Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

knew, because throwing that out was too frightening.
    I sank onto the antique trunk next to the wall. “Oh.” I forced myself to voice what I thought she was thinking. “For something to get in here, it would have to be stronger than Aunt Hyacinth.”
    She nodded, dispelling the hope I’d been wrong. “Aunt Hy and all the aunts who help renew the spells every year.”
    I felt sick. That was a lot of Goodnights, all combined. Thanksgiving filled the farmhouse to bursting. Hot queasiness warred with the chill of fear on my skin, and I shivered, wrapping my arms tight around myself. “Do you see my jacket?”
    Phin took the inane question in stride, scanning the room, where my belongings had been flung to kingdom come by the supernatural tornado. “Did the ghost do all this?”
    “No.” I shook my head and ordered my thoughts. “That is, not the first one. First was the figure I told you about—”
    “An actual apparition?” she asked. “Not just an orb or a column?”
    “Yes.” This inquisition was more like normal, unconquerable Phin, and it shored up my nerves, made me think I might be normal, unconquerable Amy again soon. “Sort of light and shadow, but definitely a human shape.”
    “Full body or torso?”
    “Full body. Or, at least, I think so. The footboard was in the way, so I really didn’t see.” I shivered again, the phantom of memory prickling my skin and tightening my chest. “It was so cold. I couldn’t breathe.”
    Phin walked to the end of the bed and extended a hand as if testing a breeze. “There’s not much of a chill left.”
    “The wind blew it away.” Watching her pace like SherlockHolmes in mismatched pajamas had a perversely settling effect on me, too, and I considered the differences between the two events—the specter and the gale. “That’s why I think there were two ghosts. The second was invisible, just this
force
that slammed open the door and drove back the horrible cold.”
    And there was Lila, who had barked as if she recognized something in it. Or someone. “I think that might have been Uncle Burt,” I said. “Or maybe a combination of the protection magic plus him. I don’t know.”
    I spotted my jacket hanging from a light fixture and stood to get it, relieved my knees held me up. Then, unable to look at the mess anymore, I reached to straighten a potted plant that had toppled, its soil spilled out onto the floor. “I should probably try to call Aunt Hyacinth—”
    “Don’t touch that!”
    The piano wire of my nerves sent me nearly to the ceiling. I snatched back my hand and whirled toward Phin, but she’d already dashed from the room. Two of the dogs went with her.
    Should I follow? Was something going to blow up? The dogs seemed calm. That should have been a good sign, but alone again in the room, I felt my dread come crawling back up from the place where I’d pushed it.
    The problem was, in all my acquaintance with Uncle Burt, I’d only seen him nudge things, turn lights on and off, and rock in his favorite chair. The scale of destruction in my room forced me to wonder, if it had been him, what awful thing had motivated such violence.
    I took the Goodnight oddities—herbs, crystals, potions,ghosts, even Phin’s paranormal chemistry set—for granted. Magical hair products and Uncle Burt hanging around his beloved wife, those were familiar and
natural
in a way even I could sense. This cold, desperate thing was an unknown, and when it reached for me, what I felt—the terrifying, visceral pull that robbed my breath and my body heat—was … 
un
natural. It was out of joint, distorting the order of both worlds, normal and paranormal.
    Phin returned, heralded by the slap of her bare feet on the pine floor. She was breathing hard, like she’d run to the workroom and back. My sister was no athlete. The only things that ran a mile a minute were her brain and occasionally her mouth.
    She’d gone to get one of her gadgets—a camera with some kind of