Copyright
© 2012 by Erica Morrison
ISBN: 9781456612498
All rights reserved. The reproduction or utilization of this work in whole in part, in any form by any print, electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of any copyrighted materials in any form. To do so is a violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
I stared out the living room window at the moving van across the street. A tall man built like an NFL linebacker was directing movers inside the house with dramatic gestures.
The house was an old three story Victorian known as “The Old Peterson Place”. It had been empty since before I was born. When my friends and I were younger we would creep up on the porch and look in the windows or try the doors and spook ourselves thinking we heard footsteps coming down the stairs.
The truth was the house was a big white house with peeling paint an overgrown yard, and a sad drooping porch, now that we were in Junior High my friends and I had given up on ghost hunting inside, and chalked it up to another old house that was too big for modern families.
I couldn’t help being a little excited though, my mom is a real busy body and on the Winslow Creek welcoming committee so I figured she’d send me over there with cookies or something and I’d finally get to see inside. I smiled thinking how jealous my two best friends, Sam, short for Samantha, and Jack would be.
I guess it was kind of weird Sam and I hung out so much, but I’d known her since we took swimming lessons together the summer before first grade. I tended to forget she was a girl; she never had any female friends, and turned her nose up at all the girly things our classmates did. I figured if she ever got into the whole nail polish lipstick thing we’d have to rethink things but I couldn’t see much danger of that any time soon.
Jack and I were friends due to a shared passion for video games. He was seriously the best at them of anyone I’d ever seen. He was also a pretty funny guy; he made a lot of jokes and kept everyone laughing. He had always been the fat kid in the class, but rarely got teased for it. Hard to pick on someone who either makes you laugh or gets to you first.
The three of us were all pretty psyched about starting junior high in two weeks. This summer had been abnormally hot and pretty lazy and we were all looking for something to fill the time. Who knows, maybe the new family would have kids; we could use some new blood. Winslow Creek was a really small town, and we only had about 50 kids in our class, and I’d known all of them since elementary school, what we needed was something to shake it up.
“Hey Ma?” I bellowed.
“What is it Cody?” She asked entering the room holding a wooden spoon. “And what did I tell you about yelling at people from another room?”
“Sorry Ma.” I said trying to look contrite. “Do you know anything about the people moving in?”
She smiled instantly warming to the subject, Mom’s a bit of a harmless gossip and loves to talk. “They are the last of the Peterson family, the people who built the house. You’re too young to remember but Ms. Peterson lived there until you were about three months old.”
I smirked. “Yeah Mom, my memories of that time are kind of hazy.”
“Very funny.” She said rolling her eyes. “Anyway Mr. Sassy Pants, that year Ms. Peterson had a stroke and went to live with her nephew in Florida, and as you know the house has been vacant ever since. Then about two weeks ago your Aunt Connie got a call from Mr. Thorne Peterson, saying that her needed the house prepared because he and his brother Earnest and his daughter Emily were going to be moving into the house by the end of summer.”
My Aunt Connie was real estate agents who also did property management and kept up a lot of the old houses in town that were awaiting renters are trying to be sold. She isn’t actually my aunt, but Mom’s best friend from collage. Mom was an only child like me so I think that’s why we get along so well. Dad was one of twelve kids and grew up on a farm. I find him a little harder to relate to, and holidays and my grandparent’s house on his side are crazy! All his brothers and sisters married and have kids of their own; it’s like trying to have a turkey dinner in a clown car.
“How old is the kid?”
“Emily is supposed to be thirteen. But Connie said she was being home schooled. She has some sort of illness, so she can’t really attend normal school. I am actually baking some cookies right now and I thought we could bring them over tomorrow and meet the neighbors. Sound good?”
I shrugged. See told you Mom was going to want to go over there. “Sure, are any of those cookies ready yet?”
“I might have a couple coming out. You interested?”
I laughed and followed Mom into the kitchen.
Last year my parents remodeled the kitchen and I loved it. It was always sort of an ugly mustard yellow and brown, like the kitchen in one of those 1970’s TV. reruns. Now it was a light yellow with awesome stainless steel appliances and best of all a center island that got tons of sunlight from a big bay window. I sat there a lot to do homework, veg out, or in this case chow down on soft Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.
Mom actually taught cooking a couple nights a week at the local community college and she was awesome at it. My favorite was last year she taught this crazy cake decorating class so my Dad and I came home to cake every night. The best one was the monster cupcakes with candy corn teeth and sugar claws in red velvet cake. Gruesomely awesome!
After I packed away a couple cookies and a glass of milk I went upstairs to hang out in my room until dinner. My room had a big window seat that I sat in a lot to read and listen to music and it had a great view of the house across the street.
The workmen were still moving things in and the chunky guy in the suite had been replaced by an impossibly tall thin man. He had shaggy brownish hair and baggy clothing that made him look like a scarecrow. He turned around and looked right up at my window, like he could feel my eyes on him. I started and twitched the curtain shut. The man’s eyes had been a strange grey color, almost white, and he was deathly pale. I felt a shiver down my spine and took a couple
