Read Dollenganger 03 If There Be a Thorns for Free Online Page A

Now was my chance to see her without the black veil. I saw her. Really saw her! But I didn't really see her nose, her lips, her eyes; I saw only the jagged rows of scars on each side of her face. Had a cat scratched her and made those scars? I felt suddenly sorry for an old woman who had to sit alone at a table without enough appetite to enjoy anything. It didn't seem fair to live such a lonely, unloved life. Not fair either for fate to show me how age could steal the beauty of someone who might have been just as lovely as my mother--once.
"Jory . . ?"
"Sssh . . ."
She kept on staring, then quickly lowered the veil over her face. "Who's out there?" she called. "Go away, whoever you are! If you don't, I'll call the police!"
That did it. I jumped to the ground, seized Bart by his hand and took off. He stumbed and fell, holding me back as usual. I jerked him upright and ran on, forcing him to run faster than he could have without my help. He gasped, "Jory! Not so fast! What did you see? Quick, tell me--was it a ghost?"
Worse than that. I'd seen how my mother might look thirty years from now, if she lived long enough to be ravaged by time.
"Where've you two been?" Mom blocked our way as we tried to slip into the bathroom to wash up before she had a chance to notice our disheveled clothes.
"We came from the garden in back," I answered, feeling guilty. Immediately she saw my guilt and grew suspicious. "Where were you really?"
"Just out back . . ."
"Jory, are you going to grow evasive like Bart?"
I threw my arms about her and pressed my face against the softness of her breast. I was too old to do this, but I had the sudden need to feel safe and comforted.
"Jory darling, what's wrong?"
Nothing was wrong. I didn't know what bothered me, not really. I'd seen old age before, my own grandmother Marisha, but she'd always been old.
That night Momma came in my dreams and was a lovely angel who put an enchanted spell over all the world to stop people from growing older. I saw two-hundred-year-old ladies as young and pretty as when they'd been twenty--all but one old woman in black, all alone, rocking in her chair.
Toward morning Bart slipped into my bed and cuddled up behind my back, watching with me the gray fog that obliterated the trees, erased the golden grass, smothered all signs of life and made the world out there seem dead.
Bart rattled on to himself. "Earth is full of dead people. Dead animals and plants too. Makes all that stuff Daddy calls mulch."
Death. My half-brother Bart was obsessed by death, and I pitied him. I felt him cuddle closer as we both stared out at the fog that was so much a part of our lives.
"Jory, nobody ever likes me," he complained. "Yes, they do."
"No, they don't. They like you better."
"That's because you don't like them and it shows." "Why do you like everybody?"
"I don't. But I can put on a smile and pretend even when I don't. Perhaps you'd better learn to put on a false face sometimes."
"Why? It's not Halloween."
He troubled me. Like those beds in the attic troubled me. Like that strange thing between my parents that rose up every so often, reminding me that they knew something that I didn't.
I closed my eyes and decided everything always worked out for the best.

Gone Hunting
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    They looked at me, but they didn't see me. They didn't know who I was. To them I was just a thing to sit at their table and try to swallow the stuff they put on my plate. My thoughts were all around, but they didn't read my mind, couldn't figure me out at all. I was goin next door to the mansion to where I'd been invited. And when I went I'd remember to pronounce my "ings"--always they were tellin me to say the G's. I'd do it right, everything, for the old lady next door.
    Gonna go alone and not tell Jory. Jory didn't need new friends anyway. He had his ole ballet classes, with pretty girls all around and that was enough. With Melodie, more than enough. Me--I didn't have nobody but parents who didn't understand. Soon as I was