A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror Read Online Free Page A

determination fired by anger, she slipped off the low shoes she had worn for driving, dropping them into the oversize handbag beside her on the seat.
    The water was icy cold on her bare foot, causing her to shudder involuntarily. With stubborn resolution, she grabbed her purse and slid off the seat, standing almost knee deep in the cold water. But despite its depth at this point, the water was slow-moving, and she was in no danger at all of being swept away in the current. She lifted her skirt and waded to the opposite side of the creek, nearly falling when she stepped on a slippery rock. She paused on the bank to put her shoes on and contemplate her predicament.
    There was nothing for it but to leave the car and her luggage and start walking. Heaven alone knew how far she would have to walk before finding Kelsey House, or any other house for that matter. In the morning there would be time enough to worry about the car and her luggage. Surely there would be someone at Kelsey House to retrieve them for her.
    She started stubbornly down the road. Without the comforting beams of the car’s headlights, the road seemed darker. She found herself frighteningly aware of its narrowness and of the tall trees towering over her on either side, like threatening sentinels. The air was filled with the sweet scent of pine and sage and juniper. What had seemed at first to be silence was not silence after all, but a sighing of leaves and branches in the breeze, and the whisper of birds overhead. There was another sound too, a faint rustling in the underbrush that might have been the breeze again, or that might have been someone moving stealthily through the woods beside her.
    She walked carefully down the middle of the road, casting frequent glances about. She remembered the stories she had read as a child, stories of roving bandits who hid in the forests and leapt out to accost unwary travelers.
    â€œThere aren’t any roving bandits these days,” she reminded herself aloud, without in the slightest allaying her fears. One could hardly live in the world today without being aware that there were all kinds of people just waiting to do horrible things. And for all she knew, in a place so forlorn and isolated as this, where they did not even know enough to put bridges across streams, there might just still be roving bandits.
    The road sloped uphill, leveling off just before it disappeared around another curve. She reached the flat ground again and began to walk more swiftly. The determination that had carried her away from the car had been more than anything else a product of her anger. As her distance from the relative comfort of the car increased, she found both her anger and determination waning.
    She was halfway around the curve when she saw the man standing in front of her, a short distance down the road. She stopped dead in her tracks, fighting the temptation to turn and run. There could be no doubt of it, he had seen her; he was, in fact, watching her.
    â€œDon’t be a ninny,” she told herself without much resolve. You’ve been wanting to see some sign of life and unless there’s some horrible mistake, this certainly is one.
    â€œHello,” she called aloud, not moving from the spot where she stood. “Can you direct me to Kelsey House?”
    There was such a long pause before he answered that she half wondered if he had heard her at all, and was about to call again when he finally spoke.
    â€œYou must be Miss Jennifer,” he called back, quite as though she had just opened the door of her home to find him there waiting to greet her, rather than having met him along an isolated country road at night.
    The fact that he knew her name startled her at first. It was an incongruous spot in which to find someone who could address her by name.
    â€œMiss Kelsey said I should bring you up to the house,” he went on as he drew nearer.
    Jennifer let out the breath she had been holding in a great sigh