Read The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession for Free Online

dare shine the light that way? He let out a quavery breath. Who would lie in wait in a pantry? Buck aimed the light that direction and turned it on.
    Just an unusual arrangement of boxes and cans. He doused the light and moved quietly to the door. Creeping through the kitchen into the dining room, the parlor, and then the front room, Buck held the flashlight in front of him as if it were on, but it served more like a blind man’s cane. As his eyes began adjusting to the darkness, he became aware of pinpoints of light from the street, and he still heard sirens in the distance.
    Later Buck would wonder whether he had smelled the blood before he heard it.
    Yes, heard it. He knew something was wrong as soon as he reached the front room.
    It was in the air. Heat? A presence? Someone. He stopped and tried to make out shapes. He felt his own heart, but something reached his ears more insistently even than that thumping. Dripping. Drip, drip, pause, drip-drip, drip. From two sources? Part of him didn’t want to know, to see. He turned his back to windows at the front, pointed the flashlight toward the sounds, and braced himself, ready to defend himself with bare hands and the flashlight, if necessary.
    He turned on the light but immediately shut his eyes to the horror. He dropped to his knees, the wind gushing from him. “Oh, God,” he prayed. “No! Please!” Was there no end to the carnage? He would rather die than find his friends, his comrades (someday his own family?) like this. In the split second he had allowed himself to take in the scene, it became clear that two victims sat side by side in wood chairs, Hannelore on the left, her mother on the right. They were bound and gagged, heads tilted back, blood dripping into pools on the floor. Buck did not want to reveal himself to anyone outside.
    Plainly, this scene was created to “welcome” someone home; certainly the perpetrators had no idea he would stumble upon it. Buck knelt before the chairs, repulsed by the sound of the drips. He knew if either of the women had survived, their respiration would have been noisy with their heads in that position.
    Still, he had to make sure. He lodged the flashlight between his knees, angled it toward the women, and turned it on. As he reached to check for Hannelore’s pulse, the flashlight slipped and illumined her ankles, tied securely to the front legs of the chair. As he angled the light up again and tightened his knees to support it, he noticed her wrists tied behind her. A smallish woman, Hannelore’s torso was stretched to allow her hands to go around the back of the chair. Great gushes of air rushed past Buck’s gritted teeth.
    He grabbed the flashlight and moved behind the chair to feel her wrist, but that put his arm in line with the blood dripping from her head. And though her wrist was warm, as he feared, there was no pulse.
    Hannelore’s mother, less than a foot away, was bound in the same position. A squat, heavy woman, her arms had been yanked into contorted positions to allow her wrists to be tied. She too was dead.
    Who could have done this? And wouldn’t Stefan, his Middle East maleness coming to the fore, have fought to the death to prevent it? Where could he be? Buck wanted to pan the light back and forth along the floor toward the front, but that might have been suicidal, he would be so obvious from the street. It was all he could do to keep from calling Stefan’s name.
    Chaim had not been home when Buck had talked with Hannelore on the phone. Did this massacre mean Chaim had arrived, or that he hadn’t? Had Chaim himself been forced to witness this? Buck’s first task was to locate Stefan, his second to check the entirety of the huge house for Chaim. If Chaim had not returned and this was all meant as a warning for him, could the place be staked out, surrounded? Perhaps it was.
    Buck feared he would find not just Stefan’s body, but also Chaim’s. But how would Chaim have gotten there? Who might have