Mothman's Curse Read Online Free Page B

through, to turn this place into a circus over it. They even kept his obituary out of the paper until I could get the house cleared out. I’ve hired a guard up there so people stay off the property, but it won’t stay a secret for much longer. Customers are already pestering me about why I haven’t advertised next week’s auction. The obituary comes out tomorrow.” He chuckled. “I’m surprised your aunt hasn’t burst from not being able to gossip about it.”
    â€œThere are initials in the camera case,” Fox said. “JG.”
    â€œJohn Goodrich,” Dad said quietly. “I hadn’t thought about that place in years. I sure never figured I’d be the one to sell off his estate.”
    I closed my hand around Dad’s callused fingers. “What do you remember about the landslide?”
    â€œI was about six—younger than Mason. We’d had a lot of rain, for weeks and weeks. We joked about building an ark. People on TV were starting to talk about the danger of landslides. Then one afternoon we turned on the news and saw that Clark was all but gone. In a town of five hundred people, almost three hundred were killed.
    â€œGoodrich must have been in his forties then. He never had children. Other survivors settled down in surrounding towns, but John Goodrich wouldn’t leave. All kinds of stories grew about him—that he’d gone crazy, that his house was haunted by the ghosts of the townspeople.”
    I nodded along, thinking of at least a dozen other tales kids still told about him at school.
    Dad’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “A few weeks ago, Mr. Goodrich asked me to come and see him, to talk about his final wishes. He was very sick; he died just two days later. When I first stepped into that house, it was like going back in time. There were no computers, no flat-screen TVs—no evidence at all he’d even been outside in the last forty years.”
    I watched Fox trying desperately to keep his focus on Dad, but his eyes kept straying to the room full of waiting treasures. I was curious, too—burning with it, in fact—but trying not to let it show.
    Dad noticed anyway. He gestured to the room. “Go on and have a look around. You see something you can’t live without, let me know.”
    â€œReally?” I blurted, surprised at the change in protocol.
    â€œJohn’s lawyer gave me the option to keep some pieces as partial payment; the profits from the auction are earmarked for a local charity. But be respectful. I’m asking you to keep this to yourselves until I decide when and how to announce the sale and the name of the deceased. Are we clear?”
    We nodded.
    â€œI’ll leave you to it, then.”
    I gave his hand a final squeeze before letting go. He smiled and kissed the top of my head, then ambled back out to the auction floor.
    I didn’t know where to look first. Larger pieces crowded the fringes of the room: hand-carved furniture, Persian rugs, brass lamps, brooding portraits in gilded frames, silver candelabras, and velvet chairs. Tables held the smaller bits and pieces of the Goodriches’ lives: mountains of books, wooden pipes, car parts, watches, photographs, five sets of golf clubs, record albums, musty clothes, stacks of old newspapers and magazines, old TVs and radios, and hundreds of tools. The storeroom was almost always full of stuff, but I’d never seen it so truly packed from one end to the other.
    Fox had already wandered farther in. I hoped he remembered we were here for information, not to add to his personal collection. Fox collected anything he deemed cool or valuable, or both. His room was filled with old maps and globes, tin toys, printer’s blocks, and sports memorabilia. It was like a shrine of auction leftovers, a monument to all his best finds.
    And don’t get me started on the rest of our house. Momma was a pack rat her whole life, and when