“It’s crap.”
“Good. I think we’ll listen to it.” Lou began to move his head back and forth to the beat. “Groove with me, George.”
“You look like an idiot.”
“I’m an idiot with rhythm. C’mon, groove with me.”
George watched him for a moment, then smiled. He cranked up the volume and the two thugs grooved off into the sunset.
THE END
About Jeff Strand:
Jeff Strand is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of such insane novels as PRESSURE, DWELLER, BENJAMIN’S PARASITE, A BAD DAY FOR VOODOO, and GRAVEROBBERS WANTED (NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY). He is grateful for yet another opportunity to piggyback off of more successful authors. He lives in Tampa, Florida, and complains about cold weather in the 60’s. You can visit his Gleefully Macabre website at www.jeffstrand.com
Other Books by Jeff Strand
A Bad Day For Voodoo
Stalking you Now
I Have A Bad Feeling About This
Dead Clown Barbecue
Faint of Heart
Fangboy
The Sinister Mr. Corpse
Dweller
Benjamin’s Parasite
Pressure
Kutter
Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary)
Single White Psychopath Seeks Same
Casket For Sale (Only Used Once)
Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers to “Shirley”)
Gleefully Macabre Tales
The Severed Nose
Disposal
Mandibles
Elrod McBugle on the Loose
Out of Whack
How to Rescue a Dead Princess
The Haunted Forest Tour (with Jim Moore)
Draculas (with JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson)
Suckers (with JA Konrath)
EERIE
a thriller
by BLAKE CROUCH
& JORDAN CROUCH
EERIE copyright © 2012 by Blake Crouch & Jordan Crouch
EERIE is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Blake Crouch and Jordan Crouch.
From newcomer Jordan Crouch and Blake Crouch, author of the runaway bestseller Run, comes Eerie, a chilling, gothic thriller in the classic tradition of The Shining and The Sixth Sense.
TRAPPED INSIDE A HOUSE
On a crisp autumn evening in 1980, seven-year-old Grant Moreton and his five-year-old sister Paige were nearly killed in a mysterious accident in the Cascade Mountains that left them orphans.
WITH A FRIGHTENING POWER
It’s been thirty years since that night. Grant is now a detective with the Seattle Police Department and long estranged from his sister. But his investigation into the bloody past of a high-class prostitute has led right to Paige’s door, and what awaits inside is beyond his wildest imagining.
OVER ANYONE WHO ENTERS
His only hope of survival and saving his sister will be to confront the terror that inhabits its walls, but he is completely unprepared to face the truth of what haunts his sister’s brownstone.
You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.—C.S. Lewis
OCTOBER 1980
“How much longer, Daddy?” Grant Moreton asks from the backseat of the ‘74 Impala. The boy catches a glimpse of his father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They aren’t angry or even stern. Just tired and sad—the way they’ve looked for the past year.
“We’re five minutes closer than the last time you asked. Do you remember how long I said it would be then?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“That’s right. So what’s twenty minus five?”
Grant glances over at the girl with braided pigtails sitting beside him. He is two years older than Paige, but his five-almost-six-year-old sister already understands math in a way he never will.
“What is it?” he whispers. “What’s the answer?”
“No cheating,” their father says. “Your sister helps out too much with your homework as it is.”
Grant stares through the window as he tries to calculate the answer. There are mountains out there, but nothing to see at this time of night beyond the occasional glint of light from a distant house or a passing car.
On the radio: game six of the World Series. The Phillies are on the brink of beating the Kansas City Royals and the roar of the crowd comes like white noise through the speakers.
Grant feels a thump on the side of his leg. He looks over. Paige leans in, whispers, “It’s fifteen.”
He glances at the rearview to make sure their father hasn’t noticed this treason.
“Fifteen,” he says.
“You sure about that?”
Grant shoots her a sidelong look.
She responds with an almost imperceptible nod.
“I’m sure.”
“That’s right. Nice job, Paige.”
Grant flushes with embarrassment, but in the mirror, his father’s eyes are gentle.
“No worries, kiddo. That’s what sisters are for.”
Jim Moreton rolls down his window and flicks his cigarette outside. Grant glances back, watches it hit the pavement in a spray of sparks.
A sharp chilled blast of Douglas-fir fills the car.
They ride on in silence listening to the game.
Through the windshield, the road ahead of them winds, steadily climbing, the double yellow emerging out of nothing into the burn of the headlights.
The boy rests his head against the window. He shuts his eyes and retrieves the square of fabric from his pocket. Brings it to his nose. Breathes in the smell of his mother’s nightgown. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pull the scene together, the way it should be—her in the passenger seat, his father’s arm stretched across the back of her headrest. Grant is having a harder time picturing her face lately without help from a photograph, but the timbre of her voice retains sharper and truer than ever. If she were in the car right now, she’d be talking over the game. Playfully arguing with Jim about the volume of the radio, how fast he was driving, the graceless way he slingshots the car through each hairpin turn. Grant opens his eyes, and even though he knows she won’t be there, the shock of the empty seat still registers.
Just fifteen minutes until we’re there.
More than a year has passed since their last visit to the cabin, and so much changed it’s like the memory belongs to someone else. They had driven up into the Cascades in the middle of summer. Their family place backed up to a small pond that stayed cold even through July. They’d stayed a month there. Days fishing and swimming. Hide-and-seek in the groves of hemlock that surrounded the property. The cold nights spent reading and playing games by the fireplace. It had been his and Paige’s job every afternoon to gather sticks and fir cones to use as kindling.
Everything about that summer is so clear in his mind. Everything except for the little boy, because he had a mother and Grant doesn’t and it hurts to remember.
“All right, here we go,” Jim Moreton says, turning up the volume on the radio, the crowd-roar swelling. “Bases loaded. Come on, Phillies. Willie’s got nothin’.”
Grant has no idea who his father is talking about, just knows that he’s done little else but watch baseball this last, awful year.
“My ears hurt, Dad,” he says.
“Mine too,” Paige echoes.
Grant’s father opens the center console and fishes through its contents until he finds an old pack of spearmint gum.