Read Online Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes by Jack Lewis - Free Book Online

There was a sign planted in the mud that read ‘For sale.’
     
    “Maybe we should pretend to be
buyers,” I said.
     
    “Maybe you should talk less and
listen more,” said Jeremiah.
     
    He reached out and gave three sharp
knocks on the door. The doorframe rattled as if it were shaking from the
physical contact. Footsteps tapped toward us and the door opened with a creak.
A man stood in the doorway with a questioning look on his face.
     
    His skin was smooth but it was
coloured as grey as his sparse hair. His eyes were large but seemed vacant,
like glass eyes floating in water. It was as if different parts of his body
aged at different speeds. He was a man who had turned old well before  his
time.
     
    “Yes?” he said. There was no warmth
to his voice, but nor was it cold. It just was.
     
    More footsteps walked toward us and a
woman joined him at the doorway.
     
    “Who is it, Pete?”
     
    The woman’s forehead was creased and
her skin bore lines of age, though she had done her best to plaster over them.
At first glance she seemed to be much older than the man, but I realised it was
because of how she was dressed. She wore a cardigan that trailed down her arms
and spilled onto her hands, and her blouse looked like it came from the over
sixties section in Marks and Spencer’s. It was her eyes that gave her away.
There was a youth in them that seemed to fight against the tide of age, as
though they were rocks that the sea of time couldn’t move.
     
    Pete looked at his wife. Again, no
warmth in his eyes.
     
    “Don’t know, they haven’t said a word
yet.”
     
    “Sorry to bother you,” said Jeremiah.
“Wondered if we could use  your toilet?”
     
    Peter jerked his head back. “What?”
     
    “We saw the sign,” I said, and jerked
my thumb back to the ‘for sale’ sign. “We’re thinking of buying in this area
and wondered if we could take a look around.”
     
    The woman scratched behind her ears.
“We’re not really ready for visitors…”
     
    Peter gave his wife a sharp look. “If
they’re interested in buying let them have a look.”
     
    His tone was urgent, as if to say ‘ they
might buy this hovel from us’. There was desperation in his face.
     
    Sharon and Peter stepped away from
the doorway. Peter gave a smile that didn’t sit true on his face, and staring
at it made me feel uneasy. I avoided looking at him as I squeezed passed him
and walked into the house.
     
    The air in the house was stale. It
smelt sweaty and damp, like a towel left in a gym bag. Things were neat and
seemed to be in their place, but little things betrayed a mess that hid under
the surface. A cobweb hung from a smoke detector and drifted in the breeze. A
fly lay dead on the windowsill. A circular red stain was ingrained in the
carpet. It stuck out underneath a chair that had obviously been moved to hide
it.
     
    We sat on the Jenkins’s sofa. Pete
went into the kitchen to make us a cup of tea while Sharon sat in front of us,
her lips pursed as if she thought of what to say. I had some questions of my
own. The death register named the girl as Emily Jenkins, and her parents were
Peter and Sharon Jenkins. This couple had called each other by those names, so
there was no doubt we were in the right house. But as I looked around me, I
didn’t see anything that betrayed the existence of their child. No drawings
from school, no photos to remember her by. 
     
    Maybe it had just been too painful.
Sometimes your brain flinches at the things it sees, and bad memories, no
matter how many years you put behind them, still prick you. Get enough of these
and it’s like death by a thousand cuts, your brain bleeds away and you become
hollow. Maybe this was the only way the Jenkins family could cope with their
tragedy. I wondered what the hell Jeremiah and I were doing. Intruding on their
grief just seemed wrong.
     
    “So you two are buying around here?”
said Sharon.
     
    Jeremiah gave a slight nod. From the
grumpy