Read The Haunting at Grays Harbor (The River Book 8) for Free Online

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ten or fifteen minutes more to get the girls ready to go anyway. And if White
doesn’t like it, too bad!” She walked back into Georgina’s bedroom.
    “I like her,” Roy said.
    “That’s because she’s a lot like you,” Steven said, ascending
the steps. Roy followed him. Once Steven reached the top, he searched for the
light and found it, pulling on a string. This time he had no choice but to
hunch over.
    “Oh, tiny,” Roy said as he entered the attic. “Where did you
see it?”
    “Well, I didn’t exactly see it,” Steven answered, grabbing
one of the boxes stacked against the knee wall and moving it to the other side
of the room. “But I thought I sensed it. Behind here.”
    Roy helped him move boxes, and after a minute they’d cleared
the space in front of the knee wall. Steven saw finger pulls.
    “Sliding doors,” Roy observed. “Probably so you could use the
space behind the knee wall for more storage.”
    Steven placed his finger into one of the holes and pulled the
panel back.
    “Jesus Christ!” Roy said. “What the fuck is that?”
    Steven looked into the open space and felt the same reaction. What is that? he wondered.
    It looked like a rod – roughly twice as wide as a soda can,
and three times as long. It hung in the air, two feet off the floor of the
attic. There was some kind of thin wire coiled around the outside of it,
suspended over the rod.
    Steven decided to drop into the River, and realized Roy was
already there. He’s always one step ahead of me, Steven thought, even
when it seems like he isn’t.
    In the River the core of the rod glowed blue, and produced a
sporadic pulse. The wire coil wrapped around the outside of the core turned
slowly along the length of the rod; a long, twisting spiral in motion. Steven
was mesmerized by how unusual it looked. He noticed that in a couple of places
the coil appeared broken, and its ends occasionally scraped against the blue
core, producing a line of bright red on the surface of the rod and an
occasional spark.
    What is it? Steven asked.
    I have no idea, Roy replied.
     
    ◊
     
    “I’ve dealt with these things many times before,” Sam White
said, his face slowly turning red as he flipped through images on an iPad in
his hands. “The best thing you can all do is leave the house and let us get on…
”
    “You didn’t even know it was there!” Roy interrupted. “You
don’t know anything about it!”
    “Gentlemen!” Barbara said, holding up her hands between Roy
and Sam. “Please! Roy, what do you think it is? Is it responsible for what’s
going on here?”
    “Very likely,” he replied. “But we don’t know why it’s here.
We need to find that out.”
    “Why isn’t relevant,” Sam said, turning his iPad around to
show Barbara the pictures he had pulled up. “It’s a rod. It’s likely only part
of the problem. The house is possessed, and rods are a common manifestation in
these cases.”
    “If they’re common, how come I’ve never seen one before?” Roy
said.
    “If you haven’t seen one before, I doubt you’ll be very
effective in dealing with it,” Sam shot back.
    “You’re a jackass, you know that?” Roy sneered at Sam.
    “Stop!” Barbara said. “Roy, if that thing upstairs is what’s
causing the problem, do you know how to stop it? What to do with it?”
    “No, not yet,” he replied. “I’d need some time to figure it
out. Understand what it’s doing and how it’s doing it.”
    “And you, Mr. White?” she turned to Sam.
    “It’s just a rod,” Sam replied. “Common. It’ll be eliminated
by the pulses we’re going to send through the house. It’s worked many times
before.”
    “Pulses?” Steven asked, stepping in. “How are pulses going to
eliminate that thing? It looks damaged as it is; how do you know you won’t just
damage it further?”
    “I intend to damage it right into oblivion!” Sam replied, his
face fully flush. “I’ve met types like you and your father.