The Haunting of Pitmon House Read Online Free Page B

objects,” Rachel
said. “That’s why I thought I should mention them, in case they’re to blame for
what happened.”
    “Well,” Eliza said, leaning back and taking another sip of
the drink, “the doctors said they’d have test results by tomorrow.”
    “When they come back inconclusive,” Rachel said, rising from
her chair to make herself another, “think about what I’m telling you.”
     
    ●
     
    Eliza let the screen door hit her as she walked into the country
home. The house had originally belonged to her grandparents, who were buried on
the property in a shady spot a hundred yards from the house. There were a
couple of other gravestones there, too — relatives she hadn’t bothered to learn
about while growing up. She would have laid her father to rest there as well,
but the laws changed. No more private graveyards, even if you did have thirty
acres of relative solitude.
    She stood for a moment in the entryway, listening. The house
was quiet.
    She dropped her keys in the key dish and walked into the
living room, falling down on the sofa. She knew she probably shouldn’t have
driven home; Rachel’s cocktails were strong, and she might be pushing the blood
alcohol limit. The combination of booze and information from Rachel was
spinning around in her mind, making her thoughts race.
    Rachel isn’t exactly reliable, she thought. She’s a mess,
personally. More than once she’s been talked to about alcohol on her breath
when she came to work. And men — boy, can she pick them. Eliza could
predict exactly how the next man in Rachel’s life would look and act: he’d be
wearing a wife beater, have tattoos up and down his arms, and a sneer or a
smirk. They’d party a lot, and after a few weeks Rachel would show up at work
with bruises on her arms, complaining that she didn’t know the guy was a felon.
Eventually she’d kick the guy out. Sometimes a restraining order would be involved;
sometimes not. She went through three or four a year.
    Eliza remembered asking Rachel once where she met the guys
she dated. Rachel mentioned a bar in Fitchburg she’d never heard of.
    A single light was on in the living room, a standing lamp
that was set on a timer. It cast a warm glow through the room, beating back the
dark that was slowly enveloping the house. She felt Sponge jump up onto the
couch with her, his head pressing against her arm and sliding several inches
down it.
    She absently-mindedly reached to pet the cat, stroking his
back. When the purring didn’t start up, she pulled her hand away and turned to
look at the animal. A foot-long garter snake was hanging limply from each side
of Sponge’s mouth. As she watched, the cat stepped forward and placed the snake
next to her. Then it looked up, expecting Eliza’s hand on its head.
    “Oh, thank you!” Eliza said sarcastically, letting her
fingers drop to the animal’s fur and giving him a quick rub. “Just what I
always wanted, Sponge: another dead snake. I appreciate the lack of blood this
time.”
    The purring started.
    She stood up and grabbed the reptile by the tip of its tail,
lifting it from the sofa. She walked into the kitchen and tossed it into the
garbage bin. Sponge was at her ankles immediately.
    “It’s coming,” she said, reaching into the cupboard to locate
a can of cat food. “If you ate what you caught, I wouldn’t have to feed you,
would I?”
    She set the cat food down and Sponge began devouring it.
“Then again, why would you want to eat a snake when you have this tasty crap
waiting for you every night?”
    She left the cat and the kitchen, walking upstairs. As she
passed the bedroom doors, her thoughts returned to Shane. She opened the door
to his bedroom and looked inside. Bed unmade, clothes on the floor. Just like
always.
    She felt a huge rush of concern resurface. She’d been good at
keeping it under control most of the day, knowing she needed to go to work and
continue making income for the household even though Shane was in