Trauma by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

had soaked right through the underlay and formed a wide brownish blotch, like a Rorschach test.
    Bonnie said, “That’s all right. It’s oak. We can probably get most of it out if we scrub it with sodium perborate.”
    Esmeralda crossed herself. “I think it’s better if I make a start on the wall.”
    â€œYou’re sure? This is nothing like so yukky.”
    â€œNo, no. I do the wall.”
    â€œIs something wrong?” Bonnie asked her.
    â€œMy knee’s bad. I can’t do too much bending.”
    â€œYou crossed yourself.”
    Esmeralda gave her a hollow, noncommunicative look. “A small gesture for the dead, that’s all.”
    â€œOkay … you can do the floor then, Ruth. I’ll start bagging up the bedcovers.”
    They worked for an hour and a half. Bonnie’s steam cleaner hissed and whuffled in the bedrooms, while Ruth’s vacuum cleaner droned around the rest of the apartment and Esmeralda’s scrubbing brush set up a brisk, percussive rhythm on the walls.
    Bonnie usually sang while she worked. “Love, ageless and evergreen …” But in Naomi’s bedroom shewas silent. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the bloody stencil patterns that Naomi’s hands had made across the wall, yet somehow she couldn’t bring herself to clean them off. It would be almost like denying that Naomi’s last few moments of pain and bewilderment had ever happened.
    She found herself wondering what Naomi must have thought of her father, as she crawled across the floor. She couldn’t bear to think that she might have cried out to him to help her.
    Esmeralda came in with a cloth and a Dettox spray. “The wall’s finished,” she said. Without hesitation she sprayed the handprints and wiped them away.
    Bonnie switched off her steam cleaner and it gurgled into silence. “You can start on the couch if you want to.”
    â€œShe’s keeping the couch?”
    â€œThat’s a thousand-dollar couch, easy.”
    â€œI couldn’t keep my couch if my husband killed himself all over it. Even if it was ten-thousand dollars. I would always feel that there was a dead man sitting there.”
    â€œYes, well, I get that with Duke when the World Series is on.”
    The room was hot and humid now, and smelled strongly of damp carpet. Bonnie went to the window and opened it wide. On the windowsill stood a large, leafy fig plant in a terra-cotta pot, and she shifted it to one side in case the drapes blew against it and knocked it over. As she did so, something black dropped from one of its leaves—something that squirmed.
    â€œUrgh!” she said, and jumped back.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    â€œIt’s some kind of maggot or something. It dropped off that plant.”
    Esmeralda came over and peered into the compost inside the pot. A fat black caterpillar was crawling up the stem of the plant, its body undulating as it climbed.
    â€œThat’s disgusting,” said Bonnie. “Look—there’s more of them.” Half concealed in the foliage were four or five more caterpillars, all of them steadily eating, so that the edges of the fig leaves were all serrated in tiny jagged patterns.
    Esmeralda crossed herself again, twice.
    â€œWhy do you keep doing that?” Bonnie demanded.
    â€œI hate these things. They come from the devil.”
    â€œThey’re caterpillars. They won’t hurt you.”
    â€œI hate them, the black ones. They bring bad luck.”
    â€œYou’re so darn superstitious, Esmeralda. You’re worse than Ruth. But if you don’t like them, go get the permethrin spray and zap them. Anyways, I don’t think that Mrs. Goodman would appreciate what they’re doing to her fig.”
    Bonnie looked around the bedroom to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything. Naomi’s bed was completely stripped now, and later this afternoon she would come