Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Read Online Free Page A

unable to cope with the recurring nightmares of the event, he drowned his wife, five boys, and triplet baby girls in a wooden washtub in the garage before hanging himself with wire above their neatly aligned bodies. Police had discovered the man’s journal in the days that followed, the pages revealing not only the sharply progressive breakdown of a human mind, but disturbingly obsessive references to “that strange mist” and “hell on Earth.” In addition, at the time of the fire, other neighbors had suffered what could only be likened to sunburn—in the middle of a cold spring night—and one woman had reported that despite the crisp but clear weather, there had been a sudden storm of electricity that was there and gone in seconds. Regarding the article itself, one angered reader of the Free Press had written a strongly worded letter to the editor the very next day, quite put off at what was surely an ill-conceived prank, given the date of its publication.
    Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1949
    “OUR GUARDIAN ANGEL”
    11 Years After Saving Twins, Hero Saves Sisters Again
    Brikker subscribed to the randomness of events: the unpredictability, the possibilities of incalculable paths cast by will and by die. But he also believed that the Fates, those dark mistresses of what was to be, held sway in the grander scheme. So when he discovered that a man from Australia—a seemingly simple dairy farmer from Melbourne—had saved the same twin girls from death for the second time in their lives, he believed that the Fates had smiled upon him. In the first instance, a wildfire had apparently claimed the four-year-olds, but no; a sudden change in the wind, just enough, had allowed them to flee the fiery hell unharmed. In the second, the girls and their father were killed instantly when a passenger train struck them at a crossing, mere moments after the family car had stalled. But no: a reckless, yet solid push from behind—from the farmer’s half-ton, in the nick of time—drove them clear. As if these miracles were not enough, in both cases at least one witness had reported a bizarre weather disturbance had appeared out of thin air, enveloping this “guardian angel” in a strange, pulsating light. Yes, the Fates had smiled, most certainly, delivering this angel to the devil himself.
    The Times, April 25, 1953
    “SECRET OF LIFE” FOUND
    U.K. Scientists Unravel The Structure Of DNA
    How many times had he read this—and that seminal paper by Watson and Crick? A hundred? A thousand? They had unlocked the door; had drawn the map to an unexplored world. A world—a future —waiting to be written.
    Montreal Gazette, June 2, 1953
    TRIO OF TWISTERS KILL 182 IN TEXAS
    Survivors Claim Four More Tornadoes “ Just disappeared ”
    What transpired at the southern range of Tornado Alley was as terrifying as it was exhilarating: there had been seven of the whirling beasts, each as powerful and as deadly as the next. Yet four of them had simply vanished. As if they had never touched down in the first place. Still, the carnage from the three monsters had been mind-boggling upon their miraculous resurrection. He had been there, had played God. Had been God.
    Roanoke Beacon and the Washington County News, May 6, 1957
    BROTHERS CHARGED IN BRIDGE TRAGEDY HOAX
    Cop Calls Cries Of Bridge Collapse “ Dangerous tomfoolery ”
    For nearly two months, a construction crew had been widening a bridge in Beaufort, North Carolina, when a school bus carrying twenty-three children rambled onto the overpass. At the same moment, an eighteen-wheeler, full bore with a load of concrete blocks, approached from the other direction. The new work collapsed because of the load, and the vehicles plunged forty-five feet into a rocky ravine, the bus exploding in flames. More than a dozen workers had leapt from the bridge, two of them killed, the others seriously injured. Or so it all seemed. Two brothers, Paul and Marcel Laplaunte, had been in a pickup behind the bus