“But Lindsay adored you and she’d want you to have a happy life.” Jeannie blinked at him innocently behind her red glasses. “And besides, a part of her will always be with you. She’s gone, but not so very far. You’re still a young man with an entire life ahead of you. At some point you have to start to move on and accept what’s happened. I’m not saying you have to like it—go ahead and rage against it, hate it with every fiber in your being—but sooner or later you have to face reality for what it is.”
“I used to think I knew what that was. Now, I don’t know.”
She took his hands, held them in hers.
“I still feel her sometimes,” he said. “I wish it comforted me, but it doesn’t, it…it’s like I’ve been holding my breath under this dark water since she died and I can’t hold it anymore but I can’t get to the surface either. I’m thrashing and fighting but I’m not alone in the water, there’s something else there too, something terrible that won’t let me go no matter how hard I fight it.”
“Danny, I see a lot of death in my profession,” Jeannie said a moment later. “And I’ve come to believe that all of it isn’t horrific and violent, the stuff of monsters and penance for the bad things we do. At the end, the real end, when something, even a part of something, truly dies, there’s beauty in that too, beauty and peace, transcendence and release, if only we’re willing to accept it. The fear and pain, mourning and guilt, all that thrashing and fighting as you call it, I don’t think it binds us to the dark at all. I think it sets us free.”
“Then what does that leave in its place?”
“Maybe it’s all in who we are, good and bad.”
He wiped tears away with the back of his sleeve and kissed his sister on the forehead. She slung an arm over his shoulder and they sat together in silence for what seemed a very long time.
“I could just sell everything and take off,” Daniel said. “Start over someplace else.”
“Sure, leave me in the lurch, right?” She winked, smiled. “You do whatever you have to do to heal. That’s what matters now.”
Daniel looked beyond the trees across the street to the vastness of the blue sky above, aware that he was alive but not yet well. His would be a long and treacherous road from here on out. The world had seemed small and frighteningly cold, a brutal place to him for so long now, he’d forgotten how limitless its magnificence and scope truly was. He suddenly felt dwarfed, a tiny though not insignificant drop of paint existing amidst an enormous and mysterious canvas, an infinite and elaborate work of art, alive and in constant flux.
He closed his eyes, let his head rest on Jeannie’s shoulder, and safe within himself, thought only of Lindsay.
The nightmare storms in his mind were replaced by memories of her face, her love, her mercy, her touch.
His salvation.
And for that short while, in that one ephemeral moment in time, his existence a stone skipping across eternity in what might have been mere seconds or the course of infinite lifetimes, Daniel was no longer afraid. In fact, he felt strangely powerful.
Like a god.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Any errors, assumptions, reinterpretations or fictional liberties in relation to physics (quantum or otherwise), or anything else that may exist in the text of this novel are my own. Also, while this novel is (largely) set in the real city of Boston, and several real surrounding cities and towns, readers familiar with these areas will notice that I have taken fictional liberties once or twice and made some very minor changes here and there. However, those few instances aside, I have attempted to portray all locales as accurately as possible. And finally, a few very small portions of this novel, predominantly parts of the first chapter, were originally published several years ago in a different form, as the short story “The Eighth Day” in the fiction magazine The House of Pain.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For more information on Greg and his work visit his official website at: www.gregfgifune.com.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
DOMINION
Connect With Us
Other Books by Author
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
Author’s Note
About the Author
About the Publisher