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ther thundering, "either you face this thing like a man or I'll have to take you back to the house and lock you in the cellar again." |
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It was then, even as now, the most terrifying thing that anyone could have said to him. The threat of darkness and the even more consummate threat of aloneness conjured up for him the most terrifying specter of all. Being alone and the dark, after all these years, were still a threat without parallel. |
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"Didn't you love your grandfather, boy?" his father growled. |
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There was no way to tell his father the truth, because in truth, he hated the old manthe fat old man with the foul smell of his tobacco breath and the even stronger odor of the pungent liquid he drank out of the old jug in the basement. |
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Even now he remembered the gravesite, a tomb within a tomb. A wall of solemn men and women, indistinguishable in their black on black, formed a morbid curtain, a second tomb, a ring of curiosity. Even then he knew they were asking the same question he was asking himself. Could it be that Cleveland Jasper Frazier was really finally dead? |
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It was Charlie's first death, and he dared tell no one that he was responsible for it. That would truly make his father angry, if he knew that his cowardly son was the real reason the |
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