Return to Red Creek Nathan Hystad (e books free to read .txt) 📖

When it touched me, it was hot. We saw a burn print on the wall in the house, remember?”

Brent nodded. “Sure. It’s freaking me out now that I know what it’s from.”

“My dad saw the same thing in the shed when he was there last time. A burning handprint. This thing isn’t wet and cool like Trevor said, so it got me thinking.”

Isabelle was in the backseat, and she leaned forward, her head between the front seats. “What is it?”

“This shadow man didn’t die like my dad thought. It went into hibernation or something. It was weakened when the bond was broken with the Smiths. Think about it… Conway was the link to our family, right?” Taylor asked, and Isabelle agreed. “Then maybe it passed to Katherine. She was in prison, remember? She killed herself not long after. What if the monster forced a link to her, and she went crazy, then hanged herself?”

“Devil’s advocate here,” Brent said. “What if she felt bad about all the kids that were killed and her role in it, and offed herself because of that, not what you’re saying?”

Taylor thought about it. “Could be, but I think I might be right.”

“What does that have to do with this Trevor kid?” Isabelle asked.

“Don’t you see?” Taylor looked at her cousin, then at Brent beside her as she drove. They were both shaking their heads side to side. “The monster’s active, but it’s not strong enough yet. It hasn’t fed in years. Not since Tommy O’Brian, when my dad first came back to Red Creek.”

“Then how did it harass Trevor?” Brent asked.

He was asking all the right questions, and Taylor was doing her best to hypothesize the answers. “Maybe it could still be seen, but couldn’t act. When it’s fed, it’s corporeal, and when it’s not, it’s merely ethereal,” she said.

Brent appeared confused. “You’ve been reading too many of your dad’s books. This is probably just some sicko nabbing children.”

Taylor was getting angry with him, but she tried to see it from his perspective as she held herself back from lashing out. “You don’t believe me, then? The night I was abducted, the journal, what Trevor said to me? The handprint in the living room of the house everyone on Wood Street thinks is haunted?”

“It’s not that. Maybe I don’t want to believe because it means things aren’t so black and white,” Brent said.

“Let’s stop at the orchard on the way home. I want to look at the grounds,” Taylor said. When no one disagreed with her, she made the exit a few miles later. It started to rain lightly as they wound their way in her car past the gravel roads that led to the old spot where Granny Smith’s Orchard had sat since the thirties.

“Oh my God,” Isabelle said as they made a right, heading toward the plot of land. Taylor rolled her windows down and saw the flashing blue and red lights filling the entire area. The roads in and out were blocked by Gilden PD cruisers. Taylor pulled over and grabbed her phone from her purse. She saw a dozen missed calls, all from her mom and dad’s numbers. She’d forgot she’d put it on silent when she got to the hospital.

She opened the text string from her mom, and her jaw dropped.

Mom – Taylor, we know you’re there and we’re heading for your aunt’s house now. See you soon.

Taylor looked up at the heavy police presence and hoped they’d found the nest before it was too late.

_______________

Tom Bartlett moved to the next suite, a street cop behind him. So far, they’d discovered only pot and a few unsavory units in the complex. Buzz and his lady were cooperative, and they’d found nothing offensive, at least not for the missing children case. The other three main floor units were clean, two of them empty.

They’d secured the building, covering all exits, and so far, none of the residents had tried to run off. Tom had been hoping one of them would, making the search far simpler. He now walked down the second floor hallway, his gun in one hand and a warrant in the other.

He knocked on a door and a woman answered it. “Emma Jeanne?” Tom asked, and the older lady nodded, her eyes wide. He saw a tremor in her hand, and wondered if she had the early stages of Parkinson’s or if she was just afraid. He’d be scared too if the cops showed up at his house on a Saturday afternoon wanting to snoop through his things.

“We need inside your suite.” He glanced over her shoulder, noticing the usual things you’d expect from a seventy-year-old single woman: pictures on the walls, some knitting supplies on a living room coffee table. The TV was on; a renovation show, from the sounds of it.

“By all means. What’s this regarding?” she asked, worry thick on her tongue.

“We have reason to believe a missing child may be in the vicinity.” Tom stepped around her and went through the process of clearing the apartment. It was a two-bedroom, but the spare room only had a few boxes on the floor, no guest bed. He searched the closets, the bathroom, under the beds, inside the kitchen cupboards. Tom didn’t expect to find anything of use in here. The sweep took less than half the time of the other units, and he left the suite.

“Thank you for your cooperation. Please stay inside until we’re gone, Ms. Jeanne,” Tom said, and she said she would.

“Officer?” she asked with a meek tone.

“Yes?”

“Is there anything you can do about my neighbor above me? He stomps around a lot and is always coming and going at all hours of the night. I don’t trust him,” she said with innocence, but Tom sensed something deeper behind her words. It sounded like the usual upstairs neighbor vendetta. It was the main reason he was paying far too much to live in his own house in Gilden.

“I’ll see what we can