The Cauldron by Jean Rabe, Gene DeWeese Read Free Book Online Page B

house shuddered under the impact of fists pounding on the front door. He turned the knob and staggered backward as the door burst open.
    “You bastard!” Mike Fowler charged through the door, hands clenched, elbows tight to his sides, his forearms a pair of battering rams.
    His fists caught Carl at the edge of his ribcage. Already off balance, Carl reeled, stumbling over the corner of the couch. Another blow backed him up against the far wall. Carl threw his arms up in clumsy defense, but Mike landed a hard punch to his side.
    “Mike,” he gasped. “What—”
    “She’s dead, freak!” Two fists thudded against Carl’s chest. “Shelly’s dead!” Tears streamed into Mike’s beard. “You killed her! God damn you!”
    Carl’s stomach knotted. He no longer felt the blows. “Dead?” he wheezed. “Shelly? How?”
    “Head on with a semi, that’s how!”
    The rain, the curve, the scream, the roaring engine shrieking across the hood, crumpling it into the windshield —
    All of it memory, not nightmare.
    Shelly’s final words to him: Wake up, Carl!
    No, it had been a nightmare! It had to have been nightmare! And this—red-faced, sputtering-mad Mike Fowler, was part of it.
    “Murdering bastard!” Mike chopped at Carl’s neck with the side of a fist.
    “No,” Carl moaned, sliding away from the blow with his shoulder raised to deflect it. “Not me. How could it be me? I never left the house—”
    Mike stepped back. His chest heaved unevenly. “You weren’t there, freak, but you might as well have been! The cop said she was on the wrong side of the road. Shelly, on the wrong side of the road! You think she did that by accident?”
    “Accident,” Carl repeated fuzzily.
    “No way. She was too good a driver for that. She wanted to die, freak. Maybe not consciously, but she wanted it, and you’re the one that made her want it.”
    “Mike, no, I lo—”
    “Shut up!” Unclenching his fist at the last instant, Mike shoved the heel of his hand against Carl’s chin. His head bounced against the wall. “She’s been going through hell all this week, all because of you!” He yanked on Carl’s shirt, as if to bring his face down and look at it to see what his sister might have seen. “We all told her getting dumped by you would be the best thing that could ever happen to her, but would she listen? From the moment she met you she was a different person. I hardly recognized her. You had her so screwed up—”
    “Mike, please, I—”
    “I said shut up!” One fist pulled back, trembling, then fell. “ Damn you! It should’ve been you smeared on the highway, not her!” Mike stepped back and stood staring at Carl for a moment, rubbing his grazed knuckles, his chest heaving. “Stay away from us,” he said, still short of breath. “Don’t come to the funeral, don’t send flowers, don’t let me set eyes on you again. Ever!”
    Mike turned, reeling against the couch and almost falling. Catching himself, he shoved through the screen door so hard it slammed against the outside wall.
    “Ever!” he shouted over his shoulder, half sobbing. “Ever!”
    The engine of Mike’s TransAm roared. The tires shrieked against the pavement. Carl felt his legs go weak. His back still against the wall by the kitchen door, he slid slowly down the wall until he was sitting sprawled on the floor, his ribs aching.
    Wake up, Carl!
    Shelly’s words kept repeating as the sound of the TransAm faded into the distance. Wake up, Carl! over and over, sometimes in Shelly’s voice, sometimes in his own, sometimes in Mike’s.
    At last the phrase turned almost soothing, like a mantra. Something softened the words, something began to seal them off, to build a muffling barrier around the pain. Finally, still slumped against the wall, the front door open to the coming dawn, Carl slept.
    ***

Chapter 7
    Sometime between nightmares, Carl pulled himself off the floor and onto his bed. That was where he found himself, fully clothed and