Read SHUDDERVILLE TWO for Free Online Page A

with someone. And you seem like a good person to me, and so I want to tell you everything. Everything.” She shook her head sadly. Her eyes were receptive and warm. “But I can’t.”
    “You can trust me.”
    She began to tremble. She fumbled for her cigarettes, and I lit one for her.
    She shuddered and said, “He disappeared when the girls were three years old. I don’t know where he went.” She spoke the way a feather settled. She gave off a faint, earthy aroma. She reminded me of something worn and polished and smooth and old as dirt. As if she’d been around forever. I moved swiftly toward her, took her in my arms and kissed her.
    “Not here,” she said fearfully, looking back at the house.
    We went up to the top of the hill and made love in the wild clover on the edge of the woods. We were quick about it, like kids. Like fumbling teenagers. She giggled and laughed. It was the first time I’d heard Delilah laugh with her head thrown back. Deep laughter.
    She grew warm and softened toward me. She opened toward me. I could smell the warmth emanating from her body. I wanted to keep her. I suddenly realized what had been eluding me all my life. Stupid, I know.
    We sat together in the tall grass and smoked cigarettes. Her eyes were like the wet centers of something. She smoothed back her hair, adjusted her clothes, found her shoes in the grass and put them on. “I should go. The kids will be worried.” Her shoes were small and black and made of soft-looking leather.
    *
    That afternoon, I sat inside my room, tempted to go up to the attic and slash the straps and release Isabelle into the sky. Let her float away like a balloon. Maybe she belonged in the upper stratosphere? Would that put me on the side of the angels? If I released her from her suffering and torment? Would God forgive me then?
    *
    That night, after an awful dinner of pork and beans, a truly ghastly meal, I went outside to have a smoke and watch the light bleed out of the sky. After doing the dishes and sending the kids upstairs to bed, Delilah came out and joined me. She took one of my cigarettes, and I lit it for her, and we stood in the twilight, listening to a multitude of insects.
    “I know all about the attic,” I told her. “I’ve met Isabelle.”
    She stared at me in shock. “I told you not to go up there!”
    “Well, I did. So deal with it.”
    She looked exhausted. She seemed so worn-down and beaten up, it was as if she didn’t care anymore. “She can read people’s souls, and she suffers for it. She suffers every day. I can’t watch my little girl suffering anymore.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Olive has a gift, too. Different than Isabelle’s, but just as powerful.”
    “What kind of a gift?”
    “She knows things that ten-year-old girls can’t possibly know. She and Isabelle are very special. They can communicate inside their heads. They don’t need language. They speak in pictures. I’ve been dealing with this for a long time, hiding it from the world.” She drew a trembling hand to her mouth. “Awful things have happened. Terrible things.”
    “What kinds of things?”
    She shook her head and shivered. She wiped away the burning tears. “I think you should go. Leave. Hurry. It’s not good for you to be here. With me. Maybe this was a mistake? Another mistake. I’m very good at making mistakes.”
    “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Delilah.”
    She hurried down the hill, and I ran after her.
    I grabbed her. “What do you mean, another mistake? How many other guys have there been? How many boarders?”
    She was weak and afraid. “Forget it.” She tried to push me away, but I grabbed her around the waist. “Let go of me!”
    But I wouldn’t let go.
    “Let me go,” she insisted.
    But I pulled me toward her and pawed at her clothes. I felt a desperate neediness that was foreign to me. This place, these people, had changed me.
    She screamed and clawed at my face. I grabbed her by the throat