Phantom Read Online Free Page A

thrashing about,
her nightgown had jumped up her thighs. And the way they had looked
at Michael, as if he had done something and it was all his fault
that she was in such a state.
    Michael sighed deeply. The boy seemed all
right. Whatever he had witnessed earlier, he was clinging to his
father now and breathing with the even rhythms of sleep. It'll all
seem like a bad dream to him when the sun comes up, Michael
thought. Kids are tough.
    Linda had to be okay. Everything was just
starting to go well for them in Washington. Our lives are just
beginning, he thought, she has got to be okay. And Ned too. Let
this not be a trauma, let there be no mental scars. Let there ...
Michael fell asleep.
    Ned was close to sleep, but his mind hadn't
let go completely yet. Snug in his father's embrace, he felt safe
and comfortable. One of the rules was that if you were with either
or both of your parents nothing, but nothing, could happen to you.
If only he could sleep with them every night—but, no, they didn't
allow it. Ned couldn't understand. It was as if they were actually
looking for trouble.
    What had happened before—he couldn't think
about that now. He was too weak and tired. Besides, it didn't
matter. His mother would come back, or she wouldn't. It made no
difference as far as the real problem was concerned. Ned knew what
had happened. A phantom had come and turned his mother into a
raving mad dog of a person. Even if she survived somehow and came
home again, the point had been made. The line had been crossed. Day
and night were mixed, once and forever.
    That was just a demonstration.
    If they could do that to your mother, just
think what they could do to you ....
     
     
    * * *
     
     
    1. Lynnhaven
     
    It wasn't much of a town anymore. You could
ride the old Coast Turnpike every day and hardly notice Lynnhaven.
Those who did take a look invariably described it as sleepy. Local
pundits often used the word "coma," while the Town Clerk was fond
of saying that Lynnhaven was in a period of transition. If so, it
had been going on for thirty or forty years. Lynnhaven was not so
much a town as a fishing village, and even the fishing activity was
residual now. More and more of the young people regarded fishing
and crabbing as hard, poor-paying work at a time when better
opportunities could be found elsewhere. If Lynnhaven had a future
it was probably in the direction of light industry, tract homes,
condos, shopping plazas and fast food chains, but the new era had
not yet arrived. Lynnhaven was a forgotten pocket of a community,
waiting half-heartedly to be rediscovered.
    There were other towns up and down the
shore, larger and suburbanized, so the rest of the world began
nearby and Lynnhaven didn't really seem like an isolated or remote
place. But inland, on the other side of the low hills, the earth
was an expanse of undeveloped, uninviting woods and swamps that
stretched for miles. Lynnhaven was merely one of the smaller and
less conspicuous stops along the Chesapeake from Annapolis to
Norfolk.
    In the old days, before the Depression and
scandal shut down the spa, Lynnhaven had a population of ten
thousand, but it had dwindled down to a third of that now. The
Sherwood family was dead and gone, their spa nothing more than a
ruin on the hill. Housing was no problem in Lynnhaven; a number of
fine white clapboard homes stood vacant and shuttered, ready for
new buyers. There wasn't a wharf along Polidori Street that didn't
need some repair work or general sprucing up, but no one bothered;
there didn't seem to be much point. It was a place of flaked paint
and driftwood grays, and if it had long since stopped taking itself
seriously, well, maybe life was a little easier for that.
    The spa on the hill had been Lynnhaven's
claim to fame back in the Twenties. The Sherwood family, who built
it, brought relative prosperity to the town for a few years. Local
old-timers who could still remember something of those days tended
to regard the spa as a