The Rain Barrel Baby by Alison Preston Read Free Book Online

kisses some more. Not about the woman in the next bed. It could have been her.
    The day at the mall came back to her. Maybe it was a dream. She had been drunk, just a little. Only Frank and Emma would have realized it. The rest of the world didn’t know her well enough to mark the changes in her when she drank. It had been so much easier when Emma was younger and hadn’t taken issue with everything. All the time. Being a secret drunk was hard work but Denise thought she was pretty good at it. Lying was second nature to her.
    “Hi, Denise. How’s it goin’?” The soft voice had startled her while she shopped and her hand flew to her chest. Little bottles rolled.
    “Jesus!” she said, and looked into the pale eyes of someone she realized she was supposed to know. Someone from the neighbourhood?
    Another man, this one wearing an apron, busied himself at her feet cleaning up the mess.
    “Smirnoff, eh?” The stranger’s voice rasped through thin lips.
    Who was this guy?
    “In the wee bottles,” he said. “An old lady’s trick. Expensive habit. I guess you think you’re fooling someone.”
    “Who are you?” Denise spluttered.
    The flat face smirked.
    She couldn’t remember for a moment if she’d finished her business there but it no longer mattered. She had run from the liquor store.
    Denise shuddered now as she remembered. It was no dream. She recalled too where she had seen the man before. He had been a member of a group she had belonged to once when she was trying to quit drinking. He’d been bossy and arrogant and one of the reasons she’d quit going. That was the trouble with groups. They had people in them.
    She hadn’t stopped running till she’d reached her car and locked the doors. She panted like a dog on a hot day, bathed in sweat and self-loathing. So little had actually happened. That was the worst knowledge of all.
    Something stank. After a few minutes she had raised her head from the steering wheel, breathed in deeply and realized to her horror that she had wet her pants.
    She groaned aloud now as she heard the nurse fussing over Mrs. Blagden.
    “Everything all right, Mrs. Foote?” the night nurse asked.
    “Terrific, thanks.”

CHAPTER 13
    Greta Bower is mowing her lawn in the early morning and Gus goes over to have a word with her. The sound of the gas mower roars through his chest and it astonishes him that anyone could be so insensitive. It’s barely dawn!
    As he approaches Greta, her pretty face turns into the head of the woman he saw in front of Frank’s place the other night. She is all sunglasses and red lips. Only this time, the lips open in a stiff smile to reveal a row of broken teeth, bluish in colour. The half-teeth move, and on closer inspection Gus sees that tiny blue worms slither over the jagged surfaces. The heads of the worms are black, and the creatures have teeth of their own, sharp teeth that gnaw at their own blue bodies.
    Gus jerked himself awake before the dream went further. He put on a coat and shuffled out to his front porch to breathe some fresh air and try to forget the terrible picture left in his brain. He had been reading about Blue-footed Boobies earlier in the day and suspected that was why his dream worms were two-toned. And Greta didn’t even own a lawn mower. She let her yard go to rack and ruin all in the name of something that Gus couldn’t remember.
    “Howdy, Gus,” Frank called over from his own front porch next door.
    “Frank. Just the man,” Gus whispered as loudly as he could. “Get yourself over here, why don’t ya, so we don’t have to shout and wake up the whole neighbourhood?”
    Frank chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone whisper as loud as you, Gus. When it gets to be that loud most folks would turn it into talking.” He sauntered over to where Gus leaned on the railing, and looked up at him.
    “Let’s have a drink,” Gus said. “I don’t think Greta quite wiped out that bottle of brandy.”
    “Not for me,