The Girl on the Glider by Brian Keene Read Free Book Online

required in horror fiction.
        I shined the flashlight around, but there was nobody there. It was just me, the trees, our mailbox, our neighbor’s mailbox and trash cans, and that wooden cross, now looking much more weather-beaten and worse for the wear.
        The beeping stopped.
        I leaned the trash cans against the guardrail and the beeping recommenced. Headlights pinpointed me, and I heard a pickup truck come around the corner. It zipped past me fast enough to ruffle my jacket. After it had passed, and the darkness returned, the road was silent.
        “There’s nothing there,” I said out loud.
        I started down the driveway and the beeping rang out behind me.
        I ran all the way to the deck. I was out of breath when I got inside. Cassi asked me what was wrong. I smiled and waved a hand, indicating that I’d answer her as soon as I’d stopped hyperventilating. When I could talk again, I lied, and told her that I ran down the driveway to get some exercise.
        

ENTRY 13
        
        The dreams continued sporadically throughout the spring and into the summer. With them came more glider rocking and phantom texting during my waking hours. If they had happened every day, I really do think I would have lost my shit, but they didn’t. There was no rhyme or reason. No way of predicting when it would occur. Weeks would go by without a single nightmare and then I’d have four in a row. A month would pass without the glider moving on its own or those haunting, disembodied beeps, and then there would be a flurry of activity that lasted several days.
        There were little things, too-occasional, one-time occurrences that didn’t seem connected to all of this at the time, but certainly do now, in hindsight.
        Example 1: The baby has this toy locomotive. It’s big. He can push it along and walk behind it, or sit atop it and scoot along with his feet. It has all kinds of buttons and little animal figures that pop out of the side. Every time it moved or you pressed a button, the train would sing (loudly) “Chugga chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.” Annoying, yes. Thank God it only plays the song once. If the baby wants to hear it again, he has to push it or press another button.
        One afternoon, while the baby was at his grandparent’s house, Cassi and I went grocery shopping. When we came home, the locomotive was playing the song, over and over and over again. There was nobody home at the time. The dog was cowering on the couch, staring at it, and the cat was hiding in the bedroom. We had to take the batteries out of it to get it to stop. I didn’t chalk it up to the girl on the glider. I attributed it to “the dog or the cat must have bumped it and the song got stuck and just kept repeating.” When we put new batteries in it, the locomotive operated normally again.
        “Chugga chugga, choo choo, spin around. Every letter has a sound.”
        I can’t stand that fucking train.
        Example 2: In late May, I was working late out in my office one night. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before or not (and I’m too lazy to go back and check) but my office is separate from the house. If someone were to walk down my driveway, they would pass by my office before they reached the house. Anyway, I’m sitting there writing something (I can’t remember what) and Max, who was curled up on my lap, suddenly jumps down, runs over to the wall, arches his back and hisses. Had someone been on the other side of that wall, they would have been standing in my driveway. Max hissed again and when I went to him, I found that he was inconsolable. I grabbed my Taurus .357 and hurried outside, expecting to find a coyote or another stray cat or maybe some crazed fan standing in my driveway.
        But there was nothing.
        There are a lot more of these examples, but it’s late and I’m tired and I don’t have time tonight to put