All the Fiends of Hell by Adam Nevill EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Adam Nevill
- Language: English
- Genre: Literature & Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 3 MB
- Price: Free
Darling. It’s time.
Appearing no older than she did before Karl started school, his mother
stood at the foot of his bed. She’d come back to him from a time when he’d
needed her more than at any other. A time when she was never far away and
he’d always found her.
Long black hair. White streaks curving to an arch around her face. Kind
mahogany eyes. The mole below the right eye an accidental beauty spot.
Mom, a cat lady. Witchy. As a boy, he’d re-imagined her with images from
television and pictures in comics. A good vamp, whose smile grew his heart
to fill his chest.
And she was right there, beside the bed.
Intense yet soft light accompanied her presence, radiating from behind
her, as if she had walked out of a wondrous luminance.
His father joined her, his hair longer than it had been in four decades.
We thought we’d all go together.
A contrail of Peter Stuyvesant cigarette smoke threaded the air. Karl’s
nose tingled. The scent of Saturday morning in a 1970s summer. A tang of
aftershave cloaked the bed, eucalyptus and the ocean. Other once-familiar
aromas drifted through the room and he was flooded with a decade of
impressions he’d thought lost. Giddy with joy and a wistful sadness, he
savoured the fragrance of the red leather seats inside his dad’s old Rover.
And here was the milk chocolate perfume from an opened Easter egg, the
foil wrinkling like the skin of a purple fruit that didn’t exist. The warm
plastic of a paddling pool on grass as soft as a cat’s neck. Sun cream,
coconut. Spice of creosote on timber. Garden roses, issuing the sweetness of
Turkish Delight from the splintering trellis where he’d collected ladybirds.
The oily, tinny odour of his toy cars.
Tears melted his vision. A happiness near unbearable shivered his skin.
Euphoria thinned him weightless. His hot face attentive, his back sodden
with sweat, Karl rose onto his elbows.
Mum and Dad. They were together again. We’re all together again.
And there was his nan, on the other side of the bed, haloed in divine
light.
My lover.
His grandfather.
Our kid.
The chortle, though unheard in many years, was instantly recognisable.
And, as if the arrival of his grandparents had opened an oven door, the air
thickened with the smell of steaming pastry and custard, marrowfat peas,
gravy and mashed potato yellowed with butter, eaten at the little table in
their kitchen. Mint sauce, lamb. Knots of wood forming triangular shapes
on the floor of their hall that he’d likened to the eyes and noses of deer.
Chocolate-y tobacco fumes, the snap of his grandfather’s teeth on the pipe
stem. Going to bed at their house with a hot water bottle, his small body
sinking between cool sheets. A kiss on his forehead.
He’d thought his mother and grandparents lost for ever. But they’d
always been near. About him. Within him. Only he hadn’t been able to see
them, or anything else, clearly. Until now. So simple. Nothing need trouble
him again.
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