The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare Read Online Free Page A

that’s the escapee right? The one you told us couldn’t possibly be Brand. That one we didn’t need to worry about?”
    “That would be him.”
    “Just as long as you know I went to bat for you back then. So don’t say anything stupid this time because I can’t go to bat twice in this game.”
    “I know,” Art said.
    “There’s nothing else down there? No other signs of what might have happened? Why she was taken? What the message means? Where Morgant is? Nothing?”
    “No. She’s gone. Her daughter’s gone. The house is empty and no one is hanging out that shouldn’t be. Family comes in tomorrow to begin gathering things. The police are questioning neighbors, but there isn’t a lot to use right now.”
    “Who’s in charge?”
    “The detective I told you about. Jake something or other.”
    “Okay, stay with him for the next few days. I’m going to get some analysts on this and see what we can find out if we start looking cross country.”
    “Yes, sir,” Art said.
    “I’ll give you a call tonight.”
    Art waited hours on the call before falling asleep, phone next to him and silent.

4
    T he moonlight always fell down out here as if the heavens were trying to speak with Matthew. He had reveled in the beauty of science’s creations, marveled at the genius of an electron collider or a telescope. But here, in this place, the moon struck him just as powerfully; he saw it as gorgeous. It turned everything into a black and white hue and cast shadows all the way from the smallest blade of grass to the lighthouse he had come to visit.
    He could only visit at night, so he was never able to see the place during daylight, but it was still something to behold now, for sure.
    Matthew walked from his van across the graveled driveway and to the bottom of the lighthouse. The structure stood so tall, and yet the door he entered through was barely big enough to allow him in. He found the key in his pocket and twisted open the lock. Stepping inside, he left the beauty of nature for the beauty of his mind.
    He hit a light switch and the building illuminated, cascading upwards in a series of rings.
    He had two new additions, but he wanted to get a look before he started working. That’s what this came down to: work. What stood before him was work. What came next was work. His whole life, except for maybe the early years where he half listened to his professors and stayed inside his own head, had been work. There was a lot left to do, a lot , but soon all his work would end. He could finally rest and place down the yoke he had thrown on his shoulders all those years ago. He wanted a second just to admire this though, just a moment. It would grow much greater, without any doubt, but even now, he thought it rivaled everything produced by any other mind, ever. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci—none of them could look on what stood before Matthew and say they could have done better.
    It took Matthew two years to figure out that God had a sense of humor. Two years of struggling with the design, of not being able to create what his mind said was possible. Staring at a notepad, scribbling down formulas, sitting in a shitty Texas apartment with the heat having no end, he finally understood the reason he wasn’t able to extract the power he wanted: he was positioning the bodies wrong. The feet needed to be placed over one another. The arms outstretched. The bodies needed to resemble a dying Christ. From that realization, the whole structure before him was born, and he began building.
    He had removed the steps that once wound their way upward along the edge of the lighthouse’s wall. Matthew hollowed out the building and then replaced it with his own ideas. A large pole stood implanted into the ground, shooting all the way to the top of the lighthouse, to where a light once burned for ships. Surrounding this pole, supported by beams sticking outward from it, were large, circular rings. The largest was at the