The Haunted Heart: Winter by Josh Lanyon Read Free Book Online Page B

wet comb through my hair, changed my
gray sweater for my black sweater, grabbed my boots and parka, and
ran downstairs in time to meet Kirk starting down to the
basement.
    The mirror was just as we had left it. We
lifted it out of the basement and then began the long, arduous task
of hauling it back up the rickety stairs. Luckily just one flight
of stairs this time. Granted, it was probably the worst flight,
given the narrowness and flimsiness of the steps. And we weren’t
racing against the clock this time. Even so, Kirk was out of breath
by the time we reached the ground floor, and I had those black
spots dancing before my eyes again.
    We lugged the mirror onto the porch and
propped it cautiously against a post. The cold air felt good on my
flushed and sweating face.
    “Wait here. I’ll get my truck out of the
shed,” Kirk threw back as he went cautiously down the snow-caked
steps. He disappeared around the corner of the building.
    The snow swallowed the sound of his
footsteps, swallowed all sound. It was a silent, white world I
waited in. Now and then a non-existent breeze seemed to tease the
bottom of the sheet over the mirror.
    I could see the snow plow had already been
down the lane that morning. That simplified everything.
    “Lane” was an exaggeration. Pitch Pine Lane
was really just a country road leading back into a small housing
development. Way back. This house sat on the edge of the woods on
the outskirts of Chester, and there was no other building or
structure within immediate sight or sound. The house was formerly
part of an estate, but most of the land had been sold off before
Great-Uncle Winston bought the house. The lot the house currently
sat on was large but unremarkable. The trees had all been cleared
away and there were just a few scraggly shrubs, scattered sheds and
fenced-in areas that looked more or less like trash dumps. A
tilting telephone pole was loosely and dangerously tethered to the
house by a stretch of sagging line. Kirk and I were probably the
last people in the world with dial-up.
    As for the house itself, it defied
definition, architecturally speaking. It was kind of like an
unhappy marriage of convenience between a demure Victorian cottage
and a dissolute French chateau. Mottled ochre-colored stone and
blood red rimmed windows and doors. The west wing was three stories
tall and included an out-jutting windowless space that would have
once been a green room or conservatory but now housed Kirk’s truck.
The east wing was four stories tall and capped by a crazy Queen
Anne roof that looked like the sorting hat in Harry Potter, the one
they slapped onto kids in order to determine which of the four
school houses they’d been assigned to. Attached to the outer west
wing were some low sheds with tin roofs, but they looked of more
recent construction. I was using the closest as a garage.
    I hugged myself, rubbed my arms. My teeth
were chattering. In fact, now that I had time to think about it, I
felt cold all the way through. Cold and sick. Was it some
manifestation of the mirror? Like the pall of anxiety and fear that
preceded the appearance of the apparition in the mirror?
    More likely I was coming down with the
flu.
    Finally I heard the roar of an engine and a
white Ford pick up drove across the blanketed lot in front of the
house, winter tires chewing up the powder.
    Kirk briskly backed up to the porch, jumped
out and lowered the tailgate. “Watch your step,” he warned as we
levered up the heavy mirror.
    He was right. The steps should have been
shoveled or salted. I was a lousy landlord. It hadn’t occurred to
me that I had a responsibility here beyond sorting and sifting
through junk. The snowplow had been down the main lane that
morning, but our own drive needed a snow blower. Or maybe a
bulldozer.
    We slip slided our way across the porch and
down the steps, managing not to kill ourselves or drop the mirror,
which we loaded carefully into the bed of the truck.
    Kirk raised the