Manifest Recall by Alan Baxter EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Alan Baxter
- Language: English
- Genre: Paranormal & Urban Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I bought a used car off a woman as thin as her hand-rolled
cigarees. “It’s a good price,” I told her. “Why are you selling?”
“Last year,” she said, beginning to tremble, “I had a business and
a husband. Now I have neither. I can’t wake up in the middle of the
night any more, unable to breathe, panicking about debt.”
I remember that clearly. Her wide, bloodshot eyes, her stained
teeth and rat-tail hair. I feel it like a weight on me, my sympathy for
that terrible, mundane predicament. It’s indelible that memory. So I
know exactly who I got this car from, even if I have no idea where it
happened. Or when. Or where I am now.
Or who the hell this shivering girl beside me might be.
Her knees are pulled up to her chest, dirty bare feet on the seat,
arms wrapped around her shins. She’s wearing her seat belt, and her
hands are secured together at the wrists with a black plastic cable tie.
All that I see from the corner of my eye. I dare not turn to look
directly at her. Not yet. She stares ahead through the windshield,
unmoving. Her face is almost as dirty as her feet and she’s wearing
an oversized T-shirt. Whether she has on shorts or only underwear
underneath, or even nothing at all, I can’t tell.
The road ahead is dark, no streetlights, only the car’s headlights
spiking onto the grey, dirty asphalt. Trees flicker by on either side,
occasionally a glimpse of stars in the night sky when the canopy
over the road briefly breaks.
Where the hell am I?
I feel as though I’ve just been switched on, like a light in an old
house, flooding a room with illumination for the first time in years.
Or ever. A flicker of story from Greek mythology comes to me.
Lethe. One of five rivers in the underworld of Hades, the river of
unmindfulness. The shades of the dead were required to drink its
waters in order to forget their earthly life. Maybe I’ve died and
drunk a gutful of Lethe and this is some strange Hell.
I need to take it back a bit. Instead of trying to figure out why I
can’t remember all this stuff, let’s see what I can remember. Can I
remember anything?
My name is Eli Carver.
I’m twenty-eight years old.
I killed a man in New Orleans and it made me vomit.
Jesus fuck, I put that gun against his ear and pulled the trigger
and his head exploded like a fucking watermelon. I can still see my
hand trembling as I did it, recall the wash of terror and disgust. I
didn’t want to do it, but something made me. Someone made me. It
was a hot night, a warm breeze blowing gently across that balcony
overlooking Bourbon Street, carrying the aromas of fried food and
cigar smoke. My knees were knocking like saplings in a gale. But I
did it. I killed him.
For More Read Download This Book
EPUB