Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Read Online Free

these seemingly innocuous sticks of death, but that was far in his future. Only the now, in the form of a package, concerned him, and he would proceed with the requisite caution lest his expectation turn on him again. Time could be harnessed like a prized stallion, yet well he knew how elusive it could be, how slippery it was.
    He swiveled toward the window and let his gaze brush up to the painting. It had always been his favorite. Dali had produced this marvel in ’31, and for a time, The Persistence Of Memory had remained in Spain. For a time. Ah, to have friends in Catalonia.
    The great painter had been right—as far as his genius had taken him—so right. The man had once said that his goal was to create an image as if he’d taken a camera into a dream. He had struck the mark with his brilliant strokes, had brought his vision to the canvas as if he had stepped into another dimension and had simply painted what he saw. Brikker sat in silence, in reverence; in awe. How the clocks lay dormant or dying, like molten keepers of time; how they seemed to wither and waste, slain by unyielding heat cast by magic. Time melted in a dream, quickly, slowly, never the same mindless pace as awake-time … melted as if it were there in the instant, and never to be again.
    How wrong the artist had been. How utterly wrong.
    Brikker ground his cigarette, indulged another, all the while contemplating the contents of the package. He set it beside the day’s paperwork—there was always one more report to produce, one more test to follow up—and then drew the drawer next to him. This had been Goering’s drawer, of course, and perhaps at one time it had held a cyanide capsule, or a Mauser P.38 with a single bullet. Assuredly, it had never held what it held now.
    He removed the scrapbook and placed it in front of him as the clock tolled seven. He had not opened it in days, which was rare; had not added to it in weeks, which was troubling. Sometimes, he could feel the future slipping away, like water through his fingers. He glanced over his shoulder to the window. The sun, just a graying ball behind the cloud cover, was only now coming up above the Complex, its diffuse light holding the Nevada desert in gloom. Soon the phone would ring—news such as this traveled quickly in the highest ranks—the call from that ignoramus, Albrecht, down at Area 51 in Groom Lake.
    Was Richards close? How long now?
    How long, Brikker?
    He felt something churn inside of him. Worry? Fear? Doubt? A sickly concoction of all three, enough to unsettle him … and Albrecht would be privy to none of them. He lit another cigarette. Better. Better.
    He opened the book with some trepidation, but began to settle as he turned the pages, their secrets surrendering. He had been remiss in his reading; sometimes, even men like he needed reminding of the goal. There was gold in this mine of yellowed clippings and faded photographs, the purest. All you had to do was tap it. See it. He scanned quickly, skipping most of the pyrite, for there was fool’s gold aplenty here, promising at first, taunting and teasing as you clawed at it, infuriating when you finally had it in hand and realized its worthlessness. He lingered only on those glimmering veins circled in red, those precious pieces of the puzzle that had tasked him— driven him, often to the cusp of madness—since the beginning.
    ~
    Detroit Free Press, April 1, 1930
    FIRE KILLS COUPLE, GRANDCHILD SPARED IN MIRACLE
    Battle Creek Teacher Says Boy, 10, “ Rose from the dead ”
    The man who had made such a wild claim insisted that the child, overcome with smoke, had been dead in his arms one moment, and in the next had been standing beside him in tears. Visibly shaken and often rambling in the aftermath, the man, a staunch Methodist, schoolteacher, and father of eight, had refused to give his name for fear of being called a crazy by the press, and to their credit not one reporter had labeled him such when but a month later,