A Festival of Murder by Tricia Hendricks Read Free Book Online

contaminating
them all. “It was great hanging out here and finally meeting you.”
    Nicholas
walked him to the door without comment.
    Dennis
slipped out the front, pausing to give Nicholas a two-finger salute. “See you
later, Mr. Trilby. Thanks again!”
    Nicholas
watched him forgo the new path leading to Nicholas’s Subaru to hop across the
knee-deep snow in the yard with the grace of a mountain goat. Dennis was no
stranger to snow.
    Nicholas
shut the door, distracted by snippets of the conversation he’d had with the
younger man. Dennis wasn’t the first to pepper him with questions about his
abduction, but it had been months since Nicholas had discussed it as much as he
just had. The old scars felt inflamed.
    When
the feelings of discomfort grew, he gravitated to his bedroom, specifically to
his closet. Inside, his coats were spaced precisely on the rod, but not too
precisely. He wasn’t a control freak, after all. Nor did he have OCD just
because he hung up his jeans. He simply didn’t have a dresser in which to store
them, and he hated ironing out the wrinkles that tended to form in the denim
when they were folded. Socks were stored in a hanging caddy made expressly for
that purpose, and which was very handy when he wanted to match colors with the
different hues of his jeans. Naturally, his Christmas sweaters were stacked—
four sweaters to each pile, the exception being stacks of six for the cashmere
ones which were thinner. All in all, a very typical, normal closet. He made a
mental note to dust inside here the next time he cleaned.
    From
beneath a Rudolph sweater with a battery-powered light-up nose he extracted a
photo album. A chill shimmied through him as he carefully grasped the cover and
opened it.
    The
pages didn’t hold a single photograph. Instead they clasped numerous newspaper
and magazine clippings between their pages. With the tip of a finger he peeled
back the pages, revealing article after article. Some were accompanied by
photos of him looking somber, while other photos showed him wearing a
bewildered expression, as if he’d just been dropped off in a foreign country
with nothing in his possession but two quarters and a penlight.
    The
headlines were all variations on a theme: “Man Abducted by Aliens from Colorado
Rockies! ” Some articles adopted a skeptical tone. Some, depending on
their agenda, were sensational. Others were hopeful. There was even an article
that attempted to tie his abduction to his consumption of pork. All of them
told him what he wanted to know: the details of the abduction he’d forgotten a
week after it had occurred.
    He
supposed there was a logical explanation for his memory loss. Most likely it
was stress-induced amnesia. In the articles, he’d told his story over and over
again, dozens of times, never deviating in the details no matter how often the
reporters tried to catch him in a contradiction. Always the same story of being
kidnapped from his home and being woken up in the yard an interminable length
of time later by Winchester, who’d been nosing the back of his neck. That kind
of repetition would make anyone crack.
    He’d
lied to Dennis about possessing physical scars. That made for a good story, but,
in truth, Nicholas hadn’t found a single mark on his body, nor any evidence
that something had been implanted inside him (and what a search that had
been). No, the scars were all mental.
    A
chill flowed over his skin, making him shiver.
    “Much
better to have forgotten,” he murmured to himself.
    He
wasn’t often haunted by nightmares, and his waking hours weren’t cluttered with
daydreams of bug-eyed aliens. But things still clung to him—his fear of the
dark and, more worrying, the occasional memory blackout.
    He
turned with the album to replace it on the shelf. A figure stood in the doorway
of the closet.
    Nicholas
screamed.
    “Aw,
geez, sorry, Mr. Trilby.” Dennis held up both hands. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “You—you.”
Nicholas