The Loveliest Dead by Ray Garton Read Free Book Online Page A

simply mentioned Josh’s name to David, she would be prodding at that wound.  
    If Jenna were certain that Josh had tried to communicate with her, she would have gotten into the car, gone out, and hunted David down to tell him about it without wasting a second. But she was not certain of what she had, or had not, seen—whether she had seen a small figure at the end of the hallway, or had wanted, perhaps even needed, to see one. It would rip David open to bring it up, so she would not. Not just yet. She would wait. For what, she was not sure. But she would wait.  
    When Miles got home from school, he went to his bedroom to do his homework so he could spend the rest of the afternoon and evening playing outside and watching television. David got home shortly before four o’clock, and Jenna knew as soon as she saw him that he had not found a job. He came into the kitchen, where she was preparing a stew for dinner.  
    “One possibility,” he said. “At a garage in Fortuna, there’s a guy retiring next month, and so far, they don’t have a replacement. I filled out an application and spent a while talking to the manager. I’m the first one to apply for the job. The manager’s a good guy—we hit it off.”  
    “That’s great ,” Jenna said. “It sounds very promising.”  
    “I’m not holding my breath.”
    “But don’t dismiss it, either. You got along with him, nobody else has applied. It sounds good to me.”
    A smile broke through David’s long face. “Are you baking something?”
    “Mom’s baking a cake for dessert.”
    Sitting at the breakfast nook, Martha looked up from one of her tabloids and smiled. “Chocolate,” she said.
    David’s smile grew even larger. “Hey, Grandma’s chocolate cake. Well, the day’s not a total loss, then.”
    After dinner, David went to the store and picked up a few lightbulbs. When he got back, he took the stepladder upstairs and put a brighter bulb in the hallway’s overhead light. They watched television for a while, then Jenna told Miles to go upstairs and get ready for bed. A few minutes later, she went up to his room.  
    She kissed Miles goodnight and, as she went out, left the bedroom door open about a foot. A cat-shaped night-light plugged into a low outlet in the hallway outside the door sent a soft glow spilling into his bedroom through the opening.  
    “Goodnight, honey,” she said.
    “‘Night, Mom.”
     
    Miles propped himself up on both arms in bed, in the dark, wide awake. He was not sure what had awakened him, but he had the impression someone had come into his bedroom.  
    The wind blew outside and sent a spatter of rain against the windowpane. Miles could hear the distant surf crashing against the rocks at the foot of the cliff behind the house. His bed was against the wall across from the door, and there were two bare windows just above it. The ivy on the outside wall of the house whispered secretly every time the wind blew. Maybe that was it—the strange new sounds of the night had awakened him, sounds it would take a while to get used to, that was all. And the room was new, the bed, everything. Even the things he had brought with him from Redding took on new shapes in the dark—the toy dinosaurs on the shelves, the stuffed King Kong huddled in the corner, the lamp and books crouching on the desk.  
    But something was not right. He could feel it.
    “Come on, be a good puppy.” The whispered voice was rough, and it came from within Miles’s bedroom. “C’mon over here and be a good puppy.”  
    Miles made a small, strangled sound in his throat just before it closed. His elbows locked at his sides and he was paralyzed by fear. His eyes moved to the spot in the room from which the voice had come—over by the shelf with the dinosaurs on it, but low, near the floor. Miles’s eyes dropped and he saw a figure in the dark— round shoulders and a large, oddly shaped head. The figure rose slowly up out of the floor, a black shape within