, he thought as the clang of metal against teeth rang loud and clear.
    “Better?” Veronica asked, bouncing up and down on the now wailing Zeke, a whirl of arms and legs, pummelling at a man who had never quite regained the sense to defend himself after the initial attack.
    Arno looked down at his wife, her face now a comical grotesque of flattened nose and bloodied lips. “I’m not sure,” he said, “can it ever be right to take pleasure in hurting someone else?”
    “Ah...” Veronica sighed, taking a rest from beating Zeke’s head against the ground, “I can see how you ended up here. What a pure soul you are.”
    “I loved her after all,” Arno admitted, “even if that love wasn’t always returned.”
    “She encouraged her lover to empty your skull of its contents, Arno, she wasn’t worthy of love.”
    “We’re all worthy of love, some of us just aren’t terribly good at