Lost Girl by Adam Nevill Read Free Book Online Page B

unbothered for long enough to
paint such a work. No council would have sanctioned it either. The father wanted to know why it was there and what it meant, because it really meant something to someone. His desire to understand
became strangely urgent.
    No one had tried to embellish the figure with a cock, tits or a toothy smile either. It simply cut a swathe unopposed. And who would deface the figure once they’d glimpsed the partial head
inside the cowl? The whites of the eyes revealed misery, even ecstasy, or maybe a combination of each. Within sharp sockets, the eyes seemed to stare upwards or inwards, an expression morbidly
religious, or tragic. The father had not thought in these terms for a long while, nor been affected by anything artistic since the afternoon his little girl was taken. He was reminded of other
times and experienced the slight disorientation that came with the sudden sense of better days.
    Now that he looked more closely at what there was of a face, it seemed tightly papered in flesh, or perhaps it was a mask, the long features drawn and weary as if from the sight of epic
suffering. One face for all. No strength remained to keep the jaw shut, and the mouth gaped beyond beseeching for mercy, a morsel of food, or a drop of water. The figure seemed beyond all of that
and was still rushing further into . . . the father didn’t know.
    Around its unsightly feet a skilled hand had written:
Usque ad mortem
. Latin. Something from a dead language, and he didn’t understand what it meant, though the mural did remind
him of the very little he knew of medieval art that celebrated death in old churches. And he briefly imagined that this was a sign, or metaphor, that
it
all had to end:
this
,
us
, the world. He imagined this was the figure’s true message. Let us all sit down exhausted and die in our unlit homes.
    The father climbed inside his car, shaken, though not sure by what precisely, and now wished that he had not looked upon the wall.
    That was the first time, his first sighting of the figure, but it would not be his last.

SEVEN
    Heavy head, soft bones. He didn’t have a shirt on and was still slick all over. He dripped. Thoughts of the coming move against Murray Bowles punctured the father. His
strength seeped out of a hole in his body that he couldn’t find. He had to repeatedly visit his ensuite bathroom to drink water.
    Moving to and fro made him feel weaker. It had been thirty-seven degrees that day and was not much cooler at night. Kent had had the highest temperature: forty-one, even hotter than predicted.
The next day it was going to hit forty in Devon. For three months the lowest recorded temperature had been thirty-four degrees. You moved, you stayed hot.
    The room was too cheap to have air conditioning. Powering A/C was too costly for the near-defunct hotel chain, so he conserved his strength like the area conserved water and electricity. Until
the three new nuclear power stations were finished, the whole of the south-west would sweat and spend more time in the dark. They got everything late except for refugees, that’s what the
locals said. People should have been used to delays and power cuts, but they still watched keenly for progress, as if reactor readiness could be achieved by force of desire alone. People had
learned that the power could not stay off for long. It wasn’t only darkness they feared; it was what the darkness did to
other
people and to them too.
    Through the evening the father obsessively checked the water meter in the bathroom, filling jugs from the cold tap. At midnight he ran another
cold
shower with the timer fixed at one
minute. When he stepped out he didn’t dry himself. He lay on the bed with most of his body upon a towel. The room’s only window was open and the street below was quiet. No breeze.
He’d kept the lights off to trick his mind into thinking the room was cooler. He could smell the sea.
    To distract himself from his nerves and the