BooksBarbecue
Back When Darkness Loves Us
Chapters (56)
  1. CoverImage
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Introduction by Grady Hendrix
  5. Foreword by Theodore Sturgeon
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US
  8. Part One
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. Part Two
  16. 1
  17. 2
  18. 3
  19. 4
  20. 5
  21. 6
  22. 7
  23. 8
  24. Part Three
  25. 1
  26. 2
  27. 3
  28. 4
  29. BEAUTY IS ...
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. 6
  36. 7
  37. 8
  38. 9
  39. 10
  40. 11
  41. 12
  42. 13
  43. 14
  44. 15
  45. 16
  46. 17
  47. 18
  48. 19
  49. 20
  50. 21
  51. 22
  52. 23
  53. 24
  54. 25
  55. About the Author
  56. About the Cover

“Sonofabitch! All over my truck, you cunt. I’ll get your ass, Leon, and that weird retard, too. Son of a bitch!” He pounded on the steering wheel.

Leon turned out the light and locked the door. He went to Martha, standing in the doorway, staring straight ahead. She was trembling, and perspiration stood out in little drops on her forehead.

“Martha? You okay?”

“I don’t know. I feel . . . for a moment there, I felt . . . while you were in here and I was in the bedroom, I almost . . .”

“Shhhh.” He put his arms around her and held her close for a moment, then guided her gently back to bed. He got in next to her and held her, a very young man and his very strange lover. He did love her, in a way.

“I felt out of control, Leon.”

“Fear can do that. I was afraid, too.”

“Out of control?”

“Not exactly, but men are supposed to be braver than women.”

“This wasn’t brave, or scared. This was . . . was . . .” she shuddered. “Something else, like taking hold. Inside.”

“They’re gone now. And they won’t be back.”

She leaned up on an elbow and looked at his eyes, shining in the faint light.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She lay back down and traced the lines of his cheek with her finger, trying hard to forget the terrible, ter­rible feeling.

20

CHAPTER 20

Harry limped in from the fields about ten o’clock one morning, his left arm hanging useless at his side. Fern took a look at his pale face and knew he was dying. Her healing powers had become so attuned to life that she could discern the least imbalance. Harry had been not well for about a week, and today he would die.

Oh God, she thought, where have our lives gone? She knew it was coming. They were not young anymore; Harry still drove himself too hard, he was never happy. God had not gifted Harry with laughter. Life was a serious business to him, not something to be joyous about.

She looked at his gray, worn face and flashes of their relationship flitted through her mind. The good times. The times when they had made love, when they were courting, the oftentimes humorous things he would say by mistake, his embarrassment at her laughter. She saw him as he used to be—young, virile, handsome, and muscled. Where did all the years go?

Now he was old and gray, skin matching closely the yellowed color of his hair. His face was wrinkled and marked with brown spots. We should have retired years ago, she thought.