The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller by Joe Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

laughter of the other boys. He’d sat there, petrified on the toilet, frozen in the cold darkness of a place that held no malice in the light, but without it, became something else.
    Memories of staggering out of the windowless locker room and into the hall full of giggling teenagers left him as he stepped down again, the shadows rising ever upward as though he were dropping deeper and deeper into a subterranean sea.
    His left hand brushed against the smooth wall, the only sound above his hushed breathing. Five steps, six, seven. The eighth tread wasn’t where it should have been, and he almost fell headlong, the surface under his foot remaining level instead of dropping away—a landing.
    Evan slid his hand forward and found that the wall turned, and he pivoted with it, his opposite arm now out before him, stretched into the black maw. The next step edge met his foot, and he went down. One, two, three. At the fourth stair his arm brushed something, and he nearly cried out before realizing it was a pillar near the foot of the stairway.
    He searched blindly until his fingers met a switch box. Knowing full well if this switch produced no light he would retreat up the stairs, he flipped it up. Three dim bulbs blinked on in a line across the basement, casting everything in a sick glow. He was about to step onto the basement floor when he looked down—
    — and saw a small child standing less than a foot away.
    Hi s feet tried to backpedal, and a strangled moan fell from his mouth as he tripped and landed hard on the stairs behind him. The treads bit into his ass and lower back, but he barely noticed, his gaping eyes locked on the child facing away from him. As he was about to spin and flee up the stairs, already forming a plan to grab Shaun from the couch and haul him to the pontoon, Evan realized that the child hadn’t moved. He waited, his breath too large for his lungs. His eyes traveled down the back of a little girl with dark hair wearing a purple dress, except something was wrong. Several slits were cut into the back of her knees.
    Evan sighed and placed h is sweating face into one palm.
    A doll.
    “Shit.”
    His voice sounded hollow, but speaking gave him the strength to stand and wince at the throbbing ache settling into his back. He moved down the last two treads, his heart returning into the realm of normality as the doll’s face came into view.
    Its eyes stared across the bas ement, its mouth covered in duct tape.
    The bubbling dread within his stomach that had receded only moments ago built again, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. Evan didn’t move any farther into the basement, his eyes fixed on the doll’s face. Visions of its head slowly turning toward him corkscrewed through his mind. If that happened, he wouldn’t simply cry out, he would become a scream embodied.
    Trying to shove aside the blaring fear within, he bent and grasped the doll’s miniature arm. Its plastic flesh was cold to the touch, as if it had been soaking in ice water. He shuddered, waiting for the frigid limb to writhe in his palm. Even as the rational part of his mind tried to quell the stampeding fear, his hands continued to shake. He turned the doll over once, studying it. It didn’t look very old or used. In fact, it appeared almost new. When he flipped it over again, he flinched as its bright blue eyes blinked shut, but realized it was designed to do that when lying flat. The gray tape covering the doll’s mouth was smooth, its chubby cheeks visible above its gag. Evan set the doll on the floor beside a stack of cardboard boxes, giving it another sidelong glance before stepping fully into the room.
    The basement ran the full length and width of the house, and even with its low ceiling , it felt like a cavernous space. To his right he saw what must have been Jason’s grandmother’s sewing area; a dust-covered sewing machine sat amidst a field of threaded bobbins atop a desk. Beside it, several baskets of yarn lay in