SHUDDERVILLE FIVE by Mia Zabrisky Read Free Book Online Page A

it growl and spit. Watching it suffer.
    “What’s wrong with it?” his wife cried. “What is it, Toby?”
    “Shh. Lie down and close your eyes.”
    She stared at him. She was so pale. “I love you,” she rasped before collapsing back against her pillow.
    “Close your eyes, sweetie,” he told her. “This will be over soon.”
    He went over to the thing, and tried to think of a reason not to kill it. Any reason at all. The creature was writhing around in a pool of its own vomit, hissing and choking for breath. It could see him. It understood what was happening—Tobias was sure of this. There was a spooky intelligence in those strange yellow eyes. He was going to murder his own son. He bent down and held out his hand, hoping one last time that none of this was true. Perhaps a mistake? Perhaps a dream? Maybe it wasn’t actually happening? Maybe something could change his mind?
    The creature lunged for his finger and snapped its jaws. It had ragged little teeth. Bloody mouth. Veined yellow eyes. Unlike any baby he’d ever seen. Real babies didn’t look that way. They didn’t act like this.
    He jumped to his feet and swung the axe. It only took one blow. He sliced the thing in half, and it was over. The creature was dead.
    *
    August 17, 1966—Hope Hollow
    The sky at dawn was platinum. The sun’s rays flattened her most ambitious intentions. Charlotte instinctively hid from the daylight. She huddled inside the house she had bought with the money she’d squirreled away, along with the inheritance from her grandmother. She was curled in a fetal position on the floor. Inhaling a resin-and-pine-needles smell. Sticky. Gummy. Nothing was more disturbing than the invisible crawl of insight—revelation upon revelation. Whatever her husband had been doing all those years was inside of her now. Pumping through her veins. Perhaps it was better not to know. Better to ignore the things she could not help. She had been lied to. Deceived. And now here she was. Alone.
    It felt as if a door had been pulled shut. The world had become fuzzy. There was a slow blurring of reality, a gradual distancing and diminishment. She looked at her own slender hands, at the dimming away of herself.
    She was not human anymore. Could it possibly be true?
    Twins, the doctor had said. Two girls.
    She was overcome with grief. She sobbed so hard she wondered who was making all that noise. Her stomach was in free-fall. She dreaded the end of the day, when the sky bled red, and twilight descended, and the stars came out. She looked out one of the curtainless windows and spotted the first star of the evening and made a fervent wish—please make me human again.
    Why did she think she was no longer human?
    Because she knew. She just knew.
    Whatever her husband had been doing had gotten into her. Through the children.
    Her body was no longer hers.
    The children were his—despite all the vicious things he’d accused her of.
    These children were his. And he had done this to her.
    “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she whispered in the dark.
    She got off the floor and brushed herself off. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Five months pregnant and out to here. Time to start thinking like a mother. Time to grow up. She had to be an adult now. She needed to fix up the house. She had to get ready for the babies.
    Twins.
    Her husband would never find her. She’d erased her identity. She was Delilah Kincaid now. She lived on 32 Welcome Street. He would never look for her in Hope Hollow. She could start over. And her children would be safe.

 
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