SHUDDERVILLE TWO Read Online Free

tied up like this? Why did they keep her up here? What was wrong with her? What was wrong with them ? I exhausted myself with these questions.
    Suddenly I heard footsteps approaching and froze in place. It sounded like somebody was coming. I raced downstairs to my room and stood listening behind my closed door. After a moment, I heard someone going up the attic stairs and wondered who it was. I wanted to peek outside, but my heart was racing too hard to do anything. I heard footsteps above my head, and a soft voice. Female. Kind. Delilah Kincaid.
    And then a harsh whisper. “No, Isabelle!”
    Followed by silence.
    A few minutes later, I heard movements, like the clinking of pill bottles, and more whispered words. Then footsteps tracking across the attic floor and back down the stairs. I heard the attic door quietly open and close. I heard a key click in the latch.
    And then nothing.
    I went to my door and peeked out. I saw the light wink off in Delilah’s room.
    I killed the remaining couple of hours with a flask of whiskey and waited for dawn to arrive.
    *
    The next morning over breakfast, I noticed fresh scratches on Delilah’s wrists. Red and raw. She covered them up with her long-sleeve blouse, but it was a hot humid July morning, and as she fanned herself with a napkin, I caught glimpses of exposed skin.
    She was gravely courteous this morning. Her eyes were flat as a lake and her hair was the color of ditch water. “I’m going to the grocery store, Mr. LaCroix,” she said stiffly. “Is there anything I can get for you while I’m there?”
    “Just some beer.”
    “I’m sorry, but we don’t drink in this house.”
    I took the news with practiced calm. I prided myself on being able to soothe my victims—that was my special gift. I was good at it. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll visit the local tavern at some point.”
    “What’s a tavern?” Olive asked, her hair in two pencil-thin braids.
    “Bar,” I told her with a wink.
    “What’s a bar?”
    “A place where people go to get artificially happy.”
    “It’s a very sad place,” Delilah corrected me.
    Andy came downstairs wearing another crazy outfit—a pair of purple shorts with a silver belt, a flowered vest, and cow-brown suede boots. “Like my outfit?” he asked, and I just rolled my eyes.
    “Jazzy,” Olive told him brightly.
    He rocked his prideful head sideways, while beads of sweat collected along his hairline. He was a big kid, tall and bulky. “What’s for breakfast, Mom?”
    “Pancakes,” she said. “Did you wash your hands?”
    He held them up for inspection.
    I passed him the maple syrup and he thanked me with an effusive grin.
    I turned to the widow and said, “By the way, I heard something in the attic last night.”
    Delilah held her fork just inches from her open mouth.
    “It sounded like a squirrel. Or maybe a rat. Well, anyway. You told me to tell you if I heard anything.”
    She swallowed hard. “Thanks. I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”
    “I’m not worried.”
    She smiled with fear in her eyes.
    In the Alaskan woods that day—after the girl died, her lips gradually turning as pale blue as her powder-blue snow boots—I began to cry. I sobbed with self-pity. I wept for my own pathetic wasted life. I wanted to die. It was the Alaskan wilderness. The vastness of it, the isolation. The woods were silent except for the creaking trees, which made a sound like many rocking chairs.
    The wind whistled multiple notes through the leafless branches, and snow collected in the crotches of the maple trees, their trunks like human torsos bulging with veins. Little baseball-sized clumps of snow slid down the feathery cypress. If you stared long enough into the woods, you would see more colors than you ever imagined possible in the landscape. Blue ice crystals, pink kisses of fungus, gold flakes of birch bark. And the snow drifted down over everything.
    That day I discovered the truth about myself. I was a killer. A vicious