Greely's Cove Read Online Free Page A

into the cell block and stored it unrefrigerated under his bunk. Mitch had shared in the “feast” late one night and had awakened hours later with cramps, chills, and an ugly taste in his mouth. He’d known that only one thing could cure his agony: throwing up, which he did in the uncovered toilet that occupied a corner of his tiny cell. He had clung to the toilet bowl like a drowning man to a rock, flinching and trembling throughout most of the night, wishing he were dead.
    He wanted to throw up now, but he fought the urge with deep breaths.
    “Well, I suppose that will be all for today,” said Dr. Craslowe, rising from his huge, wing-back chair. “I’ll see you next week, then?”
    Mitch fought down another wave of nausea and steadied himself against the edge of the massive ebony table. These sessions were taking their toll. Each one seemed to produce a stronger “psychosomatic artifact,” or whatever the hell the doctor called the demon in Mitch’s mouth. He felt sick and weak, and he wanted the sessions to end, even though Dr. Craslowe was treating him without charge.
    To make matters worse, the treatments were not working: Mitch noticed no softening of his hunger for alcohol, which the therapy was supposed to cure. As a matter of fact, he fully intended to duck into Liquid Larry’s on his way back to the mortuary for a triple threat (three shots of gin in a beer mug, over ice, topped off with tonic), after which he would crunch down a roll of Breath Savers in order to hide his boozy breath from old Matt Kronmiller’s nose. Kronmiller was the mortician, Mitch’s boss. Today especially, Mitch would need the jolt of a triple threat—to deaden the horrific taste in his mouth and purge himself of the dark unease he was feeling.
    “Shall we say Saturday, as usual?” pressed Dr. Craslowe, donning his thick, steel-framed glasses, enlarging his watery gray eyes. “The weekends are best for me, I daresay.” He rendered his craggy smile again, and Mitch caught a glimpse of ancient dentures. “My regular patients demand the lion’s share of my time during the week, I’m afraid”—meaning that he reserved weekdays for those who could pay, Mitch figured—“and Mrs. Pauling has asked for Sundays off.”
    As though on cue, the doctor’s assistant glided into the room, carrying Mitch’s anorak. She was a lithe, olive-skinned woman with almond eyes. Nearly as tall as the doctor himself and young enough to be his granddaughter, she carried herself rigidly erect. Unlike the doctor, she seemed never to smile.
    Mitch Nistler struggled with himself. If he could just find the strength to utter the word no, he would be free. He desperately wanted to see the last of this sunless mansion called White-leather Place, where the doctor lived and practiced. He wanted to be free of Craslowe, whose unsettling eyes and long face suggested impossible oldness, though the actual wrinkles and folds marked a man in his midsixties or not much older. A simple “ No! ” would deliver him of hypnotic jaunts into the chilly well of the subconscious, from which he always emerged with vague fears and, lately, a putrid taste in his mouth.
    But the “ No! ” would not come. Mitch’s tongue confronted it, tripped over the n sound, and got no farther.
    “Are you all right, Mr. Nistler?” asked Mrs. Pauling in her middle-class English clip. Her strong hand clamped around his elbow, shoring him up. “You seem a bit off-balance.” Her voice seemed full of genuine concern, perhaps even pity.
    “Nonsense,” said Craslowe. “He’ll be right as rain in a moment. He’s had a particularly lively hypnotic confrontation, that’s all. Isn’t that so, Mitch?”
    Mitch gazed into the doctor’s avuncular face as the latter helped him into his anorak. The smile never wavered. It beamed kindness and concern and confidence; but more than anything else, it conveyed authority, ancient and incontestable, not to be denied.
    “Yeah,” said Mitch