The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) Read Online Free

replied. “I meant to say three.
That’s just me being overly dramatic, I guess.”
    “You overheard me,” Winn said.
    “There’s little that goes on in this house that I don’t know
about,” Carma replied, “but, I’m sad to say, that journal is one that I missed.
I should have reviewed it with you, Deem. My mistake.”
    “It’s no big deal, Carma,” Deem said.
    “Oh, dear,” Carma replied, “big problems arise from little
problems that aren’t properly dealt with. Missing the mirror in that book was a
little problem. Now we have a big problem.”
    “What problem?” Deem asked. “I just won’t go back to that
house, if it’s as bad as all that. I can live with not knowing.”
    “It’s not that simple,” Carma replied. “Look at him, he’s
nodding off. Help me get him to bed, will you, Winn?”
    Carma rose from her seat and walked to David, pulling him up
from the blankets. Winn assisted, grabbing David by the other side, and Carma
lifted one of the blankets and wrapped it around him, ushering him upstairs.
    Winn helped them both and watched as Carma tucked David in, treating
him as though he was a five-year-old. David was indeed sleepy, and didn’t
resist as Carma pulled the covers over him and added the extra blanket on top.
By the time they left the room, Winn could hear David softly snoring.
    They joined Deem in the sitting room.
    “Is he OK?” Deem asked Carma.
    “I’m afraid not,” Carma replied. “I didn’t want to say it
while he was still in the room, but something’s very wrong with him. Seriously
wrong. And I’m not being overly dramatic.”
    “Seriously wrong how?” Winn asked.
    “I might be mistaken,” Carma said. “It could be a side effect
from having been blipped from Paragonah to here. But I’m afraid it might be
much worse.”
    “Is that what you think happened?” Winn asked. “He was
blipped?”
    “Like teleported?” Deem offered.
    “Whatever,” Carma said, shaking her head. “One moment he was
in that house with you, and the next he was here. Call it whatever you want.”
    “What happened to him in Paragonah, Deem?” Winn asked. “You
two were trancing, and you went exploring inside the house?”
    “It was much stranger than that,” Deem replied. “Bizarre,
really.”
    “Did you see him disappear?” Winn asked.
    “No,” Deem replied. “The house wasn’t the same in the River.
Well, it was, but it was different. Bigger. Duplicated.”
    “You’re not making any sense,” Winn replied.
    Deem sighed. “I kind of lost track of him. There are three
doors that lead to the outside in that house on the ground level: the front
door, the one in the back in the kitchen, and one on the side, at the end of a hallway.
We didn’t see anything strange or unusual in the house, but when we went
through the front door, we found ourselves walking into the kitchen, through
the back door. When we walked through the kitchen door, the opposite happened —
we came through the front door, into the entryway by the living room. But it
wasn’t the same living room. It was a different one.”
    “What do you mean, different?” Carma asked.
    “It was still run down, but in different ways,” Deem
answered. “Slightly different. A chunk of plaster that was on the ground in a
particular place had been moved. Holes in the wall were a little smaller.
Stains on peeling wallpaper were in different places, and were different in
color.”
    “What happened if you walked out the hallway door?” Winn
asked.
    “You came back into the kitchen,” Deem answered.
    “And the kitchen was different each time, too?” Carma asked.
    “Yes,” Deem replied. “Sometimes it was less messy. The walls
looked in better shape.”
    “So these were new rooms, not just the original room?” Winn
asked. “You weren’t looping back into the same house?”
    “It seemed that way,” Deem replied. “It felt like you were
stepping into a whole new instance of the house each time. We