He smiled back, a gleam sparkling in his eye. “Me neither.”
She kissed him on the lips and then they disappeared out the front door. The deadbolt locked behind them and Gavin could hear Brenna giggling all the way down the hallway. Pressing his lips together, he checked the Jurassic Park watch that Scotty’s parents gave him just before the funeral. “What time are we leaving tomorrow?”
Cindy furrowed her brow as if she had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh,” she said, understanding dawning in her blue eyes. “The estate sale.” She blew out a tired breath. “We’d better get going by seven.”
“In the morning?”
“It starts at eight, Gavin,” she replied, letting her glassy eyes swing back to the patio door. “So much death and sorrow. I hope next year is better.”
“Me too,” he said, slipping down the hall and into his room. Plopping on his bed, he stared out the window, unsure what to do now. Pincher still wouldn’t come out of his room and there was nothing to do. With Scotty gone, Gavin was a friend down and it left a huge void in his world. The urge to call Scotty washed over him again and it took a moment to realize the watch strapped around his wrist was roaring like a dinosaur. Flipping the metal cover open, he didn’t recognize the phone number on the screen but hit the button on the side just the same.
“Hello?” Eyebrows pulling together, he strained to hear through the smothering silence coming across the line. He brought the watch closer to his mouth. “Hello?” he repeated, all but certain the call had disconnected. Then, in a horrifying flash that spiked his worst fear, Gavin heard it as loud and clear over the watch-phone as when he heard it for the very first time at that damn house.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I Didn’t Kill My Wife!
Sunday, November 13th, Back Then
Drake folded a copy of The Cottage Grove Gazette in half and dropped it onto his bunk. Adjusting the orange jumpsuit riding him in the crotch again, he shifted in a tiny plastic chair. He was a big man and big men weren’t meant to live in tiny cages. Grabbing a cordless phone he wasn’t supposed to have from a small desk, he tapped at the screen before pressing it to an ear. Exhaling, he prayed the animals a few cells down would keep quiet. Somehow, no matter how low he whispered, they always seemed to know when he was on the phone and took it as their cue to start raising hell. He listened to it ring, back tightening. Someone yelled something down the way and the ringing suddenly stopped. For a moment, Drake thought he’d lost the signal. These concrete walls were thick and cold and…
“Mr. Rollins, how are you this morning, sir?” a man answered in a British accent.
Drake released a pent-up breath and leaned back in the tiny chair, lifting its front legs off the concrete floor and balancing on the hind ones. “You read the story about the spider bite in Cottage Grove?”
“I did. Quite the mystery.”
“Apparently not to the police,” he whispered, pausing to glance at a framed picture of his beautiful wife. “Listen to me, Turner, these kids are telling the truth about really happened to that boy named Scotty, and I want them on my team.”
The line went graveyard silent and someone down the concrete corridor shouted something about a flooded toilet, making Drake grimace.
“Sir…”
“And I don’t care the price!” Drake interrupted, lowering his voice. “Make them happy. Very happy.”
Another pregnant pause stormed the line.
“Drake, listen…”
“No, you listen, Turner,” he snapped, dropping the chair’s front legs back to earth with a sharp crack that echoed off the cinderblock walls. “I saw what I saw and, for whatever reason, these kids saw something similar.” Inhaling a deep breath of musty air, he smoothed his shiny dark hair. “And maybe, just maybe, they can help prove I’m not the bloodthirsty tycoon the media has made me out to be.” His eyes drifted to a pull-up bar on the wall near a small stainless-steel toilet with no lid or walls. “Some days I almost start to believe it myself.”
“I can assure you, Mr. Rollins, that my team and I are giving your case the utmost…”
“And where has that gotten me? Nowhere!”
Turner sighed softly into the phone, cooling his tone. “Sir, these are just some over imaginative kids who suffered something traumatic.”
“I didn’t kill my wife!” Drake barked, sending a spattering of laughter down the bone white hallway. Setting his jaw against the anger burning in his blue eyes, veins bulged in his muscular neck as he turned a pointed glare on the two men in the cellblock across from him. The smiles stalled on their faces and they quickly returned to their game of cards. The short fat man raised the tall skinny one three cigarettes and Drake spoke softly into the phone.
“Now you listen to me and you listen good, I turn forty-four next month and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend the rest of my life rotting in this hell hole while that…thing gets away with Steph’s murder.” His eyes landed on his wife’s picture again. Her beautiful smile lit up the dingy cell like an angel’s halo. Long auburn hair fell over her dark skin, glimmering in the Hawaiian sunshine as an indigo wave crashed in the background, sending a fine spray of mist bursting into the air. He wished they’d never left that place, just stayed there forever. They could have too. He was rich. He could’ve done whatever he wanted. But he had no way of knowing what would happen soon after they returned home. He married late in life and widowed early and it wasn’t fair.
“She didn’t deserve this,” he mumbled, tears magnifying a small TV in the corner. It had been a long two years but the pain was still as fresh as the cut on his cheek – courtesy of inmate number 217 and a plastic lunch tray yesterday afternoon. Stephanie would never have another Christmas or read another good book and she didn’t deserve that. None of them did. He cleared the train of thought with the blink of his eyes. Had to stay focused or he’d never get out of here. “Now do we understand one another, Mr. Turner? Or do I need to seek counsel elsewhere?”
Arland Turner cleared his throat and spoke delicately. “If what you say about your wife is true, then you would be putting these boys into harm’s way,” he said quite frankly. “Great harm.”
Drake twisted the gold wedding band around his finger. “Or putting It in great harm.”
Mr. Turner didn’t respond. He knew better.
“Now, I want you in Cottage Grove with contracts and cash in hand this week. Do you understand?”
A defeated breath slithered across miles of line, tailing off into a moment of tense silence. “I understand completely, sir,” Turner replied, contradicting his sigh. Papers rustled in the background. “I will ready the contracts and Gulfstream IV, keeping you updated as usual.”
“Excellent,” Drake replied curtly, hanging up and turning to a McDonald’s commercial with Michael Jordon and Larry Bird. “Sonofagun,” he muttered, picking up the remote and turning off the thirteen-inch TV the guards let him have for two thousand dollars. His gaze snagged on a calendar of a Colorado landscape hanging on the paint-chipped wall, its past days crossed out with large X’s. He twisted the gold wedding band around his finger, eyes a hundred miles from the thick stench of body odor and urine permeating the state prison around him. Exhaling a forlorn breath, he turned back to his dead wife’s picture and the hair went up on his arms. “We just might get out of here yet,” he whispered, heart beating faster with the incredulous discovery of something he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of for over two years.
Something empowering.
Something blooming in his gut.
Something called hope.
The end
Table of Contents
Scary House
Sean Thomas Fisher
For the young and the young at heart.
Contents
Chapter One
Present Day
Chapter Two
What The Human E
ye Can’t See
Chapter Three
PK Ripper
Chapter Four
We Have to Go Back
Chapter Five
Supernatural Chaos
Chapter Six
Believe Us Now?
Chapter Seven
Ghost Goggles
Chapter Eight
On the Lamb
Chapter Nine
Paranormal Waldo
Chapter Ten
Microfilm Rules!
Chapter Eleven
Deliver Us From Evil
Chapter Twelve
Country Home Magazine
Chapter Thirteen
Trailer Trash Father
Chapter Fourteen
The Haunting of Campbell House
Chapter Fifteen
Catching Out
Chapter Sixteen
Creamy Peach Roses
Chapter Seventeen
All Hallows’ Eve
Chapter Eighteen
The Recluse
Chapter Nineteen
Black Spandex
Chapter Twenty
Sonic and Ice Cream
Chapter Twenty-One
Finger-Fangs
Chapter Twenty-Two
Crucifaxe
Chapter Twenty-Three
Free Donuts and Coffee
Thank you for reading Scary House!
Hidden Chapter
Es El Diablo
Chapter Twenty-Five
I Didn’t Kill My Wife!
Scary House Page 22