The Resort by Bentley Little Read Free Book Online Page A

alone, feeling afraid, she picked up the remote control from her nightstand and turned on the television, but the storm must have affected the satellite reception because only two stations came in. The first was showing a horror movie. Children Who Won’t Sleep was the title, according to the ID bar that appeared temporarily on top of the screen, and Rachel saw a spooky wide-eyed girl in a windblown camisole standing atop a desert bluff at night. That was too close for comfort, and, chilled, she flipped through the channels until she found the only other station on air—something called AdultVue. The bar said this film was called Return to Beaver Valley, and in it one woman had her face buried in the hairy crotch of another woman who was moaning in ecstasy, eyes closed and lipsticked lips parted sensuously.
    She shut off the television before one of the boys heard anything.
    Outside, thunder rumbled.
    Rachel thought of that fierce cloud countenance and the terrible rage she had seen there. She considered waking up Lowell but decided that was stupid. What was there to be afraid of? A random convergence of clouds that happened to resemble a scary face? How old was she, ten?
    Still, she looked toward the shuttered window with dread. Between the slats and around the edges, the flash of lightning shone through, a blinding white that made the surrounding darkness even deeper. It reminded her of a scene in a horror movie, and she was unable to make herself move forward to once again look outside, scared that the cloud face would now be right next to the glass, glaring at her with its terrible expression of rage and hate.
    She stood there for a moment, trying to think through the situation logically. What else could it be other than a chance coalescence of storm clouds? God? A demon? It made no rational sense for any sort of supernatural entity to manipulate water vapor so that it resembled an evil face, and there certainly wasn’t any sort of monster that was made out of cloud. Not that she believed in that sort of stuff to begin with. No, she was upset, her brain was tired and her mind was simply putting a morbid spin on perfectly natural events.
    She forced herself to move forward across the darkened room, sidling next to the slightly open shutter slats, looking down this time instead of up. Below, the grounds of the resort were bathed in darkness, low lights along the pathways combining with the occasional flash of lightning to create a shifting world of shadows. The lights of the tennis court were off, as were those on the building housing the spa facility. The palms and saguaros and landscaped bushes seemed menacing and out of proportion, and made her think of the living trees that attacked Disney’s Snow White.
    A figure walked across the grass below, a dark shape that had been lurking near the edge of the building beyond her sight line but now moved suspiciously across the open expanse of lawn like a thief on his way to rob a house. Rachel could see only a silhouette, no details, but she could tell it was a man not a woman. A gardener. He was carrying a rake but something about the way he held it made it seem more like a weapon than a tool, and there was in his carriage and bearing the suggestion of violence, as though this was a man used to physically intimidating people.
    The figure reached the head of a lighted pathway where he stopped, turned, looked up. Though she could not see the features of the shadowed face, she could see the eyes, bright and wide and trained on her.
    Immediately, instinctively, she stepped away from the window, hid in the darkness of the room. There was no way he could see her through the slats. He probably wasn’t even looking at her, was probably just checking out the trees next to the building to see when they needed to be trimmed. But she was creeped out nonetheless, and she remained in the darkness for a few moments, away from the window, waiting, giving him time to leave and