There was no expression on the ghost’s face. Its angles deepened slightly, as if amused.
“What are you going to do after me?” Meacham asked. She was making a pitch. “Stay here like a spider, waiting for the next flies? That’s no way to spread the truth.”
The ghost was motionless, waiting.
Meacham was sweating. How much time was she buying with each word? I want years, she thought. Many years. I can’t face that eternity. “When this is over,” she said, “people are going to wonder what happened. If there’s no one left, how will anyone learn the truth?” Use the words that will resonate. “How will anyone hear your gospel? How will anyone know the prophecy? You need an apostle.”
I swear I’ll be that apostle, she thought. She didn’t need to speak.
Rose cocked her head. She floated towards Meacham again. A hand, white as the face, emerged from the ectoplasm. It stretched out a finger. Meacham waited for it touch her, but the finger paused, having covered only half the distance between them. The ghost waited. Meacham swallowed, and reached out with her right hand. She extended her index finger and touched the ghost’s.
The last layer was stripped away. The tapestry was pulled back, and Meacham saw.
chapter twenty-three
catch and release
Meacham walked up the drive from Gethsemane Hall. The web was ready once again. The gardens were quiet, their grooming perfect. There were no bodies. There was no trace of the party. The air was fresh with morning. Meacham heard birds. The woods were well-behaved and did not block her path. They held shadows. The smell of moss was the reminder of darkness.
She reached the gate. It was open. She marched along the road to the ghost town. She would wait at the train station. If the authorities arrived first, she would deal with them and answer their questions. If the train came first, she would board it and head for London. She had a lot of travel ahead.
She would keep her word. She would spread Rose’s virus. The contagion of future reality would eat away at the foundations of the illusion she had bargained to live in for a bit longer. She didn’t care for it as much as she thought she did. Not now. She understood Rose’s contempt for the lie.
Meacham had touched the truth of the coming god.
Copyright © David Annandale, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Allister Thompson
Design: Courtney Horner
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Annandale, David, 1967-
Gethsemane Hall [electronic resource] / David Annandale.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-4597-0226-4
I. Title.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
www.dundurn.com
Visit us at: Dundurn.com
Definingcanada.ca
@dundurnpress
Facebook.com/dundurnpress
More Fiction from Dundurn
Blind Luck
by Scott Carter
978-1926607009
$18.95
Dave Bolden’s life feels like it’s on repeat. He works his eight hours at an accounting firm, goes home, gets drunk, and wakes up the next day to go back to work with a hangover. But his life changes when a truck crashes through the front windows of his workplace, killing everyone but him. Shortly after the accident, he is approached by an eccentric businessman, Mr. Thorrin, who interprets Dave’s survival as luck and sets out to exploit what he perceives as a gift. Thorrin wants Dave to participate in gambling, stock manipulation, and extreme betting, all based on this belief.
Complicating Dave’s life further is his strained relationship with his father, a lifelong compulsive gambler. The more he interacts with his father, the more he realizes a series of events from his childhood supports the theory that he is unusually lucky. What follows is a series of extreme tests of luck, orchestrated by the very mysterious Mr. Thorrin. As the stakes rise both financially and personally, Dave is left to decide whether his run of good fortune is a gift or a curse.
The Sixth Extinction
by d leonard freeston
978-1554889037
$22.99
Jason Conrad, a man with the wealth of Bill Gates, decides to preserve for posterity the seeds of as many animal and plant species as possible in a vast and remote underground facility, taking the world’s legitimate seed banks and “frozen zoos” to a whole new level. Conrad’s secret doomsday complex, though, is staffed by a combination of environmental experts and mercenaries who will stop at nothing to achieve their once-noble ambitions.
After a fellow police officer is murdered and his award-winning German shepherd disappears, Montreal Sergeant-Detective Irina Drach and her young partner, Sergeant-Detective Hudson, connect the crime with a seed bank raid in Ardingly, England, and the kidnapping of a Triple Crown Thoroughbred named Zarathustra. Soon it becomes apparent that highly organized, ruthless abduction teams are raiding seed banks around the world, as well as scooping up the finest animal specimens from zoos, nature preserves, and the wild. Despite the global implications and ballooning media interest, however, Irina never forgets that her foremost aim is to solve the murder of a friend and fellow officer.
Visit us at: Dundurn.com
Definingcanada.ca
@dundurnpress
Facebook.com/dundurnpress
Table of Contents
Dedication
acknowledgements
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
Copyright
More Fiction from Dundurn
Gethsemane Hall Page 29