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

glad at least one person thought their new home was worth living in because Eli didn’t seem to agree. He didn’t say those words exactly, but it was something in his tone, Paisley thought, when he spoke about how fantastic the town was supposed to be, that told her the truth may be the opposite. Frankly, so far, she wasn’t that fond of it, either.

The silence was nauseating. As she drew only a couple houses away from her own, she turned and looked at a different house. It wasn’t the neighboring home, the one that they had looked at before, but the house after that one. It looked just as empty as the one alongside it. And she bet, if she were to approach the window and succeed at peering inside, she would see the same emptiness as the other. But she wasn’t going to do that. She didn’t want to see its emptiness. Because if it were empty, what would that even mean? And if she checked all the other houses on her street, would she find the same way?

She turned away, eager now to get home, just to get off that barren street. She also wanted to check on Trevor. If she were lucky, he would be doing better. Maybe they could go do something. She wasn’t sure what, but pretty much anything was better than sitting in that house.

She opened the front door to find Toby standing in the hallway, staring into his phone. He looked up when he heard the door. He put the phone away and turned to her, seemingly glad to see her. To her right, the living room was empty. She wondered where everybody was.

“Mom and Dad are upstairs,” Toby said, reading her. “Everybody is, actually.”

She started toward the stairs, but Toby stopped her. “Everybody is sick now, except you and me, apparently.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mom and Dad got sick this morning. Just a little vomiting, but it still has me worried.”

“It must be the flu or something,” Paisley said. “What else would spread like this?”

“I don’t know. It’s weird, isn’t it? How Trevor seemed fine yesterday and now, today, he is back to being sick? And we are fine even though we have been around them.”

“Is he worse now?” she asked, alarm treading into her eyes.

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, he’s sleeping now. He’s been sleeping all day, for that matter. So has Robbie. Mom and Dad went upstairs as well, not long ago, to lay down, and to get away from this horrid smell, I expect.”

“Shouldn’t we all go to the hospital or something? This is getting a little out of hand, isn’t it?”

“We are tomorrow, Mom said. She has an appointment scheduled already with that doctor they went to see yesterday.”

Paisley nodded. “I’m gonna go check on Trevor.”

She walked up the stairs straight to Trevor’s room. She found him inside, laying there asleep, just as Toby had said. She sat beside him on the bed. He didn’t stir. She wished he had. She placed her hand on his back and felt his upper body flexing in and out with his quiet breathing. She supposed the silence was better than him groaning in pain but only just barely. Toby said he had been sleeping all day. That wasn’t like Trevor at all. She wondered if he were in more of a coma than a sleep.

Toby waited until his sister had disappeared up the stairs before turning to face down the hall. She had come in right when he was deep in thought. While Paisley questioned if this sickness was the flu or something of that sort, he was wondering if it was something far different altogether.

Why was it that the two who were most sick smelled the strongest, the most similar to the basement? He wasn’t so sure the sickness was even a sickness, at least in the classical sense. He didn’t know exactly what he was even trying to say. All he knew was that something strange was happening, and he thought it may have something to do with whatever was causing the stench in the basement.

But whatever was causing the smell was locked away behind that impenetrable barrier. As he stared at the basement door, he recalled the markings he saw etched into the red door below. He tried to recall what the words read, the letters forming a language he was almost certain was not English.

There was a loud knock at the front door.

“Got it!” Paisley called out, already on her way down the stairs.

Toby heard the door open and voices exchanging words. Before he could head around the corner, Paisley shouted to him.

“Door’s for you, Toby!”

His heart dropped. It must have been Addison. That was exactly what he needed. After the night before, he felt closer to her than ever. Perhaps even closer than he had ever felt to anyone in his entire life. It had been difficult for him not to head across the street earlier and ask to see her. But he didn’t want to seem clingy. It was a lame thought, but that seemed to be how things worked, at least in high school.

All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and kiss her. His cheeks turned red just thinking about it. That feeling of butterflies returned to his chest.

The front door was mostly closed when he came down the hall. But when he pulled open the door, the butterflies scattered, replaced by angry bats, and he felt his skin turn pale white, because it wasn’t Addison who he was looking at. It was Robert.

27

Toby just stood in the doorway for a moment, unsure if he was awake or asleep. Had he passed out in the basement and just never woke up? Or was Addy’s friend Robert really standing at