The Land of Lost Things by John Connolly EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: John Connolly
- Language: English
- Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Uhtceare
(OLD ENGLISH)
To Lie Awake Before Dawn,
Too Worried to Sleep
Twice upon a time – for that is how some stories should continue –
there was a mother whose daughter was stolen from her. Oh, she could still
see the girl. She could touch her skin and brush her hair. She could watch
the slow rise and fall of her chest, and if she placed her hand upon the
child’s breast, she could feel the beating of her heart. But the child was
silent, and her eyes remained closed. Tubes helped her to breathe, and tubes
kept her fed, but for the mother it was as though the essence of the one she
loved was elsewhere, and the figure in the bed was a shell, a mannequin,
waiting for a disembodied soul to return and animate it.
In the beginning, the mother believed that her daughter was still present,
sleeping, and that by the sound of a beloved voice telling stories and
sharing news she might be induced to wake. But as the days became weeks,
and the weeks became months, it grew harder and harder for the mother to
keep faith in the immanence of her daughter, and so she grew to fear that
everything that was her child, all that gave her meaning – her conversation,
her laughter, even her crying – might never come back, and she would be
left entirely bereft.
The mother’s name was Ceres, and her daughter was called Phoebe.
There was also a man once – but not a father, because Ceres refused to
dignify him with the word, he having left them to fend for themselves
before the girl was even born. As far as Ceres was aware, he was living
somewhere in Australia, and had never shown any desire to be part of his
daughter’s life. To be honest, Ceres was happy with this situation. She had
not felt any lasting love for the man, and his disengagement suited her.
She
retained some small gratitude towards him for helping to create Phoebe, and
on occasion she saw a little of him in her daughter’s eyes and smile, but it
was a fleeting thing, like a half-remembered figure glimpsed on the
platform of a station as the train rolls by; sighted then soon forgotten.
Phoebe, too, had demonstrated only minimal curiosity about him, but with
no accompanying wish to make contact, even though Ceres had always
assured her that she could, if she wanted to. He was not on any social
media, regarding it as the devil’s work, but a few of his acquaintances used
Facebook, and Ceres knew that they would get a message to him, if
required.
But that necessity had never arisen, not until the accident. Ceres wanted
him to know what had happened, if only because the trauma was too much
for her to bear alone, even as all attempts to share it failed to diminish it.
Ultimately she received only a curt acknowledgement via one of his
associates:
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