The Sisters: A Mystery of Good and Evil, Horror and Suspense (Book One of the Dark Forces Series) Read Online Free Page A
salmon-pink over the Atlantic Ocean, as big as a vintage dinner plate made from Depression glass.
Nathan saw it rising from his bedroom window on the second floor of the big house and decided to walk into town for breakfast. He got out of bed and glanced at the large windup clock that sat on the nightstand. The ancient timepiece, which had ticked like a metronome all night, showed 7:05 a.m., a little past the time he usually got up for work.
Well, he thought, I am on vacation. Still, he worried that the days might slip away a second at a time if he didn’t plan them out, and this he vowed to do over breakfast.
After a quick shower and shave, Nathan dressed and stepped out the front door. He found that the wind had disappeared during the night, leaving a clear and cold morning that made his heart ache at its rare beauty. He looked up and down the porch and decided that after breakfast he would bring around a couple of Adirondack chairs from the storage shed in back. That way he could read on the front porch and spend at least part of his vacation outdoors.
This idea pleased him very much and he zipped up his jacket against the morning chill before stepping onto the short front walk that led to the gate in the picket fence.
Nathan was the new owner of this grand dame of a house; he had inherited it from his father’s sister, whom he knew only as Aunt Millie. She had never married, and had herself inherited the house from Nathan’s uncle many years earlier. That side of Nathan’s family had money―old money, it was sometimes called (usually by people who didn’t have any themselves). But the house had been in the family for more than a century, passing from one generation to the next, along with its family traditions and upkeep, which was not insignificant considering its advanced age.
The house was built, along with many of its neighbors, after the Civil War, back in the days when servants had their own quarters up on the top floor of the house and life was considered to be more civilized.
Over the intervening years modernizations had taken place, but always with an eye toward preservation of the house’s exterior and, to a remarkable degree, of the interior. Even some of the furniture inside dated back to the 1880s, including a remarkable baby grand piano in the parlor. Nathan had learned to play on this piano, taught patiently by his Aunt Millie, and he could still sit for hours playing endless riffs and chord changes that started out in the key of C but usually wound up two or three changes up or down.
He played as the mood took him―usually pensive melodies that mirrored his steady but reflective personality. Never one to draw attention to himself, Nathan had been the antithesis of his fast-moving father and mother, who had lived life to its fullest, growing up in the 60s and spending much of their youth shocking the much more staid members of the family who gathered at this wonderful mansion on holidays and during the summers.
These were special times for Nathan, who remembered his parents fondly. They had only the two children, and lavished love and affection on Nathan (as the “baby”), not holding back in the least and letting him share in their great zest for living. Perhaps it was this very penchant for experientialism that caused their deaths, while Nathan was at college one year. His parents had died while on a cruise in the Bahamas―victims of an unfortunate mishap when the small boat being used to ferry passengers back and forth to a private island had capsized in rough seas.
Neither of his parents were particularly good swimmers and they had disappeared quickly beneath the waves, since no one in the launch was wearing a life vest. Nathan had received the news while at Berkeley, during the fall semester of his senior year, and the entire experience had been surreal: the half-hearted search for survivors conducted by Bahamian authorities, the memorial service in Philadelphia, where his parents
Nathan saw it rising from his bedroom window on the second floor of the big house and decided to walk into town for breakfast. He got out of bed and glanced at the large windup clock that sat on the nightstand. The ancient timepiece, which had ticked like a metronome all night, showed 7:05 a.m., a little past the time he usually got up for work.
Well, he thought, I am on vacation. Still, he worried that the days might slip away a second at a time if he didn’t plan them out, and this he vowed to do over breakfast.
After a quick shower and shave, Nathan dressed and stepped out the front door. He found that the wind had disappeared during the night, leaving a clear and cold morning that made his heart ache at its rare beauty. He looked up and down the porch and decided that after breakfast he would bring around a couple of Adirondack chairs from the storage shed in back. That way he could read on the front porch and spend at least part of his vacation outdoors.
This idea pleased him very much and he zipped up his jacket against the morning chill before stepping onto the short front walk that led to the gate in the picket fence.
Nathan was the new owner of this grand dame of a house; he had inherited it from his father’s sister, whom he knew only as Aunt Millie. She had never married, and had herself inherited the house from Nathan’s uncle many years earlier. That side of Nathan’s family had money―old money, it was sometimes called (usually by people who didn’t have any themselves). But the house had been in the family for more than a century, passing from one generation to the next, along with its family traditions and upkeep, which was not insignificant considering its advanced age.
The house was built, along with many of its neighbors, after the Civil War, back in the days when servants had their own quarters up on the top floor of the house and life was considered to be more civilized.
Over the intervening years modernizations had taken place, but always with an eye toward preservation of the house’s exterior and, to a remarkable degree, of the interior. Even some of the furniture inside dated back to the 1880s, including a remarkable baby grand piano in the parlor. Nathan had learned to play on this piano, taught patiently by his Aunt Millie, and he could still sit for hours playing endless riffs and chord changes that started out in the key of C but usually wound up two or three changes up or down.
He played as the mood took him―usually pensive melodies that mirrored his steady but reflective personality. Never one to draw attention to himself, Nathan had been the antithesis of his fast-moving father and mother, who had lived life to its fullest, growing up in the 60s and spending much of their youth shocking the much more staid members of the family who gathered at this wonderful mansion on holidays and during the summers.
These were special times for Nathan, who remembered his parents fondly. They had only the two children, and lavished love and affection on Nathan (as the “baby”), not holding back in the least and letting him share in their great zest for living. Perhaps it was this very penchant for experientialism that caused their deaths, while Nathan was at college one year. His parents had died while on a cruise in the Bahamas―victims of an unfortunate mishap when the small boat being used to ferry passengers back and forth to a private island had capsized in rough seas.
Neither of his parents were particularly good swimmers and they had disappeared quickly beneath the waves, since no one in the launch was wearing a life vest. Nathan had received the news while at Berkeley, during the fall semester of his senior year, and the entire experience had been surreal: the half-hearted search for survivors conducted by Bahamian authorities, the memorial service in Philadelphia, where his parents
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