Dead of Light Read Online Free Page B

to; from first understanding, I knew that this was something entirely other, something entirely worse.
    â€œDon’t piss about,” Jamie said behind me, coldly vicious. “Have a proper look, why don’t you?”
    And his hand reached past me, gripped his brother’s chilly shoulder and heaved.
    Awkwardly, ungainly in death as he never had been in life even with all the weight he had on him, Marty shifted; Marty stirred under his brother’s ungentle hand, fell back and stirred again, finally rolled over with that fine white sheet only a tangle now between his legs.
    o0o
    Not good, this. Not a kind thing to do to a cousin, an old friend, an adoptive brother. But that was the crux, of course, because I wasn’t any more. That’s why he was so angry, so set against me; whatever the summons of blood, I was the closest he could find right now to someone from the other world, outside the family. And someone outside family had done this, and I represented them all...
    First glance, Marty’s back looked like a Mandelbrot in bad colours, black with livid purple edges. It wasn’t, of course, the shape was wrong; but it still looked fractal, it had that regularity and the sense of depth, the feeling that however close you got you still wouldn’t reach the bottom of it.
    Second glance and it just looked foul, it looked like a dreadful way to die.
    The hard smooth crust of black scab had fractured under his weight, shattered almost, into a craquelure that showed harsh red in the cracks. Maybe it wasn’t his weight that had done that after all, maybe it was his writhing and bucking as he died; because he surely must have done that, he would never have gone easy and this must have hurt.
    Whatever this was, that much I was ready to bet on, that it must have hurt. My cousin Marty, whose major ambition in life was to learn how to eat beer-glasses for fun and profit, who’d hold his finger in a lighter-flame for effect and laugh as the blister came up after; I was ready to bet that he’d screamed as these blisters came up.
    â€œJamie?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHow did they, how did they ever do this?”
    â€œDon’t know,” he said, softening a little suddenly, standing beside me; allowing the question, allowing me to be us instead of them. “Nobody knows. Allan’s on his way, though. He’ll find out.”
    Yes. Allan was the eldest of the brothers, Allan and then James and then my father Charles. Allan was the intellectual, the sophisticate, the man who had known how to erase Marty’s first primitive tattoo that time. He’d sniff out whatever had been done last night, he’d understand. Whether he’d point the finger after, whether how would give us who — that was another question, and nothing we could do but hope.
    And I did find myself hoping, unexpectedly. Standing over Marty’s body, I felt a part of this family as I hadn’t for years. Beside me, Jamie seemed to have burned his anger out; now his hand was slack on his brother’s head and I could hear his breathing catch and harden, carrying too much memory in a room where memory could only equal pain.
    â€œCome on,” I said quietly, “let’s get him tidy again, yeah? Before someone comes?”
    Jamie nodded mutely, and between us we turned Marty over and straightened him out. It was impossible not to touch those repugnant scabs, though I avoided them as much as I could, and I could see Jamie doing the same, trying to fit his fingers around them. They felt hard and dry, colder somehow than Marty’s body was. That had to be illusion or imagination, surely, but I thought Jamie was sharing it. Evil always feels cold. Christ, I should know. I’d shivered enough under my uncle’s eyes, some of my cousins’, my father’s sometimes.
    We pulled the sheet up from either side of the bed and folded it tidily, well above his groin to hide the black