Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie by Mae Ronan Read Free Book Online

it created rather a large hole in the plaster.
    “I’ll kill you, Tommy!” she cried, dashing as little more than a madwoman from the room.
    Tommy Wells was fast asleep, held tightly in the angelic arms of a sottish stupor, when Cassie charged into her mother’s room. Hesitating not a moment, she took up the lamp from the bedside table, and bashed him over the head with it.
    “What in the blazes . . .?” shouted Birdie, brought to attention by the sound that the lamp made, when it collided with the back of Tommy’s skull. “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?”
    “Your husband stole my money!” shrieked Cassie, waving the lamp to and fro. Its colour was white, and there could be seen clearly upon it the stain of Tommy’s blood, which seemed to be oozing now from his wound. He groaned softly, and reached for Cassie; but succeeded only in falling off of the bed, and injuring his ugly head even further with a corner of the table.
    “He didn’t steal nothing,” said Birdie. “I took your damned money.”
    The lamp fell from Cassie’s hand, and onto Tommy’s upturned face; where it did finally the service of rendering him unconscious. The lamp dropped down, and shattered across the hardwood floor, as Tommy slumped against the side of the bed.
    “You don’t know how to crack a lock!” hollered Cassie.
    “Well, I s’pose I learnt,” said Birdie.
    “I’ll kill you, you filthy whore!”
    Cassie flew at Birdie; but Birdie held up a hand to halt her flight, and wrapped it round her throat. “Ah ah ah,” she said. “Now, why would you want to go and do a thing like that? Only imagine, sugar, what would happen to you, if I was dead. Old Tommy here would lose the house – and you would be back living in that trailer, with that no-good Bobby-Ray Williams. Now, what you think, sugar? You missing Bobby-Ray?”
    Cassie shook herself free of her mother; but allowed herself a moment of indulgence, wherein she glared at the woman so very fiercely, that should expressions have been capable of murder, as the saying goes, she would most certainly have fallen down dead.
    Yet there was too much pleasure, and too much victory, in Birdie’s Revlon-smudged countenance. So Cassie turned on her heel, and fled the room.
    Safe behind her own locked door, she retrieved an old guitar from the closet, and sat down upon the bed. She took her fingers to the strings, and began to sing softly.

Chapter VI:
    Curu-ga
     
    T o alter our direction once again, in a manner that should, in any case, be eventually proven necessary, we delve into the side of a high cliff-face, which was turned at an angle to form what would seem, from above, an open-based triangle with a tall hill on the East-hand. Before the cliff-face was a narrow shelf of earth, only just wide enough to allow for the passage of the inhabitants of the small mount. Below the shelf opened up a great wide ravine, filled with naught but dry dust and rock.
    The side of the cliff-face was removed so much as to create an entrance tunnel eight-by-twelve foot wide and high. Due to the angle of the face, this entrance could be seen only by an individual who had braved the shelf of rock, or by one who stood at the very bottom of the treacherous ravine, which was almost three hundred feet deep, and nearly four miles in length.
    At the end of this tunnel, which was about five hundred feet long, there opened up a spacious, circular cavern. There was most always a large host moving within this cavern, engaged in any of a thousand sorts of wicked activity, of whose knowledge the reader in most cases would indeed be pleased to be excused from. There branched off through the walls of the cavern six additional tunnels, down each of which a certain number of the inhabitants made their permanent quarters. One of these tunnels led to a singular and enormous chamber, in which the High Prince of the mount made his bed. Here dwelt also his mate, and their four male offspring.
    The High Prince of the