Halloween by Curtis Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

usual: sex and drugs," she laughed, knowing he wouldn't take her seriously.
    "Thank goodness," he said. "I was worried you were O.D.-ing on English lit and political science.''
    "No danger of that," she retorted. "My parents brought me up to be a straight and decent kid."
    They walked together to his car, a black sedan with "Strode Real Estate" emblazoned in bold red and white on the door. It never failed to embarrass her, this advertisement glaring at people wherever they drove. Maybe things like this were done in Cleveland or Chicago or St. Louis, but in a small town like Haddonfield most people kept a low profile. Oh well, it brought daddy business, and (as her father was fond of pointing out) business meant food and clothes and a college education. So she couldn't really complain.
    They stood beside the car for a moment until her father managed to slide the proper key off his ring, which had so many keys on it (he called it his occupational affliction) he looked like a jailer. Handing a simple brass key to her, he said, "Now don't forget to drop this off at the Myers place."
    "I won't," she said. She decided to keep it in her hand instead of dropping it into her book bag, where it would be "out of sight, out of mind."
    "They're coming by to see the house at ten-thirty. Be sure you leave it under the mat."
    "I promise."
    She started to walk away.
    "Haven't you forgotten something?" he called after her. He stood by the car, head tilted, exposing his freshly shaved cheek.
    Laurie walked back and put her lips hastily to his cheek, hoping none of her girl friends was watching, then feeling guilty immediately afterward. Why should a girl be embarrassed about kissing her own father, for crying out loud?
    She sat out down Oak Street, rolling slightly from side to side with the weight of her books—the famous Laurie Waddle. In her right hand the key to the Myers house seemed to tingle, and suddenly she found herself thinking about the house. It was the one property her father handled that he was ashamed to speak of, and his relief at unloading it for once far outweighed his profit motive. For this was the house in which a seventeen-year-old girl had been brutally slain by her little brother fifteen years ago.
    The Myerses had moved away a few months after the tragedy. The grief, shame, and harassment by the press and gawking neighbors and passersby had made their lives in Haddonfield intolerable. From somewhere in Indiana they continued to pay their mortgage loan and taxes, which, as Laurie's father had often said, was a terrible double burden. Not only could they not find a buyer all those years, but they had to bear the emotional burden every time they wrote out a check to support the unsaleable house.
    Chester Strode had used every trick in his prodigious salesman's bag to sell The White Turkey, as he'd come to call it. But as soon as prospective buyers heard about the events of October 31, 1963, from neighbors all too eager to tell them, their superstition invariably got the best of them and it was good-bye sale. Mr. Strode couldn't even persuade customers to buy the property for the value of the land. "Buy it and raze the house, if that's the way you feel," he would tell them. But the property was tainted, and no one went for the bait.
    Thank God for the New York couple who thought the house was just what they were looking for, and who were too sophisticated to believe the nonsense the neighbors prattled about. In fact, the New York couple actually thought the idea of a haunted house was charming, something they could boast about. So Mr. Strode gave the New Yorkers something else they could boast about—a price so ridiculous, it was (to use his patented phrase) "lower than a song."
    Laurie wondered what it must have been like that night for the Myers girl, seeing her tiny brother coming at her with that enormous butcher knife. Imagine a blade that long going into her stomach, her breasts, her . . . even her . . . ! It was