SHUDDERVILLE TWO Read Online Free Page B

stomach. The girl was lying in the exact position as before, her dreamy eyes closed, and I could see her ribcage moving slowly up and down. I stood in the doorway and said, “Hello?”
    No response.
    “Little girl?”
    Nothing.
    I wanted to talk to her and find out what was going on. Or maybe she was dimwitted like her brother? Or maybe she would speak in tongues?
    “Hello? Are you awake?” I inched closer into the room. The whole scene was much creepier in the daylight. Morning sunlight streamed into the room. How could she sleep in the direct sun like that? And if she was unconscious, why was she tied to the bed? How did she eat? Why wasn’t she connected to a respirator, a heart monitor or a feeding tube? Why wasn’t she institutionalized? Nothing made sense, and for the first time in my life I felt a bit uneasy, to tell you the truth. I wasn’t used to feeling this way. I started to think that maybe there was something seriously wrong with the widow.
    “Hello?” I said again, shuffling closer.
    Nothing. No movement. Just a steady, gentle breathing.
    I reached for the pale hand bound by velvet to the nearest bedpost and touched her small, curled fingers. They were cold. “Isabelle?” I whispered.
    All of a sudden, her eyes popped open. They were shiny black as a turtle’s and just as reptilian. I gasped and drew back, so startled by this unexpected sight that I stood cringing in a corner.
    She said nothing. She didn’t move a muscle. She just gazed at me with those awful, wetly primitive eyes. It was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things. Wicked things.
    Suddenly, I was overcome with feelings. Emotions. Fear. Revulsion. My body shook with the kind of quaking terror I’d never experienced before. Inexplicable. And then sorrow surfaced, and longing and sadness. I couldn’t bear the thought of feeling anything, not even hate. I turned and ran down the narrow staircase and slammed the door and stood in the hallway, panting. I had to get the hell out of there. The house was old and worn and warm and nurturing and unnatural and full of children and cruelty and love and twisted tenderness and horror, but most especially a silent knowingness. Somehow a knowingness of who you were and where you’d been and what you’d done. A horrible judgment. And I swore, that creature upstairs knew all about me.
    I tore down the staircase and out the back door and stood in the sunshine. I closed my eyes and faced the sun, my pulse racing. I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts. A warm wind shouldered through the trees, shaking them gently. I noticed a giant oak tree on the edge of the property. It was huge and sprawling and defied gravity, like a haunted-house tree, its gnarled branches reaching for the sky and begging for light. The hot wind made the leaves flutter—it sounded like faint rain.
    I glanced around the property and saw Delilah’s stunted rose bushes, the ones she’d blamed those scratches on. The pink roses were coiled up tight, just like the widow. I stood in the afternoon heat with the sun beating down on me like a heavy rain and realized I would have to kill the thing in the attic. And then I’d have to kill Andy. And then I’d have to kill either Delilah or Olive. One or the other. Only three of them would die. Thirteen was my goal. Thirteen and done. I had a sense of renewal, of something very promising and rewarding waiting for me on the other side of that unlucky number.
    I hesitated before going back inside. I was tempted to get in my car and get the hell out of there. You could only travel on the slate-gray road for so long before you fell under its spell, and then traveling was the only thing you wanted to do. You tore up a mountain in the Rockies knowing you could spin right over the edge of the world. You drove through a fleshy southern city the way an arrow pierces a beating heart, and you never wanted to stop. Ever.
    Two squirrels