The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) Read Online Free Page B

vanished.
    Someone struck a match.
    She turned back around.
    For just a second, she thought she saw her dead father’s face—his features twisted, but she knew it was him—in the brief glow of the match.
    The match extinguished.
    “Who’s there?” she asked.
    But no one said a word.
    Is this all a joke? Are they doing this to me? Are these people who are not my friends — not realty, not the way friends realty are — are they doing this?
    Then, Alex near her. She felt his warmth. “It’s all right, babe,” he whispered. He struck another match, and it was Alex. Thank God. Thank God.
    “I was scared,” she whispered. “It got so quiet.”
    “Heh,” he grinned. “I think they’re all just taking advantage of the dark.”
    He blew the match out, and she felt his lips against hers. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to kiss him at all, but his mouth had a kind of suction that kept her there. She pushed him away, but his arms surrounded her.
    She felt his arousal as he pressed against her, and she tried to draw back but could not. She felt his hands go around her back, stroking along her spinal column. It only made her shiver—she felt uncomfortable. Even if they are all making out. Even if I only imagined seeing things. Even if that scream meant nothing. I want out. I want out now.
    Then she felt other hands, smaller hands, along her ankles, as if a little child were pulling at her.
    Instinctively, she kicked out, then brought her knee up to what she estimated in the dark to be Alex’s groin. As she drew back from him, she felt others touching her in the dark. She had to fight her way through them to move toward the one crack of light she saw in the doorway, the light from outside that came through the open window at the end of the corridor.
    She ran blindly down the dark hall, found the open window onto the back porch of the house, and crawled out. She didn’t know what had happened to the man, or to the others, but a primal fear had entered her, a sense of death and terror she had never before felt, and her heart thumped too rapidly in her chest. Once she made it to the car, she put her hand over her heart as if to calm it.
    Breathe.
    Breathe.
    A flashlight shone in her face. She couldn’t see who held it until Sam Pratt spoke.
    “Something bad’s going on here tonight,” he said.
     

11
    “You imagined it,” Bari told her when the others all came out of the house, trooping out in the rain to get to their cars.
    “No. I saw him. I saw him. He was ... playing with himself ... and then I saw ... Alex... I... saw ...”
    “Jackin ’ off, was he?” Alex said, winking at her and wrapping his arms around her. “I’ll protect you from the Jack-Off Monster. Should I kick him in the balls or just beat him off?”
    She shrugged free of his arms. “And what about Sam? What about what he saw?”
    Bari gave her an innocent look. “I have no idea. That’s Sam’s problem. Maybe he’s a liar. You want to go up and check it out?”
    Lizzie shook her head.
    “Yeah, me neither. If Sam wants to call the cops, let him.” She leaned into the car and glanced back at Sam Pratt, who stared straight ahead. “But if you decide to tell the cops anything, you’re not going to include any of us in it. You’re going to be the one who might get arrested for trespassing. Not me. Not the rest of us. You got that, geek?”
    Sam looked up at her, but didn’t say anything.
    “It’s okay, Sam,” Lizzie said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “It’s all going to be okay. Maybe ... maybe it was just some trick.”
    “Yeah,” Bari said, opening the front passenger door to shove Alex inside the car. Alex fell in like a wet dog; he was too drunk to keep his head up. “It probably was some trick. Some asshole from school who didn’t get invited tonight who’s just being nasty and stupid.”
    Andy Harris, revving the engine of his Mustang, called out, “Come on, Bari! We can still party down at the