Poe Read Online Free Page A

offense to Bob and his polyps, but I gotta have something to print or all the fuckin’ advertisers will pull out, and it’s not like we can fill up those pages with obits unless there’s, like, some kind of fuckin’ bus accident or something. We should be so lucky, right?”
    “So this feature—”
    “Yeah, you need to get your ass down to the Aspinwall mansion by seven, otherwise Maddy will pitch a fit. She’s my fuckin’ wife’s hairdresser, and damn, she’s got a mouth on her. I’m sending Nate,too, ’cause he’s driving me up the fuckin’ wall. He wants to start a gym-and-donut franchise. Can you believe that shit?”
    I have nothing to say about that.
    “I swear to God my wife fucked around behind my back, ’cause that idiot doesn’t even look like me. But what the hell can I do, right?”
    I try to get the conversation back on track. “So what’s the angle?”
    “Angle? It’s a fuckin’ Halloween story in a fuckin’ haunted house. You sure you went to college, ’cause you’re starting to sound a lot like Nate.”
    “Right,” I say, trying to think if I’ve ever heard of Aspinwall mansion. I haven’t. “So—”
    “Just don’t fuck it up, because I swear to fuckin’ God this is your last shot.”
    Click.
    Great. Me, Nate, and a psychic hairdresser spending the first anniversary of my parents’ death in some kind of decrepit mansion that’s probably a death trap and will certainly set off my mold allergies.
    My life could not possibly get worse.

CHAPTER TWO: SPOOKY
    I ’m twenty minutes late, because the address of the “haunted” mansion isn’t on Google Maps, and I drive right by it two or three times. The entrance is completely overgrown with thorny, hostile-looking bushes. In my messenger bag I’ve got a notepad, pencil, and thermos full of coffee made with eBoost caffeinated water, my special concoction that would be illegal if anyone paid attention and will probably cause my heart to beat erratically. But after the séance or whatever, I still have to get the copy in by midnight, so it’s a price I’m willing to pay.
    I look to see if there are any other cars parked on the street—nope—which means that even though I’m late, I’m also the first to arrive. That’s assuming Nate will be able to find his way here, which I doubt, given his seventh-grade reading level and presumably poor map skills. I should be so lucky. But then I’d be clueless myself how to find Aspinwall if I hadn’t called Lisa—font of wisdom that she is—because there wasn’t anything on the Internet except for a few digital pictures taken by drunk teenagers who apparently have made it their party destination.
    Lisa told me that Delia Aspinwall was admitted to Crosslands two years ago. She was the daughter of Captain Aspinwall, who built the mansion after he made his fortune with evil South American coffee plantations that doubly exploited the indigenous tribes: first by forcing them to cut down the rain forest, their main source of sustenance, and then by making them pick coffee beans on thecleared land so their families wouldn’t starve to death. Now seventy-eight, Delia is only semilucid, but she is remarkably bossy and sharp tongued, so none of the nurses want anything to do with her. Her habit of saving feces to throw at staff hasn’t helped her popularity much either.
    Delia lived at Aspinwall until she was eight, when there was a tragic fire of undetermined origin that claimed the lives of six rich socialites, including her mother. Some said her father started the fire (harsher tongues whispered it was Delia herself), and from age eight to nine Delia didn’t speak a word, which made her “queer” (not the kind that immediately comes to mind). Finally at age ten she broke her silence, demanding to go back to Aspinwall, because she said her mother wasn’t really dead; she had seen her at the movie theater watching Animal Crackers with the gardener. At this point her father sent her