Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe Read Online Free Page A

know.”
    â€œI know,” said David, his voice at a distance from Leslie’s enthusiasm. “I didn’t think anyone actually bought that stuff.”
    â€œWell, I did. I thought it would help to support those prisoners who are doing something
creative
,
instead of . . . well, instead of destructive things.”
    â€œCreativity isn’t always an index of niceness, Leslie,” David warned his wife.
    â€œWait’ll you see it before passing judgment,” she said, opening the flap of the box. “There—isn’t that nice work?” She set the piece on the coffee table.
    Dr. Munck now plunged into that depth of sobriety which can only be reached by falling from a prior alcoholic height. He looked at the object. Of course he had seen it before, watched it being tenderly molded and caressed by creative hands, until he sickened and could watch no more. It was the head of a young boy, a lovely piece discovered in gray formless clay and glazed in blue. The work radiated an extraordinary and intense beauty, the subject’s face expressing a kind of ecstatic serenity, the convoluted simplicity of a visionary’s gaze.
    â€œWell, what do you think of it?” asked Leslie.
    David looked at his wife and said solemnly: “Please put it back in the box. And then get rid of it.”
    â€œGet rid of it? Why?”
    â€œWhy? Because I know which of the inmates did this work. He was very proud of it, and I even forced a grudging compliment for the craftsmanship of the thing. But then he told me the source of his model. That expression of sky-blue peacefulness wasn’t on the boy’s face when they found him lying in a field about six months ago.”
    â€œNo, David,” said Leslie as a premature denial of what she was expecting her husband to reveal.
    â€œThis was his most recent—and according to him most memorable—‘frolic.’”
    â€œOh my God,” Leslie murmured softly, placing her right hand to her forehead. Then with both hands she gently placed the boy of blue back in his box. “I’ll return it to the shop,” she said quietly.
    â€œDo it soon, Leslie. I don’t know how much longer we’ll be residing at this address.”
    In the moody silence that followed, Leslie briefly mused upon the now openly expressed departure from the town of Nolgate, their escape. Then she said: “David, did he actually talk about the things he did? I mean about—”
    â€œI know what you mean. Yes, he did,” answered Dr. Munck with a professional gravity.
    â€œPoor David,” Leslie said, lovingly sympathetic now that machinations were no longer required to achieve her ends.
    â€œActually, it wasn’t that much of an ordeal, strange to say. The conversation we had could even be called stimulating in a clinical sense. He described his ‘frolicking’ in a highly imaginative manner that was rather engrossing. The strange beauty of this thing in the box here—disturbing as it is—somewhat parallels the language he used when talking about those poor kids. At times I couldn’t help being fascinated, though maybe I was shielding my true feelings with a psychologist’s detachment. Sometimes you just have to keep some distance between yourself and reality, even if it means becoming a little less human.
    â€œAnyway, nothing he said was sickeningly graphic in the way you might imagine. When told me about his ‘most memorable frolic,’ it was with a powerful sense of wonder and nostalgia, shocking as that sounds to me now. He seemed to feel a kind of homesickness, though his ‘home’ is a ramshackle ruin of his decayed mind. His psychosis has evidently bred an atrocious fairyland which exists in a powerful way for him. And despite the demented grandeur of his thousand names, he actually sees himself as only a minor figure in this world—a mediocre courtier in a broken-down