From Dark Places Read Online Free Page B

cowered beneath him, his fury taking her from the mundane plane with him, the kitchen fading into pastel colours and transparent shapes. He seethed, realising she’d done this every time. Every single Creation he had dawdled away from, she had interfered. Hitler, Genghis, Jesus and all the others, all made extreme by her meddling.
    He would end her. As soon as the thought came to him, he calmed. It was inevitable, and something he would have done a long time ago, if he hadn’t fallen in love with her.
    As he relaxed, the kitchen restored itself around them. He saw the hope and relief in her eyes. He smiled. She didn’t see the lack of warmth in it. He went to Pammy and sniffed at the dough she pounded. A bitter ingredient had been added.
    “You wanted another war,” he said sadly but received no reply. He didn’t need one.
    “What are you doing?” she asked nervously but he ignored her. “Darling? What is that? Is it a spice? What’s in that bottle?”
    He poured three drops from the bottle he kept in his pocket. “Tears of joy, wept by a man who had lost all hope.”
    After sweet spices were incorporated to balance out hers, powdered breath from a lover’s sigh was added, then distilled hope from a crystal vial.
    “Why are you doing this?” she shrieked. “You’re breaking the rules too!”
    “I’m undoing your work,” he hissed and she backed away. “It’s too late for this to be a normal child, even to be a world-shaker. So I’m making my own child. This time, I won’t get the ingredients wrong.”
    “This… time?” her voice quavered.
    He simply looked at her and she knew he’d Created her. They weren’t equals as he had let her believe. Out of love? Out of carelessness?
    “But you said there can only ever be two of us—male and female—humanity reflecting us. What will it mean to have a third?”
    “Third?” He stepped back from the sparkling dough, feeling the heady rush of a thousand million potential lives coalescing under the mortal’s hands. “There will be no third. Only ever two, beloved. And the final ingredient comes from you.”
    He caught the sound of her scream, pressed it tight between his palms into a cold, oily droplet and let it slide into the dough.
    This one would be different. This time, the recipe was perfect.
    “Sixty-seven minutes!” the woman gasped and flopped into her chair. “Thank God for that.”
     
     
     
    BURNT
    The ruined house was still smouldering when she arrived. As much as she had tried to prepare herself, all she could do was stare at the shell and watch the wisps of grey smoke twist up into the morning air. Most of the whitewashed walls remained, now blackened from smoke and pitted with blown-out windows. They looked like rectangular sockets in a strange face—the charred front door assuming the role of gaping mouth, mirroring her own.
    It was cold, the sun had yet to rise above the mountain and the rain stole any residual heat from the air and the fire. The noise from the surrounding forest was so loud, as though the animals protested at the violence of the fire in their habitat. They would have been used to the little house, nestled in the clearing all these years. For it to suddenly roar brutally must have been a shock.
    The rain mingled with the tears on her cheeks, the fat drops feeling like fingertips drumming on the top of her head. Her sodden clothes hung heavily on her and she dripped like the trees around her, motionless, taking it all in. A hoot in the woods tore her attention from the house for a moment to look into the encroaching darkness.
    Why had she come? Why put herself through this? Nothing could be done now.
    Wretchedness anchored her to the spot and she forced herself to move, as if somehow walking away from the feeling would leave it behind, abandoned in the muddy footprints. Moving towards the house, she could hear groaning, as if it were crying in its death throes. She felt sorry for the house, she had loved it. So many