The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror by Charles L. Grant Read Free Book Online

way. It took the developer four years to sell the nineteenth house, and he never bothered to build any more. To live in the country was one thing; to live close to nothing at all but rolling fields, treed hills, and a traffic light that never turned red was something else again.
    Those who did remain did so because they either couldn’t afford to move again, or because they realized that Deerford was what they had been looking for all along. It wasn’t unusual, then, that the “new folks” were the most militant about restrictions in town, the most enthusiastic about local affairs, and the most eager to be accepted.
    And for the most part they were, and by the time the sapling maples planted along the curving streets had grown large enough to have foliage worth the name, it seemed as if they had been there forever.
    And the last time a farm went up for sale the whole town chipped in and hired Eban Parrish to buy the land for them and lease it to a farmer who would work the fields hard and leave none of it to fallow.
    If it seemed boring, it was only because some people had lost the knack of imagination.
    And if it seemed tranquil, it was only because Winterrest was still sleeping.
    2
    The darkened house just to the left of the Depot was a squat, bulging Victorian that had been, at some time in it’s recent past, shorn of the ornate gingerbread that had coiled around the rim of its house-long porch, the tiny-paned gables at each corner, and just above the sagging eaves on the black slate roof. It was freshly painted white, its shutters black, and its windows low enough almost to be square. Just inside the solid oak front door was a tiny vestibule barely wide enough for guests to utilize the coat closet on the left; and the inner, glass-paned door couldn’t be opened if the closet was in use. Few visitors lingered there; it was too much like being in a glass-fronted casket.
    The large, high-ceiling parlor which held most of its original, overstuffed, or back-breaking furnishings was on the left, the dining room with a refectory table and eight-foot china closet was on the right, and a narrow, red-carpeted staircase loomed directly ahead, climbing to a broad landing above which was a rose window perpetually dark.
    The walls were papered in floral patterns now faded, the trim was dark and polished, and the fireplace in the parlor was made of grey stone.
    At night the house, because it was not air conditioned and the untended attic did not have a circulation fan in either its front or back windows, tenaciously held the summer’s worst heat to an unpleasant degree; it was, however, cool during the day.
    Judith Lockhart sat on the heavy, embroidered couch facing the long front window and watched the day’s light traffic pass by on Deerford Road. Her short-sleeved blouse was pale green, her jeans were faded, and her feet were bare with the toenails lacquered dark red.
    She was alone.
    All the other shades in the house were down, and she shivered in the faintly golden light, rubbing her thin arms and thinking she ought to go upstairs and find herself a sweater. It was ludicrous; hot outside, and here she was raising a bumper crop of gooseflesh on skin that had very little meat beneath it. What she ought to be doing was getting some sun—lying in the standing hammock in the backyard and listening to the trees tell her stories and the squirrels telling her to mind her own business; or trimming the dense privet hedge that surrounded her property; or going to the Depot to get ready for Friday night.
    She ought to be behaving like ordinary people.
    Instead, she sat in the midday gloom and watched the traffic, and listened patiently for signs of her brother returning.
    And as she did she thought about Douglas Muir, and the trouble he was causing her because he was so damned stubborn, and so infuriatingly polite, and so maddeningly determined not to relinquish any control over his life.
    He was getting to be a pain in the ass.
    But