Mothman's Curse Read Online Free Page A

profit.”
    â€œWe like this one,” I said to drown him out. “It has character.”
    â€œCome to think of it,” Dad said, scratching his head, “I thought that camera belonged with next week’s lot. You kids didn’t get that out of the storeroom, did you?”
    â€œâ€™Course not. It was on Table Six with everything else,” Fox said. “It didn’t belong to the estate you sold today?”
    â€œNo. Maybe Bill mixed it in by accident.”
    â€œWhose is it, then?” I said. “We don’t even know which estate you have lined up next week.”
    Dad’s mouth quirked upward. “That doesn’t sound like my kids, forgetting to make everybody else’s business their own.”
    â€œAnd you haven’t made us help with inventory or research or any of our usual jobs,” Fox countered. “What’s the big secret?”
    â€œNo secret.” Dad clutched his broom a little tighter. “Just been busy. It’s a big estate.”
    â€œSo whose is it?” Fox pressed.
    â€œJust a widower over near Clark.” He and his broom skulked away to a section of floor he’d already swept. Fox and I raised our eyebrows at each other.
    Clark. A town twenty miles west with its own terrible history. Long story short, most of it was destroyed in a landslide when Dad was a kid. Hundreds dead, buildings unreachable. A whole town, gone. People still talked about it like it’d just happened. The whole thing made my chest feel heavy and cold, as if I couldn’t get a decent breath. Of course Fox and I had always, always wanted to go there and see it for ourselves, and of course no one would ever let us.
    Fox wasn’t giving up on the issue just yet. “A big estate near Clark, huh? It wasn’t old Mr. Goodrich, was it?”
    Dad rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. He wouldn’t look at us.
    â€œSeriously?” I said.
    â€œI can’t believe you didn’t tell us!” Fox cried. “We almost missed the auction of the century!”
    Sighing, Dad set his broom against the wall. “I was going to tell you.” He sighed again when he saw our eyes, wide and unblinking. “Come with me.”
    Haunted camera or no, our interest had just jumped to the moon and back. We followed at his heels as he led us to the storage room that we used for sorting, cataloging, and photographing merchandise.
    Dad unlocked the door and pocketed his keys. He threw the master switch to flood the room with light from the double-high ceiling.
    Every free inch of space was occupied with secondhand swag.
    â€œThis is the Goodrich estate,” Dad said.
    â€œDang,” I said.
    Our voices sounded hushed and harsh, swallowed up by all the stuff.
    Fox couldn’t speak. He always had something to say, but right then, all he could do was drool. He was probably imagining the money he could make selling just two or three items from the infamous Goodrich estate—even a used toothbrush or a can of motor oil.
    Because everyone knew that the Goodrich mansion was one of the few buildings to escape the landslide.
    Mrs. Goodrich had been running some sort of errand in town when the landslide hit. They never found her. Mr. Goodrich had been at home and survived, house untouched, the wall of dirt and debris rumbling to a standstill just shy of their property. He pretty much stayed in that house for the next forty years, refusing to leave or relocate. He paid people to bring groceries and keep up the grounds, but basically his life ended along with all those other unlucky people in the disaster.
    â€œWhy all the secrecy, Dad?” I wondered, even though I could guess at the answer. Dad was no fool. He knew that if we knew he’d landed the Goodrich estate, we would have been hard-pressed to keep our mouths shut.
    Dad pushed his hat back to scratch his forehead. “Didn’t seem respectful, after what that poor man went