Free Linda Castle by The Return of Chase Cordell

quickened its tempo at the notion that he might remember something.
    The face he stared at in the painting was his father’s, yet it was a face so like the unfamiliar one he found staring back each morning when he shaved, it sent a shiver through him. The same dark hair and serious gray eyes stared down dispassionately from the old canvas.
    Chase turned around and looked at the other paintings lining the walls between the shelves of books. A pale woman with soft brown eyes smiled at him.
    It was his mother. He knew it, even though he couldn’t dredge up a single recollection of her. He. also knew, from some deep spring of hidden information, that she had died in childbirth when he was very small.
    The irony of feeling some happiness, or relief, at such a melancholy memory did not escape Chase. He sighed and concentrated on each portrait.
    Above the fireplace was the likeness of a young girl with raven locks and porcelain skin. Her eyes were similar tothose of his father, with a youthful promise of great beauty in the childish face. Her name suddenly popped into Chase’s head as if conjured up by a magician in a snake-oil act.
    Marjorie, his aunt, the apple of his grandfather’s eye. Chase had an obscure remembrance of her funeral and the madness that took his grandfather’s mind away following the somber occasion.
    “Am I the next Cordell to lose his mind?” he muttered while he stared at the young girl’s gray eyes. A conflict of emotion ripped through him and a strange high-pitched ringing filled his ears. Was his grandfather’s affliction somehow responsible, or was it something else that took his memory?
    He tore his gaze from the painting and slouched into a tall-backed chair in front of the cold fireplace. The sound in his ears had taken on a lower tone, but it was still evident. With a slight unsteadiness of his hand, he poured himself a large brandy from the glass decanter on the side table. The liquor blazed a hot trail down his throat toward his empty belly.
    Maybe the alcohol would silence the buzz in his ears or numb the ache in his hip. He prayed it would at least dull the raw need he perceived each time he thought about Linese and how much she had lost during the past two years.
    Chase returned the glass to the table and picked up the first issue of the Gazette from the mound at his feet. With a little luck, perhaps he could find a part of his missing self in the words. If nothing else, maybe he would stumble upon some clue that would unearth the mystery of what he had done before he went to war. Then, even if he was doomed to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, he would have some tiny bit of himself, a shadow of the man he used to be. Maybe it would be enough.
    Linese sat in the rocker beside Captain Cordell and watched the moon rise above the treetops just as she had done for the past two years. Funny, Chase’s return hadmade little difference in the day-to-day existence at Cordel-lane. Her reality was nothing like the dreams she had spun in Chase’s absence. She was still sleeping alone, still sitting with Captain Cordell in the evenings, watching the moon and the stars, while she longed for the company of her husband.
    “I’ll be taking some food over to Doralee’s sporting house,” Captain Cordell said suddenly. He never looked at Linese. He just continued to stare up at the twinkling array of stars overhead.
    She turned to him in amazement. It had never occurred to her that the Captain went to the local bordello. She knew that almost every other able-bodied man left in Mainfield did, but she had never even thought of the Captain that way. In truth she had never given much thought to the fact he was still a healthy man who probably had physical desires. She caught herself blushing with the thought.
    When she first arrived at Cordellane, in the first lonely weeks, she had wondered if he was as out of touch as people believed. Slowly she had come to realize his condition was changeable. His