Read SHUDDERVILLE TWO for Free Online Page B

and squeezed, and she stared at me with terrible eyes. She understood me just then, the real me. The man I’d been hiding from her. I rocked back on the balls of my feet and felt everything, pain and sorrow and regret and excitement and fear.
    And then I squeezed the life out of her.
    I felt it happening right under my fingertips—her life draining away.
    I lowered her body to the ground, and a nostalgic thought entered my head, like raindrops spattering against a windshield.
    I shook it off. I had to be cold and empty tonight.
    *
    I stashed the body in the woodshed, clapped the dirt off my hands and went back inside the house. “Kids?” I hollered.
    Not a peep.
    I moved swiftly upstairs to my room and got out my hunting knife, along with a roll of duct tape and some rope. “Olive? Andy? Where are you?” I hollered.
    Nothing.
    I stepped out into the hallway where the moonlight cast deceptive shadows. I didn’t see the blow coming. I never heard anyone creep up behind me. It felt as if I’d been struck by lightning on the back of my head, and the whole world came crashing down.
    *
    I woke up with my face mashed against the floor and strings of saliva dangling from my mouth. Olive was walking in circles around me, her bare feet leaving sweaty footprints on the wood. The muscles of my face constricted as I tried to pull my shoulders together and sit up, but the pain was too great. The pain was astonishing.
    “Andy! He’s moving,” Olive hissed, standing very still.
    “Want me to hit him again, Olive?” Andy said.
    “No. Wait.”
    “Hey, mister?” Now Andy was poking me in the back with the blade of the shovel. “Is he dead yet, Olive? Is he?”
    “Stop it, Andy. Don’t poke him like that.”
    “Is he dead?”
    “Don’t touch him. He’s a bad man.”
    “Really? A bad guy, Olive?” He sounded excited. “One of the bad guys, you mean? Those guys?”
    “Stop it, Andy! Quit poking him.”
    I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move. I tried to sit up, but there was duct tape wrapped around my arms and legs, binding them together, and rope twisted and knotted around my body. Andy shoved me with the heel of his boot, and I rolled over onto my back and gazed up at the pair of them. The moon threw a slab of light into the hallway. My thoughts moved like molasses through my mind.
    Leaning over, Olive examined me intensely, the way you might examine a bug you were about to pull apart. “Where’s Mommy?” she demanded to know.
    The boy knelt down beside his sister. “Still breathing. Should I hit him?”
    “No,” Olive said. “Where’s Mommy, Clarence? What did you do to her?”
    “You’re a bad guy, aren’t you?” Andy said, shaking his finger in my face. “Isn’t he, Olive? He’s one of the bad guys, huh?”
    I tried to fight them. I tried to scream, but nothing came out of my mouth. I tried to grab hold of them but could only wiggle my fingers between the knotted ropes. I tried to roll over onto my side, but the pain returned like a freight train and flattened me.
    Now I heard footsteps on the stairs.
    I craned my neck to see who it was.
    “Go ahead, Andy,” Delilah said, bruised and disheveled but alive. “Hit him. Go ahead and hit him, honey. Now.”
    The boy raised the shovel, and the blow felt like a car wreck.
    *
    When I came to again, they were tugging and pulling my body up the attic stairs.
    “He’s too heavy.”
    I was upside down, and the feeling of vertigo was strong. Andy and Olive were ahead of me on the stairs, and Delilah was down behind me.
    The little girl paused to study the situation. She grabbed one of my feet and tugged with all her might, but they could only drag me up the stairs a few inches at a time. I stared at Delilah and she stared back. My throat was packed with foam and drool. I tried to speak with choked words. “What the hell are you doing?”
    The widow squatted down beside me and said, “You’re a liar.”
    As if that was the worst of my sins.
    Delilah told Andy,