The Night Villa Read Online Free Page A

The Night Villa
Book: The Night Villa Read Online Free
Author: Carol Goodman
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Biddle grabbing Elgin and pulling him out of the way of Dale’s next shot.
    Of course, I think as the gun goes off for the third time (why, I wonder, have I been counting?) and I hit the floor, Agnes said that Dale was jealous of her relationship with Professor Lawrence.
That’s
why she was so nervous this morning, not because of the internship interview. I should have paid more attention to what she was trying to tell me.
    It’s dark under the table, like the shade underneath the live oaks we walked beneath this morning. Still, I can make out across the table Agnes’s scuffed navy pumps with the little red and white bows that I found so quaint only an hour ago. They strike me now as both heartbreaking and infuriatingly innocent. Hadn’t she realized Dale was capable of going on a homicidal rampage? But then, I think, I’d had no idea how far gone Ely was until he shaved his head and went to live with a cult. I remember how all my friends had wondered how I hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t noticed that he spent more and more time alone locked in a room chanting, that he’d stopped eating anything but raw nuts, and that the pile of books on his side of the bed were no longer math textbooks but tracts on Eastern mystery religions, reincarnation, and numerology.
    Ely. I remember the phone calls and it occurs to me with total irrationality and total conviction that he had been somehow calling to warn me: a warning framed in a numerical code.
    Another shot explodes above me, splintering through the table and showering me with sawdust. The fourth shot. The phone was ringing four times when I left my office. I’m suddenly sure there will be five shots in all.
    On the other side of the table I see the heels of Agnes’s shoes press together as if she thought she was Dorothy and could transport herself back to Kansas, but no, she’s standing up. In the silence that still rings with the echo of Dale’s last shot I hear her surprisingly firm voice quoting something that sounds like scripture.
    “Dale, remember what we talked about.
The evil I flee, the better I find.

    I see the black sneakers walking toward Agnes’s side of the table, making their way around two crumpled bodies—one I recognize from his clothes as Barry Biddle (I can’t recognize him from his face because his face is gone) and the other is Elgin. Only Elgin is not crumpled. He’s huddled, pretending to be dead, no doubt, his right hand splayed out above his head, his left cupped in front of his face, as if hiding from what is happening above him. I see his face contort as a Converse High-Top steps on his hand, but he doesn’t cry out or move. I try to lip-synch a message to him, but he’s looking down. I notice that a light is reflected on his face and realize that he’s got a cell phone in his hand that he’s trying to operate. He must be trying to get help, but I don’t believe that anyone is coming in time to help Agnes.
    I can feel the rough fiber of the carpet rubbing against my elbows and it reminds me of the pavement that burned those people pinned on the mall while Charles Whitman took potshots at them. There’s no shame in trying to save your own life, I can imagine my aunt M’Lou saying. But then there was nothing those people could have done.
    I prop myself up on my elbows and start to wiggle myself toward Agnes’s shoes. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Elgin looking at me, his face lit by the light from his cell phone. His lips are forming some silent command to me, but I can’t tell what. It’s too late, I think; on the other side of the table I can see the black High-Tops approaching Agnes’s navy pumps. The white rubber parts of Dale Henry’s sneakers are slippery with blood. The last thing I want to do is touch them, but then I hear Agnes scream “No!” and I lurch for the shoes, reaching for an ankle. As soon as my fingers graze the bloodstained canvas I can feel that he’s already losing his balance. I hear the
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