"What's the point of a bunch of books you've already
read?" The joke reminded him of better times and he smiled a genuine
smile.
#
Though the stinging hot shower revived him somewhat, he kept quickening
into panic at the thought of David creeping into his house in the night,
stumping in on desiccated black child-legs, snaggled rictus under
mummified lips.
He spooked at imagined noises and thudding rain and the dry creaking of
the old house as he toweled off and dressed.
There was no phone in the mountain, no way to speak to his remaining
brothers, the golems, his parents. He balled his fists and stood in the
center of his bedroom, shaking with impotent worry.
David. None of them had liked David very much. Billy, the
fortune-teller, had been born with a quiet wisdom, an eerie solemnity
that had made him easy for the young Alan to care for. Carlos, the
island, had crawled out of their mother's womb and pulled himself to the
cave mouth and up the face of their father, lying there for ten years,
accreting until he was ready to push off on his own.
But Daniel, Daniel had been a hateful child from the day he was born. He
was colicky, and his screams echoed through their father's caverns. He
screamed from the moment he emerged and Alan tipped him over and toweled
him gently dry and he didn't stop for an entire year. Alan stopped being
able to tell day from night, lost track of the weeks and months.
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