The Rampant Reaper by Marlys Millhiser Read Free Book Online Page B

snowmobiles sat up toward the street like lawn ornaments with mowed weeds for a lawn. It was the last house before the cornfields began.
    Harvey’s house stood in the front of the lot, with a screened porch on each side and curved windows at each corner upstairs and down, and an open formal porch between them. Two stories, with high ceilings and an attic by the looks of it, and probably a basement, the house extended back quite a way. There was a lot of room, but it was the curved corner windows that caught the eye. The house and the outbuildings were of that white-painted wood with the gray beginning to weather through in spots.
    â€œYour accident didn’t leave any dents or permanent injuries at all? You don’t even have a limp.”
    â€œDidn’t I tell you? I’m the bionic woman now. So why is it I and my daughter have Marlys Dittberner’s eyes?”
    â€œCharlie, you’ve got to understand, people here don’t talk about things like that.” He turned the Cherokee around and started back down the street. There were lots of houses on big lots with snowmobiles for lawn ornaments, she noticed now.
    â€œThen how come everybody knows these things? Everybody but me.”
    â€œYou kind of find out things that nobody talks about by rumor, hints, innuendos, and such—piece them together over the years and end up knowing what everybody else knows by living here. But direct questions will just get you put off. People aren’t direct about some kinds of things in small towns—important things, scary ones, embarrassing things, intensely personal things, family things. Or stuff that could cause unknown
results. People are cautious. This is Myrtle, not Minneapolis.”
    â€œI don’t live here. I don’t have years to find out anything.”
    â€œWhat’s this bionic woman business? You have mechanical parts—powerful ones?”
    â€œThat is a very direct, personal, important, and potentially scary question. How can you ask it?”
    â€œBecause you don’t live here. You’re not one of us.”
    â€œThen why do I have Marlys’ eyes?”
    â€œBecause she’s your great—” Marshal Delwood was saved by his cellular. Marlys had been sighted on the road to the cemetery. He switched on the siren and floored the pedal.
    â€œDon’t you think that might scare her? The siren? Or at least alert her?”
    He turned it off and slowed down. “I get carried away. It’s so much fun being marshal.”
    â€œI’d hate to be out when you’re plowing the streets.”
    â€œYou sound like my mother.”
    â€œGreat what?”
    â€œGreat-grandmother. And you did not hear that from me.”
    â€œI heard a rumor on the wind, or was it an innuendo?”
    Nothing in Myrtle is far from anything else, which still did not explain how Marlys could move so fast, but they were already at the gates of the dark little graveyard with the sucking soil.
    â€œWouldn’t it be better if we parked here and walked in? Less threatening for her?”
    He stopped the red Jeep under the entrance arch that announced they were entering the MYRTLE CEMETERY. “Okay, bionic Charlie, you call the shots. Your way isn’t as much fun as mine, you know.”
    The marshal grabbed his cellular, Charlie her purse, and they slid to the ground without slamming the car doors. They walked to the sides of the white-rock-graveled one-lane drive into the shade and still-gliding dead leaves. Maple leaves, because of those finger jags, catch on your clothes and hair. They
also make it impossible to sneak because once fallen, they crunch right along with the oak leaves.
    â€œThere she is,” Charlie whispered and pointed to the lone standing figure ahead whose hair blew in the wind. The rest were tombstones. “Don’t call her honey, okay?”
    This guy was no rocket scientist but he was endearing and fun—he grimaced,