Trang chủ
Đăng nhập
Nhật kỳ....
Trợ giúp
Truyện
Truyện Tranh
Sách Nói
Thơ
Lời Nhạc
Sưu Tầm
Chat
Đăng nhập
Đăng nhập iSach
Đăng nhập = Facebook
Đăng nhập = Google
Đăng ký
Tùy chỉnh (beta)
Nhật kỳ....
Ai đang online
Ai đang download gì?
Top đọc nhiều
Top download nhiều
Top mới cập nhật
Top truyện chưa có ảnh bìa
Truyện chưa đầy đủ
Danh sách phú ông
Danh sách phú ông trẻ
Trợ giúp
Download ebook mẫu
Đăng ký / Đăng nhập
Các vấn đề về gạo
Hướng dẫn download ebook
Hướng dẫn tải ebook về iPhone
Hướng dẫn tải ebook về Kindle
Hướng dẫn upload ảnh bìa
Quy định ảnh bìa chuẩn
Hướng dẫn sửa nội dung sai
Quy định quyền đọc & download
Cách sử dụng QR Code
Truyện
Truyện Ngẫu Nhiên
Giới Thiệu Truyện Tiêu Biểu
Truyện Đọc Nhiều
Danh Mục Truyện
Kiếm Hiệp
Tiên Hiệp
Tuổi Học Trò
Cổ Tích
Truyện Ngắn
Truyện Cười
Kinh Dị
Tiểu Thuyết
Ngôn Tình
Trinh Thám
Trung Hoa
Nghệ Thuật Sống
Phong Tục Việt Nam
Việc Làm
Kỹ Năng Sống
Khoa Học
Tùy Bút
English Stories
Danh Mục Tác Giả
Kim Dung
Nguyễn Nhật Ánh
Hoàng Thu Dung
Nguyễn Ngọc Tư
Quỳnh Dao
Hồ Biểu Chánh
Cổ Long
Ngọa Long Sinh
Ngã Cật Tây Hồng Thị
Aziz Nesin
Trần Thanh Vân
Sidney Sheldon
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sách Nói
Danh Mục Sách Nói
Đọc truyện đêm khuya
Tiểu Thuyết
Lịch Sử
Tuổi Học Trò
Đắc Nhân Tâm
Giáo Dục
Hồi Ký
Kiếm Hiệp
Lịch Sử
Tùy Bút
Tập Truyện Ngắn
Giáo Dục
Trung Nghị
Thu Hiền
Bá Trung
Mạnh Linh
Bạch Lý
Hướng Dương
Dương Liễu
Ngô Hồng
Ngọc Hân
Phương Minh
Shep O’Neal
Thơ
Thơ Ngẫu Nhiên
Danh Mục Thơ
Danh Mục Tác Giả
Nguyễn Bính
Hồ Xuân Hương
TTKH
Trần Đăng Khoa
Phùng Quán
Xuân Diệu
Lưu Trọng Lư
Tố Hữu
Xuân Quỳnh
Nguyễn Khoa Điềm
Vũ Hoàng Chương
Hàn Mặc Tử
Huy Cận
Bùi Giáng
Hồ Dzếnh
Trần Quốc Hoàn
Bùi Chí Vinh
Lưu Quang Vũ
Bảo Cường
Nguyên Sa
Tế Hanh
Hữu Thỉnh
Thế Lữ
Hoàng Cầm
Đỗ Trung Quân
Chế Lan Viên
Lời Nhạc
Trịnh Công Sơn
Quốc Bảo
Phạm Duy
Anh Bằng
Võ Tá Hân
Hoàng Trọng
Trầm Tử Thiêng
Lương Bằng Quang
Song Ngọc
Hoàng Thi Thơ
Trần Thiện Thanh
Thái Thịnh
Phương Uyên
Danh Mục Ca Sĩ
Khánh Ly
Cẩm Ly
Hương Lan
Như Quỳnh
Đan Trường
Lam Trường
Đàm Vĩnh Hưng
Minh Tuyết
Tuấn Ngọc
Trường Vũ
Quang Dũng
Mỹ Tâm
Bảo Yến
Nirvana
Michael Learns to Rock
Michael Jackson
M2M
Madonna
Shakira
Spice Girls
The Beatles
Elvis Presley
Elton John
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd
Queen
Sưu Tầm
Toán Học
Tiếng Anh
Tin Học
Âm Nhạc
Lịch Sử
Non-Fiction
Download ebook?
Đăng Nhập
Đăng nhập iSach
Đăng nhập = Facebook
Đăng nhập = Google
Quên Mật Khẩu
Đăng ký
Dark Places
ePub
A4
A5
A6
Chương trước
Mục lục
Chương sau
Libby Day - Now
B
ack in the car, Lyle said only three words. “What a nightmare.” In reply, I said, mmmm. Krissi reminded me of me. Grasping and anxious, always bundling things aside for future use. That packet of chips. We scroungers always like little packets of food because people give them up with less hassle.
Lyle and I drove for twenty minutes without saying much, until finally he said, in his summing-up, newscaster voice, “So obviously she’s lying about Ben molesting her. I think she lied to her dad too. I think Lou Cates went nuts, killed your family, and then later, he found out she’d lied. He killed an innocent family for nothing. Hence, his own family disintegrates. Lou Cates disappears, starts drinking.”
“Hence?” I nipped at him.
“It’s a solid theory. Don’t you think?”
“I think you should not come on any more of these interviews. It’s embarrassing.”
“Libby, I’m financing this whole thing.”
“Well, you’re not helping it.”
“Sorry,” he said, and then we stopped talking. As the lights of Kansas City turned the sky a sick orange in the distance, Lyle said, without looking at me, “It’s a solid theory though, right?”
“Everything’s a theory, that’s why it’s a mystery!” I mimicked him. “Just a great mystery, Who Killed The Days?” I proclaimed, brightly. After a few minutes, I said grudgingly. “I think it’s an OK theory, I think we should look at Runner too.”
“Fine by me. Although I’m still going to track down Lou Cates.”
“Be my guest.”
I dropped him back outside Sarah’s, not offering to take him home, Lyle standing on the curb like a kid baffled that his parents can really bear leaving him at camp. I got home late and cranky and anxious to count my money. I’d made $1,000 so far from the Kill Club, with another $500 that Lyle owed me for Krissi, even though Krissi clearly would have talked to anybody. But even as I thought that, I knew it wasn’t true. None of those Kill Club misfits could have made that work with Krissi, I thought. She talked to me because we had the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia.
I’d earned my money, I thought, resentful for no reason. Lyle seemed completely fine with paying me. That’s what I did, though— I had angry, defensive conversations in my head, got mad at things that hadn’t even happened yet. Yet.
I’d earned my money (now I felt calmer), and if I heard from Runner, if I talked to Runner, I’d earn a lot more money and be set for a good four months. If I lived very still.
Make that five months: by the time I got home, Lyle had already left a message saying some local Kill Creeps wanted to have a swap meet, buy some of my family’s “memorabilia.” Magda would host, if I was interested. Magda the cave troll who’d drawn Devil horns on my photo.!!!Yes, Magda, I would love to be a guest in your home, where do you keep your silver again?!!!
I clicked off the answering machine, which I’d stolen from a roommate two moves ago. I thought of Krissi and knew her house was probably filled with other people’s crap too. I had a stolen answering machine, a nearly full set of pocketed restaurant silverware, and a half-dozen salt-and-pepper shakers, including the new pair, from Tim-Clark’s that I couldn’t manage to transfer from the hall table to the kitchen. In one corner of my living room, by my old TV set, is a box with more than a hundred small bottles of lotion I’ve swiped. I keep them because I like to look at the lotions all together, pink and purple and green. I know this would look crazy to anyone who came to my home, but no one does, and I like them too much to get rid of them. My mom’s hands were always rough and dry, she was constantly oiling them, to no avail. It was one of our favorite ways to tease her: “Oh mom don’t touch, you’re like an alligator!” The church we fitfully attended kept lotion in the women’s room that she said smelled like roses: we’d all take turns squirting and sniffing our hands, complimenting each other on our ladylike scent.
No phone call from Diane. She’d have gotten my message by now, and she hadn’t called. That seemed strange. Diane always made it easy for me to apologize. Even after this latest round of silent treatment— six years. Guess I should have autographed my book for her.
I turned around to the other set of boxes, the under-the-stairs boxes that had grown more ominous the more I let myself think about the murders. It’s just stuff, I told myself. It cannot hurt you.
When I was fourteen, I thought a lot about killing myself—it’s a hobby today, but at age fourteen it was a vocation. On a September morning, just after school started, I’d gotten Diane’s.44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. But I thought about Diane, and her coming home to my small torso and a red wall, and I couldn’t do it. It’s probably why I was so hateful to her, she kept me from what I wanted the most. I just couldn’t do it to her, though, so I made a bargain with myself: If I still feel this bad on February 1, I will kill myself. And it was just as bad on February 1, but again I made the bargain: If it’s this bad May 1, I’ll do it. And so on. I’m still here.
I looked at the boxes and made a quieter kind of bargain: If I can’t stand doing this anymore in twenty minutes, I’ll burn the whole lot.
The first box came apart easily, one side collapsing as soon as I pulled off the tape. Inside, at the top of the pile, was a concert T-shirt for The Police that was my mom’s, food-stained and extremely soft.
Eighteen minutes.
Below that was a rubberbanded bunch of notebooks, all Debby’s. I flipped through random pages:!!!Harry S Truman was the 33rd American
president and from Missouri.
The heart is the pump of the body it keeps blood
going all over the body!!!.
Under that was a pile of notes, from Michelle to me, from me to Debby, from Debby to Michelle. Sifting through these, I plucked out a birthday card with an ice-cream sundae on the front, its cherry made with red sequins.!!!Dear Debby, wrote my mom in her cramped handwriting.
We are so lucky to have such a sweet, kind, helpful girl in our
family. You are my cherry on top! Mom!!!
She never wrote Mommy, I thought, we never called her that even as kids. I want my mommy, I thought. We never said that.!!!I want my mom!!!. I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn’t have loosened. A stitch come undone.
Fourteen minutes.
I rummaged through more notes, putting the boring, inane ones aside for the Kill Club, missing my sisters, laughing at some of them, the strange worries we had, the coded messages, the primitive drawings, the lists of people we liked and didn’t like. I’d forgotten we were tight, the Day girls. I wouldn’t have said we were, but now, studying our writings like a spinster anthropologist, I realized it was true.
Eleven minutes. Here were Michelle’s diaries, all rubberbanded together in a faux-leathery bundle. Every year she got two for Christmas—she needed twice as many as a normal girl. She’d always start the new one right there while we were still under the tree, chronicling every gift each of us got, keeping score.
I flipped open one from 1983 and remembered what a rotten busybody Michelle was, even at age nine. The day’s entry talked about how she heard her favorite teacher, Miss Berdall, saying dirty things to a man on the phone in the teachers’ lounge—and Miss Berdall wasn’t even married. Michelle wondered if she confronted her, maybe Miss Berdall would bring her something nice for lunch. (Apparently Miss Berdall had once given Michelle half her jelly donut, which had left Michelle permanently fixated on Miss Berdall and her brown paper bags. Teachers were usually reliable for half a sandwich or a piece of fruit if you stared at them long enough. You just couldn’t do it too much or you’d get a note sent home and Mom would cry.) Michelle’s diaries were filled with drama and innuendo of a very grade-school level: At recess, Mr. McNany smoked just outside the boys’ locker room, and then used breath spray (breath spray underlined several times) so no one would know. Mrs. Joekep from church was drinking in her car … and when Michelle asked Mrs. Joekep if she had the flu, since why was she drinking from that bottle, Mrs. Joekep laughed and gave her $20 for Girl Scout cookies, even though Michelle wasn’t a Girl Scout.
Hell, she even wrote things about me: she knew, for instance, I lied to Mom about punching Jessica O’Donnell. This was true, I gave the poor girl a black eye but swore to my mom she fell off a swing.!!!Libby told me the Devil made her do it!!!, Michelle wrote.!!!Think I should tell Mom?!!!
I closed the book on 1983, browsed through 1982 and 1984. The diary for the second half of 1984 I read carefully, in case Michelle said anything noteworthy about Ben. Not much, except repeated claims that he was a big jerk and no one liked him. I wondered if the cops had had the same idea. I pictured some poor rookie, eating Chinese food at midnight while reading about how Michelle’s best friend got her period.
Nine minutes. More birthday cards and letters, and then I dug up a note that was folded more expertly than the rest, origami’d so it looked almost phallic, which, I supposed, was the intention, as the word STUD was written at the top. I opened it up, and read the rounded girlish writing:!!!11/5/84
Dear Stud,
I’m in biology and I’m fingering myself under the desk I am so hot for you. Can you picture my pussy? It’s still nice and red from you. Come over to my house after school today, K? I want to jump your bones!!! I’m so horny, even now. I wish you’d just live with me whenever my parents are gone. Your mom won’t know, she’s so spacy! Why would you stay at home when you could be with me?! Get some balls and tell your mom to go to hell. I’d hate for you to come for a visit one day and find me getting some action somewhere else. JK! Oh I want to cum so much. Meet me at my car after school, I’ll park over on Passel St.
See ya soon,
Diondra!!!
Ben had not had a girlfriend, he hadn’t. Not a single person, including Ben, had ever said so. The name didn’t even sound familiar. At the bottom of the box was a stack of our school yearbooks, from 1975, when Ben started school, to 1990, when Diane sent me away the first time.
I opened the yearbook for 1984–1985, and scanned Ben’s class. No Diondra, but a photo of Ben that hurt: sloped shoulders, a loose half-mullet, and an Oxford shirt that he always wore on special occasions. I pictured him, back home, putting it on for Picture Day, practicing in the mirror how he’d smile. In September 1984 he was still wearing shirts my mom bought him, and by January he was an angry, black-haired kid accused of murder. I skimmed through the class above Ben’s, jerking occasionally as I hit Dianes and Dinas, but no Diondra. Then to the class above that, about to give up, when there she was, Diondra Wertzner. Worst name ever, and I pulled my finger over the row, expecting to find a lunchlady in the making, someone coarse and mustached, and instead found a pretty, plump-cheeked girl with a fountain of dark spiral curls. She had small features, which she overplayed with heavy makeup, but even in the photo she popped off the page. Something in the deep-set eyes, a daring, with her lips parted so you could see pointy puppy-teeth.
I pulled out the yearbook for the previous year, and she was gone. I pulled out the yearbook for the following year, and she was gone.
Chương trước
Mục lục
Chương sau
Dark Places
Gillian Flynn
Dark Places - Gillian Flynn
https://isach.info/story.php?story=dark_places__gillian_flynn