The Frighteners by Michael Jahn Read Free Book Online

here tonight.”
    “I don’t think we really want to hang on to these, do we, hon?” Lucy asked nervously.
    “Maybe we could give them to Old Man Stickler down the block,” Ray said. “He’s been a pain in the ass for as long as I can remember?”
    Bannister waggled an admonishing finger in the air. “It’s not wise to use our emanistic friends as weapons unless you really know what you’re doing.”
    He sauntered over to the sink. “You could run them through the garbage disposal,” he said. “That should do the trick.”
    “Get rid of ’em,” Ray said.
    Lucy handed the bag back to Bannister, a bit tentatively. He sensed that she felt for whatever it was in the silver bag, unlike her husband, who would have run a steamroller over them if that had been possible.
    Bannister dropped the bag into the disposal unit. A quick burst of the motor and they were gone. Lucy gasped.
    “Don’t worry, they don’t feel pain,” Bannister said. “At least, that’s what the books say. But I guess we’ll never know for sure.” He grinned at Ray and Lucy.
    Irritated, Ray said, “Okay, you can go.”
    Ray took the facecloth off his forehead and, as he did, caused Frank to stare at it. There, etched on Ray’s forehead in raised welts of skin, was the number thirty-seven. Bannister moved closer to see it better.
    “What the hell are you staring at?” Ray snarled.
    “What’s with the number?” Bannister asked.
    Lynskey didn’t know what the man was talking about and made that clear. Lucy then inspected her husband’s forehead.
    “What number?” she asked.
    Now mad, Ray said, “Are you trying to freak me out?”
    “Not me. I was just telling you what I see. You have the number thirty-seven on your forehead.”
    “It won’t work, buddy,” Lynskey continued. “You’re not getting any more money out of us.” He stood then, flexed his muscles, and said, “Get outta here!”
    Bannister quickly swept up his equipment and backed out of the house. As he walked across the front lawn he heard footsteps and looked around to see Lucy Lynskey running after him. He said, “Look, if this is a complaint from your husband, tell him I did my job. Your house is free of emanations. And I can almost certainly guarantee these particular ones aren’t coming back.”
    “No, nothing like that,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for coming here in the middle of the night. And whatever you did worked. I mean, the mere knowledge that you were coming over—the ghosts . . . I mean, the emanations heard me make the call to you.”
    Bannister said, “Maybe I should get a nine-hundred number and do this over the phone.”
    “Thank you for helping me.” Lucy touched his arm warmly, warmly enough to give even the hardened Bannister a little flash of heat in his heart.
    Fifteen minutes later Bannister had driven back up the hill, through more of Fairwater’s famous winding hillside roads, and reached his house. His home sat on a bluff overlooking Fairwater, which was as dead as a headstone as he looked down on it at three in the morning. Bannister also was exhausted, and pulling into his driveway did nothing to lift his spirits.
    For the house was only half-built. As revealed in the moonlight, there was a roof and four walls—for the most part. Either money or interest ran out, possibly both, a long time ago. Whole areas of the house—a would-be family room, for example—were nothing but framework covered loosely by protective tarps. Whenever a wind came up, as it certainly had the night before, they flapped wildly, shaking the entire house.
    Stacks of bricks and timber were left untended here and there, and a rusty old concrete mixer had, over the years, filled up with dirt and turned itself into a planter. Wild grass, complete with dandelions, grew from its cast-iron maw. Everywhere was rust and decay, rust on the metal parts and decay on the timber that had been left in the harsh Maine weather for a decade.
    Bannister