Shadowkiller by Wendy Corsi Staub Read Free Book Online

against her back, he said firmly into her ear, “It’s time to go home. It’s late. Mom’s going to wonder where you are, and I have to get on the road, remember?”
    â€œNot tonight, Daddy. Please. Can’t you stay tonight?”
    â€œNot tonight.”
    â€œ Da-addy! ” she whined.
    â€œ Diddle-Di-iddle! ” he whined right back. “I told you that before. Don’t you remember?”
    Remember . . . what was she supposed to remember?
    There was something . . . a memory swooped close enough to touch and then swung up and away, and she couldn’t catch it. She couldn’t . . .
    Or maybe you don’t want to.
    â€œCome on. If we go now, I can tuck you in and read you a quick story before I go. But no Mother Goose.”
    That was fine with her. All the nursery rhymes in that book were much too short.
    â€œHow about Tikki Tikki Tembo ?” she asked.
    â€œNope—that’s not a quick story!”
    That was the point. But it was just as well he didn’t want to read it to her again. The last time he read it, the book had given her nightmares about falling down a well—the one on their own property, which Daddy had once proudly told her had been hand-dug a hundred years ago by an early settler somewhere back in his family tree.
    There were tens of thousands of those old wells dotting the prairie, dug by homesteaders on their claims a hundred years ago, he told her.
    Theirs was covered by a heavy wooden lid. One day, as Daddy was taking a break from working outside to roll her around in the wheelbarrow, she asked him if they could look inside the well.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI want to see what it looks like.”
    â€œThere’s not much to see. I filled in most of it years ago,” he told her. “It’s the law. But it’s still pretty deep, so you stay away from it.”
    â€œHow deep?”
    â€œSix, maybe eight feet. See?” He held a flashlight and she leaned forward in the wheelbarrow and peered over the edge, breathing the dank smell of earth. There were worms, she remembered, and then a big shiny black spider crawled toward the opening, and she screamed and made him close it back up again.
    â€œThat was a black widow,” he told her. “They’re poisonous. You don’t want to get bit by one of those.”
    â€œWhat would happen? Would I die?”
    â€œYou might. At the very least, you’d have terrible pain, starting about a half hour after the bite, and your muscles would begin cramping as the venom enters the bloodstream and attacks the nervous system. After a few hours, if you didn’t get help, your blood pressure would go up and you’d have trouble breathing, probably convulsions—”
    â€œDaddy, stop! I don’t want to hear any more!” Why did he always have to give her such complicated responses to basic questions?
    â€œWhy not? I’m teaching you about black widows. They’re fascinating.”
    â€œI’m afraid of them.”
    â€œWell, you don’t have to worry about them at all if you don’t go near the well. They’re nocturnal creatures. They like it down there in the damp dark hollow. Make sure you stay away.”
    â€œDon’t worry. I will.”
    In the nightmare, she was walking along on a summer afternoon through the high grass in the open field way out behind the house. The cover must have been left off the well, and she was swallowed up and trapped there, alone in the dark with the big spider, lots of spiders . . .
    Her mother must have told her father that she’d been waking up screaming in the night, because the next time she saw him, he had a present for her.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked, trying to mask her disappointment. She’d been hinting that she wanted a new set of furniture for her Barbie house, and instead she got . . .
    Some kind of contraption made out of sticks,