HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down by T. J. Brearton Read Free Book Online

whispered because her scream had not driven whatever, or whoever, it was away, and she was terrified.
    Jared said nothing, but stopped and tensed. Liz shut her mouth tight.
    On the porch, something thumped. It sounded like feet to Liz. Like bare feet. There was no mistaking that thump. The one thump, the whickering of something dragging over the wooden slats, then another thump. Like the labored walking of a barefoot intruder.
    Both the screen and storm doors were closed, but not locked. Something was working at the handle of the storm door; the pane of Plexiglas rattled, and the door appeared to be tugged at from the other side; its hinges were positioned so that it swung out, the screen door swung in. Now whatever was out there had managed to rotate the old thumb latch handle on the storm door and started to get it open.
    “Oh God,” said Liz.
    From her position in the doorway of the kitchen, within the vestibule where the stairs led up and where the living room began, Liz could just make out Jared’s Adam’s apple bob once in his neck as he swallowed. He loaded two shells into the shotgun, racked it, and then leveled it.
    The storm door inched open a little further, the hinges pealing a short squeal. Then, whatever it was lost its hold and the door sucked back shut.
    “Jared,” she called, soft and urgent. “Jared.”
    He was rooted where he stood, about six feet from the door, in the middle of the kitchen. The overhead light was on inside, the porch light off. She could see half of Jared’s reflection in the polarized glass, blurred by the screen door in front of it. Neither of them could see much beyond their own images, only that vague hump on the other side.
    She was about to suggest calling the police, or suggest going back upstairs and pretending none of it was happening; or going out the front door and running down to the pond, swimming away in the frigid water if they had to, out to where the loon was, out to where sanity lay. And freedom. She was about to say something like this when she heard the sound of the levered handle to the storm door depressed again, turning enough to disengage the latch, the door starting to jerk open once more.
    “What is it?”
    Who is it ?
    It’s Christopher, it’s just him, he’s come back and he’s confused or maybe . . .
    Maybe Christopher had been hurt — maybe whatever was going on with him when he stood in the kitchen was still going on, and he was lying there on the porch and trying to get in, unable to call out, unable to ask for help.
    Like an automaton, Elizabeth started across the kitchen, her soft-soled boots moving her quietly and swiftly. Her hand came up to open the screen door but Jared’s arm shot out and stopped her, catching her and blocking her at the upper thighs. He pushed her back, hard enough to make her lose her balance and stumble back a step. The door, still stuttering open, stopped moving, about a foot ajar, and she thought she could see something through the screen mesh, down low, and it looked like skin. Like human skin. Not animal.
    Jared was going to shoot someone. He was going to shoot Christopher, she was suddenly and brightly sure of it.
    “Jared,” she breathed in alarm. “I think it’s someone. I think it’s—”
    Jared’s hand scrabbled at the air before finding purchase on her left thigh, where it once again gripped and squeezed and then shoved. This shove forced her back again, but this time she toppled over.
    “Ow!” she cried out, her rear hitting the floor, and at the same time the storm door heaved open the rest of the way.
    Jared fell back on his ass and started to scramble backwards across the linoleum. He still had his boots on, and the rubber soles squeaked as he pushed. It was, after all, a freshly washed marvel of a kitchen floor.
    Elizabeth realized that whatever, or whoever, was on the porch had still not been scared off. Instead, Elizabeth saw with a distinctly muscle-mushing horror, it was trying to look