Whistling Past the Graveyard Read Online Free Page A

appropriately, that’s not why she was killing her now. It wasn’t revenge because revenge was soft. Revenge would disappoint Doctor Nine the same way rage would. There was no beauty in a lack of control.
    Besides, this was not about punishment…it was about rewards.
    Bethy thought about that as Millie’s eyes focused and unfocused over and over again. ‘Rewards’ wasn’t exactly the right word either. She chewed her lip and thought about it as her sister died, bit by bit.
    There was a sound and then blades of light cut into the room between the half-closed blinds, and Bethy got up, excited, knowing who was outside. She started to run to the window and then in the space of two steps slowed to a walk and then stopped, still yards away. Running was silly. Running to check if he was out there was bad. It wouldn’t show faith, like that Bible story about Moses tapping the rock and then not being allowed into the Promised Land. After everything he did right, he was reminded that everything had to be done right, and so Bethy turned around and sat back down, picked up her diary and pen, and continued making notes until Millie stopped breathing. It took nearly forty minutes, and she would have been lying if she didn’t feel the tug of that window and the image she would see through the blinds. But feeling a thing and becoming its slave were different. Doctor Nine had told her that in her dreams.
    When Mr. Whiskers said that it was two-thirty in the morning, Bethy put down her diary, set her pen neatly on top of it, and took a couple of slow breaths just to make sure she was calm. She reached over and touched Millie’s cheek. The skin was still soft but it was already cooling. Bethy sat back, leaning on both palms, and watched for a little while longer. There had been no more words from her sister. No additional emotions had crossed Millie’s face. After that last outburst she had simply gone to sleep, and in sleeping had settled down into a deeper rest. Her body had not visibly changed except that her chest no longer rose and fell. While she watched now, though, Millie seemed to shrink in on herself, to become less solid, and it took Bethy a while before she realized that it was just the blood draining from Millie’s flesh and veins to the lowest possible point in her body. She’d read about that on the Internet, too.
    When she had surfed the Net, Millie had read a lot about killing. About the laws of it, the history of it. The art of it. There were so many killers that she felt happy that she would always have new brothers and sisters. Some of them even killed in the name of God, which was a funny thing. She’d have to ask Doctor Nine about that, but she already knew what he would probably say—the essence of it, at least. If God is All then God is killing, too. And really, God kills everything, from microscopic life forms to whole worlds. Maybe that was why so many have worked so hard to make killing a ritual and an art: it was their only way to try and connect with God. Even at nine Bethy understood that. If God made man in His image then man reflects the killing nature of God. To kill is to be godlike. That should be obvious to everyone.
    And yet they didn’t call killers ‘gods’ or even ‘godlike.’ They called them monsters.
    Bethy got up and walked across the bedroom and stood in front of the mirror that hung on the door of their shared wardrobe. She still wasn’t letting herself look out of the window. Instead she looked at the monster in the mirror.
    It still looked like her. The her she had always seen.
    “Monster…” she murmured. Not for the first time she wondered if every one of the godlike monsters she’d read about on the Net had stood in their rooms, just as she now stood, and looked at themselves and announced who and what they were.
    She hoped so. It felt like a family thing to do.
    Finally Bethy turned away from the mirror and walked past the cooling meat. Millie was gone now; the body was