Read Autumn for Free Online Page B

the scraping tenor of its voice was the worst sound Arabel had ever heard. It sounded like it had come up from the darkest part of the spirit world and it echoed with a menacing timbre, deep as death and low and raspy.
                  It looked like an evil phantom and unlike any of the spectres Arabel had ever seen before. It smiled at her and the broken teeth were rotten and foul. The very flesh on the face of the man seemed to curl and morph into a slimy green mass.
                  Arabel screamed as it moved toward her, fingers outstretched, to curl against her pale throat.
                  Arabel’s bedroom door burst open and there stood Amelia Bodean. She graced the doorway, looking fierce in her long white nightgown, her hair wrapped tightly in rag curlers, a rolling pin in her hand and a glazed look of semi-drunkenness upon her countenance.
                  “What is going on in here?” Amelia Bodean demanded haughtily, wildly brandishing the rolling pin as a weapon.
                  The man shimmered and faded quickly, almost instantly. Arabel ran to her grandmother’s side.
                  “A nightmare,” Arabel lied quickly, removing the rolling pin from her grandmother’s unsteady hand.
                  “Loud enough to wake the dead!” Amelia Bodean complained, turning away. “Go back to sleep then and try not to keep the rest of us awake.”
                  Arabel closed the door quietly behind her grandmother’s retreating form. Never one to coddle her granddaughter, Arabel was used to her grandmother’s testy ways. Arabel knew the drinking didn’t help. It turned Amelia Bodean’s energy sour somehow and Arabel herself vowed she would stay away from rum for the rest of her life. Wine, a glass here and there Arabel quite enjoyed but she had never been intoxicated and she didn’t intend on starting now. Who knew what evil that might conjure? Arabel had enough trouble when she was sober; it seemed likely alcohol would only make things worse.
                  Sleep wouldn’t come, no matter how much Arabel tried to blank everything out. Shapes seemed to form in the dark, levitating up from the folded blankets on the chair, and Arabel’s draperies were billowing out wildly, like a gruesome scarecrow. Smoke rose in slick spirals to float amongst the cacophony of shoes that began to skate along the very air of the ceiling, dancing to their own inaudible beat.
                  Arabel shot up in bed.
                  I fell asleep after all, Arabel noted with relief, willing her heart to cease its frantic pounding. She lay back against the pillows, catching her breath. Maybe this time she’d sleep without any sort of nightmare.
                  Arabel was going to ask Eli to take her to see the Gypsies after dinner tomorrow so she needed her rest. It promised to be a long evening, and if she were honest with herself, Arabel had to admit she wanted to look her personal best.
                  Arabel started her nightly relaxation routine all over again. She relaxed her toes, wiggled her feet, and worked her way up, breathing…
                  Somehow the night finally passed and the darkness reluctantly gave way to the healing light of the sun. In the pale, early morning rays of dawn, Arabel peered at herself in the looking glass which sat upon her dresser. Her wide blue eyes scrutinized back with alarming intensity. Arabel’s thick, raven-black hair hung straight past her shoulders in a soft curtain. Her pale skin highlighted the rouge of her lips and the arches of her black eyebrows framed the beautiful oval of her face with precision. Arabel gazed at herself solemnly and wondered how she appeared to others.
                  There was so much illusion, rampant illusion, she knew, when it came to objectivity, subjectivity and