Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [61]
“I’m afraid it’s not here.”
Slowly, D’Agosta let his flashlight drop to his side. He realized he was breathing fast, and that his heart was racing. It was bizarre—beyond bizarre. “What the hell is this place? And how has it stayed like this without being robbed?”
“The town protects its secrets well.” Pendergast’s silvery eyes darted about, taking everything in, an expression of intense concentration on his face. Slowly, once again, he paced the room, finally stopping at the table of handmade books. He quickly sorted through them, flipping the pages and putting them back. He left the room, and D’Agosta followed him down the hall as he entered the daughter’s room. D’Agosta caught up as he was examining the shelf of identical red-bound volumes. His spidery hand reached out and plucked the last one down. He riffled through the pages; every one was blank. Pendergast put it back and drew out the penultimate volume. This one was full of nothing but horizontal lines, made apparently with a ruler, so densely drawn that each page was almost black with them.
Pendergast selected the next book, flipped through it, finding more dense lines and some crude, stick-like, childish sketches in the beginning. The next volume contained disjointed entries in a ragged hand that climbed up and down across the pages.
Pendergast began to read out loud, at random, prose written in poetic stanzas.
I cannot
Sleep I must not
Sleep. They come, they whisper
Things. They show me
Things. I can’t tune it
Out, I can’t tune it
Out. If I sleep again I will
Die… Sleep = Death
Dream = Death
Death = I can’t tune it
Out
Pendergast flipped a few pages. The ravings continued until they seemed to dissolve into disjointed words and illegible scratchings. More thoughtfully, he put the book back and drew out another, much earlier in the set, opening it in the middle. D’Agosta saw lines of strong and even writing, evidently that of a girl, with doodles of flowers and funny faces in the margins and i’s that were dotted with cheerful circles.
Pendergast read off the date.
D’Agosta did a quick mental calculation. “That would be about six months before Helen’s visit,” he said.
“Yes. When the Doanes were still new to Sunflower.” Pendergast paged through the entries, scanning them swiftly, pausing at one point to read out loud:
Mattie Lee razzed me again about Jimmy. He may be cute but I can’t stand the goth clothes and that thrash metal he’s into. He slicks his hair back and smokes, holding the cigarette up close to the burning ash. He thinks it makes him look cool. I think it makes him look like a nerd trying to look cool. Even worse: it makes him look like a dweeb who looks like a nerd who’s trying to be cool.
“Typical high-school girl,” said D’Agosta, frowning.
“Perhaps a bit more incisive than most.” The agent continued flipping forward through the volume. He stopped abruptly at an entry made some three months later. “Ah!” he exclaimed, sudden interest in his voice, and began to read.
When I got home from school I saw Mom and Dad in the kitchen hovering over something on the counter. Guess what it was? A parrot! It was gray and fat, with a stumpy red tail and a big fat metal band around its leg with a number but no name. It was tame and would perch right on your arm. It kept cocking its head at me and peering into my eyes, like it was checking me out. Dad looked it up in the encyclopedia and said it was an African Grey. He said it had to be somebody’s pet, it was too tame for anything else. It just showed up around noon, sitting in the peach tree next to the back door, making noise to announce its presence. I begged Dad to let us keep it. He said we could until he found the real owner. He says we have to run an ad. I told him to run it in the Timbuctoo Times and he thought that was pretty funny. I hope he never finds the real owner. We made a little nest for it in an old box. Dad is going to the pet store