Crooked House by Joe McKinney, Wayne Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

later, he started awake.
    Angela was a few feet from him, whimpering in her sleep.
    Groggily, he sat up and wiped a hand across his face . He licked his teeth and groaned. He should have brushed his teeth before going to sleep. His mouth felt gross. But when had he fallen asleep? He had no memory of drifting off, only of not being able to sleep. He sat up and looked around. The candles were out, that was good, and evidently the power came back on as well, for there was a dim glow coming from the entryway and kitchen, where they must have left the switches in the on position.
    Beside him, Angela made another noise . She wasn’t whimpering, he realized, but moaning in her sleep.
    He crawled over to her . Back when she was four or five, he’d go to her room to check on her before he went to bed and he’d sometimes find her bolt upright, terror-stricken, but still asleep. She’d mutter unintelligibly. She’d throw the covers off her legs. Once she’d even gotten out of bed and walked all around the room, clearly in distress, muttering something about snakes before he and Sarah had awakened her and finally been able to calm her down.
    What she was doing now didn’t look like one of those episodes . It wasn’t quite that bad. But she was clearly upset about something in her sleep, and so he did what he had done for her when she was younger and whispered as soothingly as he could in her ear, stroking the hair out of her face.
    “Easy,” he said . “Shhh, you’re okay. Go to sleep, baby.”
    When at last she seemed to be through it, he sat back down on his sleeping bag, running his fingers through his hair and wishing he could go back to sleep . That wasn’t going to happen, though. He could feel that now. And he had an early meeting too.
    Then, from somewhere behind him, he heard a noise, like a woman whispering , the words indistinct, but clearly a voice.
    He looked at Sarah, who was sleeping soundly on her own pillow.
    He waited, and when nothing happened, he put his head down.
    But then he heard it again, and sat up, his skin prickling, his ears straining against the silence of the house. When it came again he jumped to his feet. Was somebody in the house? It had been empty for nearly three years, like Thom had said, the only visitors Lightner’s housekeeping staff. Maybe one of them had decided to crash here for the night, or was living here without anybody knowing, or...Oh hell, he thought. Just go figure this out.
    In the hallway outside the library he heard the sound again . He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, just that it was coming from somewhere inside the house, and not too far off. Robert checked the conservatory, the kitchen, the breakfast room. Nothing. He went into the entryway, which was brightly lit now, and waited.
    This time, when the sound came again, he was certain it was coming from upstairs.
    He started up, trying to be quiet, listening carefully, but when he smelled smoke he broke into a run.
    At the top of the stairs he sniffed . He’d never had a keen sense of smell – and certainly not since smoking a pack a day back in college and early grad school, which had killed his sinuses – but he was certain the smell was coming from the east wing.
    S omebody smoking up here?
    That was it, wasn’t it ? Not only had some maid decided to squat in his house, but she was smoking in it too. The bitch.
    “Hey!” he yelled . “If there’s somebody up here you need to show yourself right now.”
    The itching had returned, and he could feel it needling at his back, his arms, his belly. He waited, chasing the itch up and down his arms, and when the whispering came again, his anger and his resolve melted. The sound was the same, breathy and feminine, but his reaction to it was different up here. Robert suddenly felt cold. His hands were numb. The whispering seemed ominous and dreadful. It filled up the silence of the house and everything around him felt absolutely still. Even the rain hitting