Free The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) by Michael Richan Page B

don’t know
what might happen if you were to remove one. Like this one, here.” She pointed
to a project on the table next to them. A flat, thin piece of wood about a foot
square was covered with a green moss. Above it, a contraption was rigged to
drip a single drop of yellow liquid onto the exact center of the moss every
minute or so. A collector pan under the moss was gathering a brownish liquid
that ran from it, and recycling it back up through several bottles until it fed
the tube delivering the drop of yellow liquid.
    “What’s going on here?” she asked. “Do we dare take it apart,
stop what it’s doing?”
    “It looks to me like it’s concentrating something,” Steven
answered, examining it more closely. “The liquid. Becoming more and more
concentrated. Or refined.”
    “Wonder what the liquid does,” Eliza said. “Wish there were
some way to know.”
    She left Steven and began wandering along the tables, looking
at the other projects.
    “Roy would like to stop and see Judith, on the way back
tomorrow,” Eliza said, still browsing the items. “Thinks that if you tell her
the details of the deal, she might be able to explain a few things.”
    “I don’t need her to tell me I killed my son,” Steven said,
leaving the moss and moving to the next project on an adjacent table.
    “I’ll let him explain it,” Eliza said. “But I hope you’ll
hear him out.”
    “Always do,” Steven said. They browsed for a few moments
more, then Steven spoke up. “You know, he was not sleeping when I did it. He
was awake, looking at me. He tried to save himself, he tried to roll off the
bed, out of the way of my ax.”
    “You weren’t holding an ax, Steven,” Eliza said. “That was a
dream.”
    “I know I didn’t kill him with that ax, I killed him some
other way. But he tried to save himself, and couldn’t. The ghost there with me,
the one that possessed me – he was stopping Jason from moving by saying
something. A word. He kept repeating it, and it was holding Jason in place so I
could kill him.”
    “Have you told Roy about this?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I think you should. He’s trying very hard to sort
things out.”
    “There’s nothing to sort out. The deal with Aka Manah is
done, and Jason is dead. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.
Time to find the next book to return.”
    “I think there are some questions still,” Eliza said, working
her way back to Steven. “Things may not be completely over yet. I think Roy
won’t have any closure until those things get figured out.”
    “I can’t tell you how many times last night I wanted to come
down here and find an object that I could use to kill myself,” Steven said. “That’d
be some closure.”
    Eliza walked up to him and put her hand on his back. “That
would destroy your father,” she said. “And it’s not what Jason would have
wanted.”
    Steven began to cry again, and Eliza wrapped her arms around
him. “Jason was a good kid, wasn’t he?” she asked, after he had a moment. She
let him go.
    “Always a good kid,” Steven said, composing himself. “Never
in trouble. You see so many kids who lose track of themselves. He was never
like that. God, his mother is going to be devastated. And it’ll drag on and on,
because she’ll think it’s a missing persons case.”
    “Listen to Roy when he talks to you, OK? As a favor to me? I
think what he’s worried about makes sense.”
    “Alright,” Steven said. “I’ll go to Judith’s. Why not.” He
began pacing around the room once more, studying the objects, trying to divert
his mind.

Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    “How long ago were we here?” Eliza asked. “Two weeks? So much
has happened, I’ve lost track of time.”
    They waited in the finely appointed drawing room of Judith
Duke’s mansion. Clara, the maid, had left them to announce their arrival.
    “About that,” Roy said. “Hopefully this will be the last
time.”
    “How did you meet her?” Eliza