Vampire Blood by Kathryn Meyer Griffith Read Free Book Online Page B

place holds a lot of memories for us, but for others it has always held ... questions.” Uneasiness tainted her voice.
    “About what?”
    “It frightened some people, that’s all. Some people thought they ... saw things.”
    “Saw things?” Jenny chuckled. “My brothers and I used to go there all the time when we were children; it never scared us, and we never saw things .” She started to dismiss the subject with a lazy gesture, but then asked, “What sort of things?”
    Maude sighed. “Things that go bump in the night. Ghosts, you might say. Some remembered that in the early days, there’d been disappearances.” Maude had tilted her head and was rubbing her chin lightly with her fingers.
    “Like as in ... people?” Jenny pressed her.
    “Yes. People. Quite a lot of them actually.”
    “I never knew that. Did they ever find out what happened to them?”
    “No. Not a trace.”
    Jenny was staring out the window.
    “That was years ago,” Maude said. “It’s been closed for a long time. Nearly twenty years, at least. This time.”
    “This time?” Jenny’s eyes reflected interest.
    “A fire burnt the place to the ground a few years after it’d been built. There were people trapped in the auditorium who couldn’t get out and many lost their lives or were horribly disfigured. The place was rumored after that to be not only haunted, but jinxed, evil, and that the fire had been purposely set.”
    Maude evaded Jenny’s gaze in a most peculiar way, as if she’d already said more than she wanted. She had the unsettling feeling that there was something else Maude wasn’t telling her.
    “Why did they think that?” Jenny was growing intrigued by the story now in spite of herself.
    “I never found that out. People, when I was a girl, didn’t want to talk about it,” Maude finished, staring down at the article about the butchered animals.
    “It seems kind of strange to me—I don’t know exactly why but it does—that all these mutilations and killings have begun, and suddenly the theater is opening again.”
    “What would one have to do with the other?”
    Maude refused to answer, only shrugging. She shoved the paper aside, finished with it.
    “Anyway,” Jenny talked on, not noticing how concerned Maude was over the situation, “it’ll be great to have the theater back. Haunted or not. Great to have any theater in this town again.”
    “I second that,” Maude agreed, lightening up. “I’ll have to keep an eye peeled for the grand reopening and pry George away from the television long enough to take me. We haven’t been to an indoor theater in ages.”
    Maude got up and went to the refrigerator; opening the freezer door, she offered, “George made homemade peach ice cream for dessert. Made it this morning, in honor of the house being started.”
    “He always made the best peach ice cream I’ve ever eaten,” Jenny reminisced aloud.
    “If that father of yours doesn’t get in here soon, he just won’t get any,” Maude threatened. “We’ll devour it all ourselves.” She was already digging Jenny and herself out generous scoops and slamming them into large bowls.
    “Maude,” Jenny sighed. “You’re too good to a lowly house-painter.”
    Maude set the dish down with a clatter in front of Jenny and threw her a piercing look. “Jenny, Jenny, my girl. You are no lowly housepainter—not by a long shot. You’re simply drifting for a while. Trying other things, like most writers. Pretending to be something you’re not. Right?”
    The questions in Maude’s eyes made Jenny nervous. They said, One writer to another, I know you well.
    Jenny ate her ice cream, ignoring the obvious challenge. “I believe this truly is the best batch of ice cream George has ever made.”
    Maude patted Jenny motheringly on the arm. “You dickens, you. Always was stubborn as a mule, like your daddy, even as a child. Talented too.
    “When’s the next book coming out, Jenny?”
    “I told you I don’t write