King Carrion by Rich Hawkins Read Free Book Online Page A

closed his eyes. Afterwards he went to the misted mirror and wiped away the condensation. Stared into his face, his eyes, and saw a broken thing pretending to be human.
         He turned away from the mirror because he couldn’t look at himself any longer.
     
    *
     
    After handing Mason a coffee, Ellie cooked bacon and scrambled eggs. There was silence as she worked. When she was done she placed the plate before him on the dining table. Despite the aching hole in the pit of his stomach, he ate slowly and forked small amounts into his mouth. She watched him from across the table, a mug of milky tea steaming between her hands.
         Winter sunlight through the window above the sink. Mason glanced at the wall clock. How long until dark? He tried not to think about it.
         “Why are you still wearing your wedding ring?” Ellie asked him.
         He paused with a forkful of scrambled egg at his mouth. Looked at her. “I don’t know.”
         “Really?”
         “Does it matter?”
         “Depends.”
         “On what?”
         She placed her mug on the table. “On what you’re after…”
         “I’m not after anything.”
         She shook her head. “You came to the town to see me. Did you think we’d reconcile or something? You’d sweep me into your arms and we’d live happily ever after?”
         “No,” he said, and sighed. “I don’t know.”
         “You don’t know much, Mason.”
         He chewed his food and swallowed. “I know.”
         She finished her tea then stood and put her mug on the draining board. She rearranged the dirty plates and bowls in the sink.
         “I have to go out in a minute,” Mason said.
         “Okay.”
         “I won’t be gone for long, I hope.”
         “Okay.”
         “You’re not going to ask me where?”
         With her back to him, she turned on the taps. Thin streams of water fell into the sink. Her hands moved in the basin. “None of my business. Like you said, I’m not your mother.”
         He looked at her. She didn’t turn around.
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER TEN
     
    Mason stood before the abandoned house. The sky had darkened. Specks of rain fell against his face. The bread knife he’d taken from Ellie’s kitchen was in the pocket of his jacket. In one hand was the penlight torch. He took a deep breath. Cramps in his stomach and bile in his chest. He looked around then started towards the house.
     
    *
     
    The front door had been thrown into a large patch of weeds and brambles. Despite the rain Calvin’s blood stained the grass. Mason stood at the doorway and pointed the torch inside. It was a struggle to move his feet over the threshold and the dried blood just inside it, but in the end he did, then walked deeper into the house.
         The downstairs rooms were empty of life. He swept the torch over the bare walls. He recovered his rucksack and went through it to check nothing was missing. Calvin and Zeke’s bedding was still on the floor. Their belongings were still stored in one corner and along the wall.
         Mason stood in the sorry little room that still smelled of smoke and dust, and listened to the quickening rain upon the old house. Such sadness passed over him that he had to crouch upon the floor and bow his head for a moment.
         And then he heard the creak of an upstairs floorboard.
     
    *
     
    Mason took the stairway one slow step at a time, his legs trembling, and mouth open as if he were preparing a scream.
         The shifting of the walls around him. The voice of the wind through nooks and recesses. The flapping of something loose on the rain-dashed roof.
         He stood on the landing in the dark, and the torch only lit a small patch of floor ahead of him. The bacon and eggs sloshed heavily in his gut.
         He found them in a room at the back of the house, sprawled around one another on the floor. Sleeping or dead. Or both.