Animosity Read Online Free Page B

angle of her head that her neck had been broken. A wormy rivulet of bright red blood ran from one nostril down to her chin, like an ugly crack in the face of an otherwise perfect porcelain doll.
    Something else trickled out of her, too. Something thick and milky.
    Down there.
    Overhead, a bird chirped in the treetops. It was a maddening sound, a midsummer song far too merry for the scene at hand. From the Tomblins’ yard next door came the staccato chattering of an automatic water pistol, accompanied by a woman’s shrill laughter and pretend pleas for mercy. From further down the block: the high-pitched giggle of a toddler, in time with the metallic squeak -sigh- squeak -sigh of a backyard swing-set.
    Meanwhile, my pulse banged in my temple like a tympani drum, louder than everything else.
    Norman brushed against me. I flinched. Swayed. My breath burst out of me in a sick wheeze.
    “Norman—”
    The retriever’s eyes were sad, watery, as he crept toward the dead girl.
    “Norman, no… d-don’t—”
    He started licking her left foot.
    I turned, vomited into a pile of discarded two-by-fours, and I didn’t stop making that same high-pitched whining noise my dog had been making minutes ago until I was all the way home, clamoring up the steps of my front porch, stumbling for the phone.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    In the prologue to my fifth novel, A Cold, Dark Place , a man finds the mutilated corpse of a little Asian boy shoved into a culvert behind his place of business as he closes up shop on Christmas Eve. Though he did not know the child, I remember describing the character’s terror as “a devastating sense of loss .” In that boy’s glazed, lifeless eyes, the man saw the inevitable mortality of his own small children. He recognized the depths of evil to which humans are capable of descending, and with his discovery came “an awful, black knowledge” that no one is ever truly safe . Not even the innocent.
    I felt an inexplicable sense of déjà vu as I sat there in my living room, tormented by what I had found that morning. As if I had personally experienced all of this before. And I felt regret. A smothering depression like I had somehow brought this upon myself, as if I had created the events of this day by penning something similar eleven years before.
    I shuddered. I kept seeing that little girl’s tiny white face. Her fixed gray pupils staring through me into eternity. Over and over and over again, replaying in my mind like a clip from some misogynistic film I had watched in spite of my better judgment and now prayed I could forget…
    Two hours had passed since I found her, and still I heard the obscene rasp of my golden retriever’s coarse tongue lapping across the soft, dead flesh of her heel.
    “Samantha,” I wept. “Oh, Sam… ”
    Not since the day she was born had I so desperately wanted to hold my own daughter, to hug her and squeeze her and promise her I would never let go. I cursed myself for postponing our weekend together, for worrying about some stupid book when I should have savored every precious second I was allowed to spend with her. Guilt gnawed at my soul with hateful, razor-sharp fangs, but at the same time I found myself burning up inside with a primal, white-hot rage. No one would ever put his hands on my Samantha like someone had put his filthy hands on that poor child at the Clinton property…
    Sweet Jesus, who could do such a thing?
    I ran one trembling hand through my sweat-stiff hair, made a sound somewhere between a furious growl and a tortured moan.
    In my right ear then, a deep male voice: “Sir?”
    I could barely stop myself from lashing out at the faces looming over me. For the last few minutes, I had almost forgotten that I was not alone.
    “Whoa. Easy there. You sure you’re gonna be okay, Mr. Holland?”
    I took a deep breath. Forced myself to calm down and deal with the task at hand.
    “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.” My voice was hoarse. “I don’t