The Taint Read Online Free Page B

the older woman. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
    Nora Mae Samuels clutched the robe around her thin body. “Just enjoying the peace and quiet. And breathing the fresh air, if there’s no rule against it.”
    Joyce smiled. It was a familiar argument. “No, but it’s cold out here, you’ll catch your death.”
    “It’ll have to catch me.” Her piercing black eyes examined Joyce. “Someone died tonight.” It was not a question.
    “Now, Nora . . .”
    “I can feel it.” Her voice rasped, urgent. “I can smell it.”
    It was true that Nora always seemed to know when someone had died, but how much was psychic, like she claimed, and how much was acute hearing, no one could tell. Joyce put an arm along the woman’s shoulders and began to guide her to the door.
    “Come inside, now,” she said gently, not wanting to upset her.
    Nora allowed herself to be walked back into the building, her head tilted in concentration, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
    It took some doing to get her settled back in her room; all of the bedcovers had been thrown on the floor, and Joyce went to the linen room to get fresh sheets. Nora sat in a chair, looking out the window at the courtyard, not speaking as Joyce worked.
    After finishing the bed, Joyce got a fresh pitcher of water and placed it on the bedside table, and brought a tiny white pill in a paper cup. She watched as Nora took the pill, and the ripple in the old woman’s throat as she swallowed.
    “Good night, now,” she said, and walked to the door.
    “Someone,” Nora began, and lowered her voice, “is out there.”
     
     
     

SEVEN
     
    Natalie Stuart woke with a start. Something was outside the trailer; she could hear it moving. She nudged Ralph, hoping to wake him but he slept on, snoring lightly.
    It rustled the leaves outside, the noise getting fainter as it moved toward the front of the trailer.
    An animal? She didn’t know much about wild animals, only what she had seen on TV, and little of that was reassuring. Beasts lying in wait, preying on each other, the survival of the fittest. Vivid images of torn carcasses flooded her mind.
    She swallowed hard. What if it were a bear? Those horrible stories of people being attacked, mutilated and killed. Could a bear get in? Hadn’t she heard something about a camper being demolished by a starving bear?
    She nudged Ralph again, harder this time, but he just turned onto his stomach, trapping her against the wall. He wasn’t snoring now and she could hear again, clearly, the sound of it moving outside.
    Melanie and Jason were asleep in the front of the trailer, in the smaller bed across from the door, tired from a full day of camping, mainly consisting of eating. Had Jason washed his hands after eating those ripe peaches? Could the bear smell him through the door?
    She groaned, not meaning to, and was startled by the sound. Outside the rustling stopped.
    She closed her eyes, waiting for the sound of ripping metal and the snarls of a frenzied beast. Instead, the sounds came back to where she lay. Something brushed along the side of the trailer, rocking it just slightly. Ralph slept on.
    It was right outside the window at the rear of the room. She forced her eyes open, twisting carefully to get a look at the shape that menaced her. Barely perceptible, a shadow crossed from right to left.
    And then, a cough. A human cough.
    It was worse than she’d thought. A different type of beast, with cold steel honed to a fine edge, and the sick, perverted urges of the insane.
    Miles down the mountain there was an asylum.
    This was no time to panic. She could try to slip out of the bed and find the small handgun that Ralph had brought along. If nothing else, she would wake the kids and hide them in the bathroom.
    She began to slip the covers down, and tried to maneuver into a sitting position. Ralph quickly spread out to take up the space she had vacated.
    Outside, he passed the window once more and started to