Read The Haunted Heart: Winter for Free Online Page B

treat
myself to that kind of thing anymore. I had no time for
self-indulgence.
    Maybe I had more in common with old Winston
than I thought, because he hadn’t gone in for self-indulgence
either. There were canned goods in his cupboards older than me, and
if he’d bought a new set of sheets or towels in the last decade,
they were safely hidden in a hope chest somewhere. No, if I really
wanted to do myself a favor, I’d see if I could find a hot water
bottle in that crowded, airless linen cupboard. The house was
bitterly cold at night even when it hadn’t been snowing off and on
all day.
    Somehow I couldn’t get up enthusiasm for the
hot water bottle hunt, though, and instead I went into the drafty
little bathroom where, for the last forty years, Uncle Winston had
shaved his whiskers, brushed his teeth, and watched his face grow
older and older and older. I shivered. It was even colder in here.
As frigid as though I’d left the window over the toilet standing
open. I flicked the wall switch and one of the two bulbs overhead
popped, leaving the small room bathed in a gray, dingy light.
    “Great,” I muttered. But maybe it was an
improvement. In the poor light it wasn’t as easy to see how badly
the bathtub needed cleaning. The bathtub, the toilet, the fixtures,
the mirror, me...
    Yeah, even discounting the corpselike tint
cast by the overhead light, I really did look terrible. I needed a
bath, a shave, a couple of nights’ sleep, and something to eat that
didn’t have the words “Fun Size” on the label. I needed to pull
myself together.
    Or I could just turn the gas on that antique
stove in the kitchen up full blast and go to bed.
    “Dirty pool,” I chided myself, and popped
open the medicine cabinet. I’d run out of toothpaste two days ago,
but Uncle Winston had a lifetime supply of toothpowder that tasted
like a mix of dust and peppermint. Of course I could always amble
downstairs and ask to borrow Kirk’s. I pictured his reaction to yet
another unannounced visit from yours truly, and sniggered.
    Kirk. What was his story anyway? What was he
doing living out in this run down and nearly deserted part of town?
Talk about Off-Broadway. Why would anyone — anyone normal — choose
to rent rooms from an eccentric old man in a death trap of an old
house? Okay, the rent was ultra affordable. Even so.
    Maybe his plays were so bad he had to hide
out from the critics.
    I shook some powder in my cupped palm,
turned the taps on, and after a death rattle, icy water spurted
out. I uncapped my toothbrush, the only genuinely clean thing in
the room — maybe even the entire upstairs — and dipped the brush in
the white-ish powder. Leaning against the sink, I gave my teeth a
long, thoughtful sweeping.
    Maybe I would sleep that night. All
at once I was so tired I could barely stay on my feet. I scooped
the frigid water up, swished it around my mouth, spat it out,
splashed more cold water on my face for good measure, recapped my
toothbrush, and replaced the powder in the cabinet. I swung the
mirrored door shut.
    I yelped and stumbled back from the sink. I
wiped my eyes with my wet hand, peered through wet lashes.
    “No way,” I protested.
    The surface of the mirror was nearly black,
and rising through the inky blackness was an image. A face. No, not
a face, exactly, more like a diluted and wavering reflection on
water, or features seen through a mist. A miasma in this case,
because those black and burning eyes and bared teeth belonged to
something diseased, not sane, barely human.
    “No, no, no .” It couldn’t be
happening again. This time it had to be a nightmare.
    The hazy image began to solidify, take
form.
     
    Kirk’s door flew open on the third knock.
Okay, given the speed with which I was hammering his door, it was
more like the thirtieth knock, but that had to do with how fast I was moving, not how fast he was moving.
    “I’m going to kill you,” he announced, “and
no jury in the world will convict