Shivers Read Online Free Page A

it! Thorne swore to himself. This is what my life has been devoted to. Why did I run away? Why didn’t I stay there with him, learn what he had to say?
    Because the implications were just too horrible. The images he had picked up were too unreal, the product of a crazed consciousness. He would have learned nothing from a man whose mind had long since abandoned him. Surely he had not been sane. He couldn’t have been.
    But nevertheless, he had definitely been a sensitive. Thorne could not ignore that. He would have to find him again.
    And God help him when he did.
    * * *
    Steven left for Vivian’s apartment at 8:35. He walked down to Lincoln Center to catch the crosstown bus at 66th Street. The bus cut through Central Park and would stop not far from Ms. Jessup’s apartment house. He boarded, paid his fare, and sat down in the back. There were only a few other passengers.
    As the bus turned into the road through Central Park, he stared out the window, trying to see past his reflection, to catch a glimpse of the darkness outside and whatever it might have been hiding. He felt chilled—not just by the cold weather, but by the eerie quality of the park at night. Was his brother in there somewhere—in pain, crying, bleeding to death—or dead? Last night he’d looked all over the area where Joey had gone jogging, and again this morning before he’d gone to the police. Nothing.
    The bus went through a tunnel, and the moonlight was blocked. Steven thought for a moment that he had seen someone walking through the tunnel, someone hunched over, tired or ill. Joey? He turned his head and stared into the tunnel as the bus pulled out, but the figure was gone, if it had ever been there at all. Stop seeing Joey in every shadow, he told himself. It won’t do any good.
    He got off at Madison and 65th Street, walked up three blocks, and turned right at 68th. The woman’s home was located in the middle of the block. It was an old, but swanky, apartment house, with an aging doorman and a big, mirrored lobby full of plants and cushioned chairs. The doorman checked with Vivian Jessup via intercom, and Steven was allowed to proceed to the elevator. He stepped into the car, pushed the correct button, and tried to summon up a mental image of the woman he was about to meet. Her voice on the phone had been sultry, husky, sensual even, and she’d sounded older than he’d expected. Wasn’t that the rage these days—older women, younger men? He’d never really known what type of women his brother had gone for, but there was no reason to assume he stuck to women his own age. Maybe the two of them had had some kind of crisis—like he and Andrea had had. They’d spent plenty of nights staying up discussing their future, hadn’t they? Couldn’t Joey and Vivian have been doing the same?
    There were only two apartments on each floor. He pressed the buzzer outside 14A and listened as soft, delicate footsteps approached from within. Please be there, Joey. Be inside “shacked up” with Vivian.
    The door opened. A cautious face looked out. Pretty, soft. Tense.
    “Are you Mr. Everson?” the woman asked.
    “Yes. Ms. Jessup, I presume?”
    She nodded. “Mrs. Jessup. Come in, please.”
    She was a beautiful woman, but even more “mature” than Steven had expected. She appeared to be at least in her mid-forties, maybe older. There was a glamorous aura about her, a sort of fading loveliness recaptured in part by paint and powder. She had an upswept hairstyle and wore vivid red lipstick. Golden earrings dangled from her creamy lobes. Her face was narrow, small, with hazel eyes, high model’s cheekbones, and a slightly longish—but attractive—nose. Her lips and eyes were small—made larger by the lipstick and mascara. The eyelashes may have been false. She was about five-foot-five, and slender. Her outfit—though a casual one—was chic and expensive, not the thing one wore to the supermarket.
    As she ushered him into the living room, Steven