Chapelwood by Cherie Priest EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Cherie Priest
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Leonard Kincaid, American Institute of Accountants, Certified
Member
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA FEBRUARY 9, 1920
I escaped Chapelwood under the cover of daylight, not darkness. The
darkness is too close, too friendly with the terrible folk who worship there.
(The darkness would give me away, if I gave it half a chance.)
So I left them an hour after dawn, when the reverend and his coterie lay
sleeping in the hall beneath the sanctuary. When last I looked upon them,
taking one final glance from the top of the stairs—down into the dim, foulsmelling quarter lit only with old candles that were covered in dust—I saw
them tangled together, limb upon limb. I would say that they writhed like a
pit of vipers, but that wasn’t the case at all. They were immobile, static. It
was a ghastly, damp tableau. Nothing even breathed.
I should have been down there with them; that’s what the reverend
would’ve said if he’d seen me. If he’d caught me, he would’ve lured me
into that pallid pile of flesh that lives but is not alive. He would have
reminded me of the nights I’ve spent in the midst of those arms and legs,
tied together like nets, for yes, it is true: I have been there with them,
among the men and women lying in a heap in the cellar. I have been a
square in that quilt, a knot in that rug of humanity, skin on skin with the
boneless, eyeless things that are not arms, and are not legs.
(I dream of it now, even when I’m not asleep.)
But never again. I have regained my senses—or come back to them,
having almost fled them altogether.
So what sets me apart from the rest of them, enthralled by the book and
the man who wields it? I cannot say. I do not know. I wanted to be with
them, to be like them. I wanted to join their ranks, for I believed in their
community, in their goals. Or I thought I did.
I am rethinking all the things I thought.
I am fashioning new goals, goals that will serve mankind better than the
distant, dark hell that the reverend and his congregation seek to impose
upon us all. They taught me too much, you see. They let me examine too
many of their secrets too closely, and taste too much of the power they
chase with their prayers and their formulas.
When they chose me for an acolyte, they chose poorly.
I take comfort in this, really, I do. It means that they can misjudge.
They can fail.
So they can fail again, and indeed they must.
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