The Darkness of Bones Read Online Free Page A

gleaming with new wetness. The clothes draped around her as if her bones were cradled in the very fabric, her frame emaciated with flesh barely drawing substance. Her age was half that of her husband.
    “Where have you hidden it?” she asked, her voice controlled but with a hint of menace. Her eyes seemed to look at him from some point far beyond her body. Sweat beads, tiny as lice eggs, camped on her forehead.
    Limiting the expressiveness of his face, Jeremiah hoped to make his response sound casual, eager to forestall any arguments.
    “Hidden what?”
    “
Do-not-play-fucking-games,
” she hissed, each impatient and deliberate word emerging from her tight mouth. “
Where-is- my-fucking
-m
agic-powderrrrrr!
”
    Swallowing the spittle caged in his throat, Jeremiahresponded. “You’ve used it all up. A month’s supply devoured within a week. You’re trying to kill yourself with all this depression and—”
    “
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Shut up with the fucking
preaching!
I’ve hardly used any! Now, where the fuck
is
it?
Where?
” She was sweating excessively now, and pressed a fist tight against her stomach as if hoping to fend off the inevitable stomach cramps starting to ferment.
    Jeremiah had witnessed the telltale signs, many times, yet it always shocked him, always frightened him until he knew not what to do.
    Judith’s voice rose in halting queries, while Jeremiah’s voice—calm but urgent—flowed insistently over and around her sharp, demanding questions.
    “You can’t go on like this, Judith. You’ve got to get help.” He remained seated, resisting the urge to rise. She would perceive any movement from him as a threat, and act accordingly.
    “Help
me?
Help
you
, if you don’t tell me where you’ve fucking hidden it—
now!
” she demanded, giving him a withering look.
    “You’re not going to have your way, Judith. Not this time. I’ve always surrendered to—”
    She squeezed her head between her hands, tight, like in a vice. “Your whingeing voice is like acid, going through me like diafuckingrrhoea.” Her hands came abruptly down, disappearing beneath the apron, moving with purpose before reappearing, clutching something between her fingers. It was a cut-throat razor, identical to the ones in the barber’s shop, held in stock by a mother-of-pearl handle.
    “Put that away … please … please put it away …” said Jeremiah, frightened, his voice barely a whisper.
    Ignoring her husband, Judith drew the razor lightly over the ball of her thumb, whetting the blade, her trance-like eyes staring at him with the unblinking intensity of a cobra preparing to strike.
    Slowly and deliberately, in a perverse teasing movement, she ran the evil-looking blade up and down her bare arm, testing metal against flesh—a perforated flesh, freckled with needle marks and ant-sized nicks.
    “Please, Judith …” pleaded Jeremiah, noticing how quickly her pupils were dilating, withdrawal rapidly taking over. This was when she was at her most dangerous—drying out.
    Gently, she rested the razor in the crank of her elbow, before twisting the mother-of-pearl handle, slightly, creating a line on her pale skin. The thin line whitened then turned red.
    “Judith!” screamed Jeremiah, rising quickly.
    “Don’t,” she said calmly, her voice automatic, like an answering machine. “Don’t you fucking dare to come any closer.” She transferred the razor to her throat, just below the jawbone where a white scar rested like a pearl necklace.
    Jeremiah wished she had screamed the words, because her calmness was always menacing, a notification of something dreadful about to happen.
    “Okay,” he said, defeated. “You win. I’ll get it from the—”
    “
No!
… no … just tell me … just tell me where it is.” Her eyes became slits of suspicion. “That’s all. I only need a small hit, a little buzz. Then your Judith will be back, the way you like her—the way you
enjoy
her. Don’t you want her