Night Shift by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

understandable reason.
    â€œMr. Boone,” said she, offering a half-curtsey. “If you've come about washing, I take none in past September. My rheumatiz pains me so that it's trouble enough to do my own.”
    â€œI wish laundry
was
the subject of my visit. I've come for help, Mrs. Cloris. I must know all you can tell me about Chapelwaite and Jerusalem's Lot and why the townfolk regard me with such fear and suspicion!”
    â€œJerusalem's Lot! You know about
that,
then.”
    â€œYes,” I replied, “and visited it with my companion a week ago.”
    â€œGod!” She went pale as milk, and tottered. I put out a hand to steady her. Her eyes rolled horribly, and for a moment I was sure she would swoon.
    â€œMrs. Cloris, I am sorry if I have said anything to—”
    â€œCome inside,” she said. “You must know. Sweet Jesu, the evil days have come again!”
    She would not speak more until she had brewed strong tea in her sunshiny kitchen. When it was before us, she looked pensively out at the ocean for a time. Inevitably, her eyes and mine were drawn to the jutting brow of Chapelwaite Head, where the house looked out over the water. The large bay window glittered in the rays of the westering sun like a diamond. The view was beautiful but strangely disturbing. She suddenly turned to me and declared vehemently:
    â€œMr. Boone, you must leave Chapelwaite immediately!”
    I was flabbergasted.
    â€œThere has been an evil breath in the air since you took up residence. In the last week—since you set foot in the accursed place—there have been omens and portents. A caul over the face of the moon; flocks of whippoorwills which roost in the cemeteries; an unnatural birth. You
must
leave!”
    When I found my tongue, I spoke as gently as I could. “Mrs. Cloris, these things are dreams. You must know that.”
    â€œIs it a dream that Barbara Brown gave birth to a child with no eyes? Or that Clifton Brockett found a flat, pressed trail five feet wide in the woods beyond Chapelwaite
where all had withered and gone white?
And can you, who have visited Jerusalem's Lot, say with truth that nothing still lives there?”
    I could not answer; the scene in that hideous church sprang before my eyes.
    She clamped her gnarled hands together in an effort to calm herself. “I know of these things only from my mother and her mother before her. Do you know the history of your family as it applies to Chapelwaite?”
    â€œVaguely,” I said. “The house has been the home of Philip Boone's line since the 1780s; his brother Robert, my grandfather, located in Massachusetts after an argument over stolen papers. Of Philip's side I know little, except that an unhappy shadow fell over it, extending from father to son to grand-children—Marcella died in a tragic accident and Stephen fell to his death. It was his wish that Chapelwaite become the home of me and mine, and that the family rift thus be mended.”
    â€œNever to be mended,” she whispered. “You know nothing of the original quarrel?”
    â€œRobert Boone was discovered rifling his brother's desk.”
    â€œPhilip Boone was mad,” she said. “A man who trafficked with the unholy. The thing which Robert Boone
attempted
to remove was a profane Bible writ in the old tongues—Latin, Druidic, others. A hell-book.”
    â€œDe Vermis Mysteriis.”
    She recoiled as if struck. “You know of it?”
    â€œI have seen it . . . touched it.” It seemed again she might swoon. A hand went to her mouth as if to stifle an outcry. “Yes; in Jerusalem's Lot. On the pulpit of a corrupt and desecrated church.”
    â€œStill there; still there, then.” She rocked in her chair. “I had hoped God in His wisdom had cast it into the pit of hell.”
    â€œWhat relation had Philip Boone to Jerusalem's Lot?”
    â€œBlood relation,” she said darkly. “The