Sour Candy Read Online Free Page B

gone, only the ghost of an old oil
stain to suggest it had ever been there at all, and of course his
Chevy was on the back of a tow truck en route to a garage
somewhere. Visible through the narrow window next to the front
door, Phil could see that only the light in the hall was on. The
rest of the house was in darkness, and while he’d seen it this way
countless times before, it unsettled him now.
    The detectives exited the vehicle,
Cortez coming around to open the door for Phil, who, with great
difficulty, braced a hand on the doorframe and eased himself
out.
    It was early Fall and a chill had
crept into the air, something Phil loved but found difficult to
fully appreciate now that his battered chest limited his air
intake.
    “ You all right?” Marsh
asked, sounding as if she really didn’t care one way or
another.
    “ Yeah.” He pushed away from
the car door and closed it behind him.
    He looked up at the house. It looked
as it always had but he found himself dreading it.
    “ You need to mow your lawn,
man,” Cortez said. Phil ignored him.
    How could a day that started so
sweetly, so perfectly, so quickly turn to hell?
    The answer to that was a simple one:
the woman. And now she was gone, out of the picture, free from
accountability, which left only the boy she had somehow and for
whatever reason, installed in his house.
    “ Lead the way,” Cortez
said.
    Phil did, his hands trembling as he
fished for his keys. He reached the front door and stood for a
moment on the welcome mat, head turned, listening for a sound from
within, but all was quiet.
    “ You want us to go first?”
Marsh asked.
    “ No, I got it.” He slid the
key into the lock, turned the knob and the door swung soundlessly
open, revealing everything right where he had left it. Dark
hardwood floor; lemon-yellow walls. To the left, beneath a silver
framed oval mirror stood the small mahogany table where he left his
keys and the mail after work. Beyond that, the door to the living
room and further along, the stairs. To the right, the door to the
office he shared with Lori. At the far end of the hall next to the
stairs, the entryway to the kitchen. Again he waited and again
there was no sound to indicate a presence in his house. And while
he would have preferred to have seen Lori rushing out to meet him,
he was content with silence for now because it meant nobody else
was here either.
    He allowed himself a moment to relax a
little, though the tension was not so easily dismissed. He started
to turn to tell the detectives waiting on the threshold that they
could go now, and what a pleasure it would be to finally be rid of
them and their inexplicable hostility…
    … And then the kitchen light
came on, revealing the backlit silhouette of the child standing in
the doorway.
    Phil froze, the keys clattering to the
floor.
    “ What are you doing in my
house?” he blurted. And much to his surprise, one he’d forever wish
he’d never experienced, the child responded.
    His voice was perfectly normal,
perfectly child-like, and worse, utterly convincing.
    “ I live here,
Daddy.”
     
    * * *
     
    “I’ll look after the kid,”
Marsh told her partner, then nodded at Phil. “You might want to
take him outside
for a moment.”
    Cortez turned and gestured toward the
open doorway. Phil gaped at him. “What in God’s name is going on
here?”
    “ Step outside and we’ll
discuss it.”
    “ I don’t want to discuss it.
I want to know what’s going on.”
    “ I wasn’t
asking.”
    Frustrated and afraid he was losing
his mind, Phil nevertheless complied, if only because he had
absolutely no idea what else he was supposed to do. He stepped out
into a light rain and raised his face to it, hoping it might wash
away some of the panic that was fluttering like a caged bird in his
chest.
    Cortez followed him out, leaving the
door open behind them for light. He looked up at the sky as if
disappointed that it had decided to rain without telling
him.
    Marsh called out to