The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) by Douglas Clegg Read Free Book Online
Authors: Douglas Clegg
this particular day, the shop was open but empty of customers. Out front, a middle-aged woman sat in her rocking chair reading John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, and was not sure why her toes and fingers had begun tingling.
One might imagine that the woman named Alice Kyeteler who sat upon the front porch of her shop had not dreamed that this day would one day come to pass. That the moment would come when she would whisper to herself, “You haven’t been aware enough,” as if whatever she was afraid of was like a teakettle left too long on the stove, and the whistle had just begun to blow with steam.
The autumn day when someone would come to her and ask about entering the dark place.
CHAPTER THREE
1
In the early 1980s, a carnival had arrived at the village of Watch Point, New York. It was nothing special—the trucks brought the carnies and the rickety Ferris wheel, the Whirligig, the funhouse, the sideshow, the rows of arcade games that blew in on an October night and blew out a few nights later as if the wind had swept the village clean.
But the woman who had been the fortune teller at the carnival’s seedy sideshow decided she liked the village, and she camped out there—first in a motel off the highway just outside of town, and then in a little apartment above a bookstore on the main drag of the village.
Her name was Alice Kyeteler, and she became both a massage therapist and owner of a small “Fortune Tarot” shop down near the train station. Rumor went that she was a witch, but Watch Point was a sophisticated enough Hudson River town to deal with her little salon and its books on psychic phenomena, candles and perfumes. Although if she didn’t have a background in Reiki and Reflexology massage, she might’ve gone out of business in her first year.
After the fire at the school called Harrow, and the bizarre circumstances of the psychic investigators and the murder that also went on at the house, she had all but closed her storefront and would just sit on the porch, people-watching. The village had lost some residents after the commotion and those seeking souvenirs of the house had left. Some who had the means to move decided that Peekskill and Ossining and Beacon might be a better place to live. A book or two had been written about the house, and an old diary had been published, written by a man who had lived in the house in the early part of the twentieth century. The house, whether truly haunted or not, had acquired an unpleasant reputation, and its only glamour was held by local kids who felt it was a proper place to scare each other on October nights or boring winter afternoons. Alice disliked the place intensely, and despite her lifelong devotion to the psychic and the spiritual, she had no interest in ever setting foot on the grounds of that place, which was just beyond the village itself, and yet distant enough to be forgotten on lazy afternoons.
Now and then she saw a ghost, but she preferred not to talk about it with strangers—and despite having lived in Watch Point for more than twenty years, most of the people there were still strangers to her.
2
One day, near noontime, a man with a soul like midnight walked up to her and said, “I’d like to know what’s going to happen this fall.”
The village had begun growing dark early with autumn, and the dusky winds blew along its leaf-littered streets; by the afternoon, any glow of the sun was gone, and daylight became tempered with the early twilight; along the trees, swarms of birds flew, telephone to tree to rooftop to tree, nearly ready to go farther south as the winds grew colder and the twilight seeped with a purple haze.
Alice glanced up from her sewing—she hand-repaired most of her clothes, and at that particular moment had been working on an old pair of jeans that had ripped right in the crotch not two days before when she’d been squatting to clean up some broken glass off the floor. She was so startled that she nearly
One might imagine that the woman named Alice Kyeteler who sat upon the front porch of her shop had not dreamed that this day would one day come to pass. That the moment would come when she would whisper to herself, “You haven’t been aware enough,” as if whatever she was afraid of was like a teakettle left too long on the stove, and the whistle had just begun to blow with steam.
The autumn day when someone would come to her and ask about entering the dark place.
CHAPTER THREE
1
In the early 1980s, a carnival had arrived at the village of Watch Point, New York. It was nothing special—the trucks brought the carnies and the rickety Ferris wheel, the Whirligig, the funhouse, the sideshow, the rows of arcade games that blew in on an October night and blew out a few nights later as if the wind had swept the village clean.
But the woman who had been the fortune teller at the carnival’s seedy sideshow decided she liked the village, and she camped out there—first in a motel off the highway just outside of town, and then in a little apartment above a bookstore on the main drag of the village.
Her name was Alice Kyeteler, and she became both a massage therapist and owner of a small “Fortune Tarot” shop down near the train station. Rumor went that she was a witch, but Watch Point was a sophisticated enough Hudson River town to deal with her little salon and its books on psychic phenomena, candles and perfumes. Although if she didn’t have a background in Reiki and Reflexology massage, she might’ve gone out of business in her first year.
After the fire at the school called Harrow, and the bizarre circumstances of the psychic investigators and the murder that also went on at the house, she had all but closed her storefront and would just sit on the porch, people-watching. The village had lost some residents after the commotion and those seeking souvenirs of the house had left. Some who had the means to move decided that Peekskill and Ossining and Beacon might be a better place to live. A book or two had been written about the house, and an old diary had been published, written by a man who had lived in the house in the early part of the twentieth century. The house, whether truly haunted or not, had acquired an unpleasant reputation, and its only glamour was held by local kids who felt it was a proper place to scare each other on October nights or boring winter afternoons. Alice disliked the place intensely, and despite her lifelong devotion to the psychic and the spiritual, she had no interest in ever setting foot on the grounds of that place, which was just beyond the village itself, and yet distant enough to be forgotten on lazy afternoons.
Now and then she saw a ghost, but she preferred not to talk about it with strangers—and despite having lived in Watch Point for more than twenty years, most of the people there were still strangers to her.
2
One day, near noontime, a man with a soul like midnight walked up to her and said, “I’d like to know what’s going to happen this fall.”
The village had begun growing dark early with autumn, and the dusky winds blew along its leaf-littered streets; by the afternoon, any glow of the sun was gone, and daylight became tempered with the early twilight; along the trees, swarms of birds flew, telephone to tree to rooftop to tree, nearly ready to go farther south as the winds grew colder and the twilight seeped with a purple haze.
Alice glanced up from her sewing—she hand-repaired most of her clothes, and at that particular moment had been working on an old pair of jeans that had ripped right in the crotch not two days before when she’d been squatting to clean up some broken glass off the floor. She was so startled that she nearly
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