A Place So Wicked Patrick Reuman (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📖

But he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

He neared his uncle’s room and felt his pulse quicken. He now hoped much more that his uncle wouldn’t be in the bedroom. The idea of going upstairs and asking Robbie to chill out so he could get some sleep seemed a lot easier to tackle than waking Robbie up to combat an intruder.

The bedroom door was cracked open just a few inches, which Toby didn’t remember seeing during his return from the bathroom. He nudged it open just a little further, just far enough to peek his head in like a gopher out a hole and get a look around the room. It was empty.

A barely measurable wave of relief surfaced under Toby’s skin. He pulled in a breath and laughed silently at how childish he was behaving. Of course it was Robbie upstairs and not some burglar. He had allowed his imagination to get the best of him. If it were a burglar, why in the world would he have been in the attic? Even if he was here to steal, there wasn’t anything to steal up there. He continued past Robbie’s room a little more confidently and then stopped at the attic door.

He started to turn the door handle but thought he heard a sound and let go, whipping around to face Paisley’s bedroom. He stood a moment, staring at the door, but didn’t hear it again. It was probably just his little sister rolling over in bed, sleeping, exactly like Toby should have been doing.

He twisted the attic door handle slowly and pushed it open. A bitter chill rushed out to meet him. That was it. At least one problem was solved. The cold air was definitely coming from the attic. He shivered, hugging himself for warmth, considering for a moment returning to his own room for a hoodie.

The door at the peak of the stairs was open. He wondered if that was the way he left it when he had hurried out to meet that girl. The room at the top was enveloped in darkness. The stairs were not as loud and creaky as he had expected them to be. He pushed the second door open slowly, surprised his uncle hadn’t heard him coming up and moved to meet him at the door.

No one was there to meet him, just the darkness and the strange cold. He glanced at the two windows. They were closed, of course. Everything was quiet. He couldn’t quite see into the second room from where he stood, the room above his own, and wondered if maybe Robbie had already gone back to bed.

What was also strange was that the attic was bone-chillingly cold, but he didn’t feel a breeze at all, not even the slightest sign of air circulating in from the outside. But sure as hell, the cold was there, and it was spreading and freezing the rest of the house.

He walked quietly over to the door separating the two parts of the attic. He wasn’t going to stick around long, not really wanting to wake Robbie if he had gone back to bed. He wasn’t actually mad at his uncle for being loud. Half the reason he got up from his bed, now that he really thought about it, was because he was bored and wanted to do something. Had he ever really thought there was an intruder? It seemed like a silly thought now.

As soon as he stepped through the doorway, he froze in place. He wanted to be afraid, but his mind could not seem to manage even that. It just shut down, frozen along with the rest of him. A woman stood in front of the window, one of the windows that faced the road out front, doing something in front of her that Toby couldn’t entirely make out but could still see because, impossibly, Toby could see through the lady. Her insides were like a nearly transparent curtain, a thin layer of fog standing there in the shape of a person. She was going at something wildly, whining and crying as she did so.

First, he took a step back, thinking that his best option was to run and get help. Just because this person, or thing, was a girl didn’t mean she was safe. But it wasn’t a girl. It couldn’t have been. You can’t see through a person.

It was as if the woman hadn’t even noticed he was there yet. She just continued with what she was doing, hunched forward, focused in on whatever was in front of her that had her attention. His curiosity pulled him forward. He stuck close to the wall and maneuvered to the left to catch a glimpse of what she was doing. As he got closer, just inches away from being able to see, a thought shot through his mind of a massive butcher knife in her one hand, a sharpener in the other, as she drew the knife into a wicked, razor-sharp blade.

But it was the window’s latch that she was working at. In her hand was not a knife, but rather a screwdriver, which she appeared to be trying to wedge underneath the latch. She continued her whining, clearly upset that whatever she was trying to do was not working. Just as he reached forward, ready to touch her shoulder and stupidly ask what she was doing, she turned, shooting a glance at him.

But it wasn’t anger or murder in her eyes like he had expected but absolute fear, on a level that he had not only never seen but couldn’t even imagine. And she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking just to his side, at the door he had just entered through.

She mouthed something like “ow” or “how.” He wasn’t sure. Then she jerked back around and slammed the screwdriver into the window latch and started jamming