The Fraternity of the Stone by David Morrell Read Free Book Online Page A

communicate with gestures. But other noises were unavoidable, doors being opened, footsteps on hard bare floors. Indeed, with an ear against the insulation, he suspected that several indistinct creaks he heard below him were due to someone creeping through his oratory, study, and sleeping quarters. These sounds could easily have been imagined. Nonetheless he concentrated his attention across the dark attic toward the unseen trapdoor, listening apprehensively for the scrape that it would make if someone pushed it up. He licked his dry lips.
    And waited.
    The night passed slowly. Despite his tension, the stifling air made him groggy. He blinked at the dark through heavy eyelids, woke with a jerk, and fought not to drowse again. The next time he woke, disoriented, quickly on guard, he noticed a hint of light through the cracks in a ceiling vent that allowed the build-up of heat to escape during summer. Morning. He no longer heard the drumming of the rain on the roof. Indeed, except for the dry controlled hiss of his breath, he heard nothing.
    All the same, he waited. In his former life, he'd once been hunted for five days through a jungle. He'd eaten almost nothing, only non-toxic leaves that gave his brain the potassium and lithium it needed to remain alert. Unable to trust the bacteria-ridden water, he'd depended on rainfall to give him moisture. By comparison with that jungle, this attic presented few problems. He was sedentary, after all, and accustomed to fasting. If the month had been August instead of October, the swelter up here (even with the heat vents) would have been unendurable. But given his circumstances, chilly but not dangerously cold, he could remain here for three full days. That was the limit for surviving without water. Perhaps he could last even longer, but he'd be delirious.
    He brooded throughout the morning, feeling death below him. The corpses would have passed beyond rigor mortis now, entering the stage of livor mortis, beginning to swell from body gases, stinking. The same would be happening to Stuart Little.
    His forehead ached from frowning. In 1979, he recalled, he'd been in such despair that he'd wanted to kill himself. The monastery had provided his only alternative, a way to punish himself and try to save his soul.
    Then why now was he so desperate to avoid whoever was hunting him? Why did he feel compelled to stop them from doing what he'd almost done to himself? If the assassins killed him, it wouldn't be suicide, after all. He wouldn't be damning himself.
    Because it was one thing to be martyred, quite another to invite being martyred. Presumption was as damning a sin as despair. He couldn't dare count on God to save him merely because he'd been killed for his sins. He had to fight for salvation. He had to use every device in his power, every trick he could think of, to avoid his executioners.
    I want to be punished. Yes. For my former life. For the monks who died because of me.
    But...
    Yes?
    I'm also under an obligation.
    Oh? To do what?
    To punish others, those who killed them.
    But you didn't even know those monks. They were hermits like yourself. Personally, they meant nothing to you.
    It doesn't matter. They were human beings, and they were cheated. They deserved the chance to pursue their holiness.
    Maybe they're in Heaven now.
    There's no guarantee. That's presumption again.
    So in its place, you prefer revenge? Is that a proper Carthusian motive? An eye for an eye as opposed to turning one's cheek?
    He didn't have an answer. Unfamiliar disturbing emotions, dormant for six years, welled up in him. The world had intruded, corrupting him.

    Chapter 21.
    The next night, late, it stormed again. Lightning flashed, dimly visible through the slots in the air vents. Thunder shook the roof. He decided to take advantage of the weather and crawled toward the trapdoor, shifting it as silently as possible, easing down to the darkness that hid the sink. As the storm raged outside, he crept to his