The Visitor
Chapter One
Disme the Child
Deep in the night, a squall of strangled brass, a muted
trumpet bray of panic: Aunt Gayla Latimer, wailing in the grip
of nightmare - followed shortly by footsteps.
"Papa?" Disme peered sleepily at her door, opened only a crack
to admit her father's nose, chin, one set of bare toes.
"It's Aunt Gayla having the Terrors, Disme. Just go back to
sleep." He turned and shuffled up the attic stairs to be
greeted by Roger, Disme's older brother. Mumble, mumble.
"Val?" A petulant whine from Father's room.
Voice from upstairs. "Go back to sleep, Cora."
Corable the Horrible, said a voice in Disme's head. Cora
Call-Her-Mother.
"But she's not my mother," Disme had said a thousand times.
"Of course not. But you call her mother anyhow. All little
girls need a mother." Papa, over and over.
Fresh howls of horror from Aunt Gayla's room.
"Can't anybody shut that old bitch up?" A slightly shriller
whine, from the room that had once been Disme's and now
belonged to Rashel, Call-Her-Mother's daughter, already
growing into a faithful copy of her mother.
Disme pulled the blanket around her ears and rolled an
imaginary pair of dice. Odds or evens: go back to sleep or
wait to see wha ... read full excerpt from: The Visitor ebook
