Read Online House of Reckoning by John Saul - Free Book Online Page A

corner of the cafeteria, she spotted four students sitting at one end of a long—and otherwise empty—table. Her face burning as everyone watched, she hobbled through the maze of tables and chairs, almost tripping over a book bag someone shoved in front of her as she passed. Finally she set her tray at the opposite end from where the other kids were sitting and let her backpack slip off her shoulder onto the floor.
    The other kids at the table instantly rose to their feet, picked up their trays, and walked away.
    Sarah glanced around and saw that everyone in the cafeteria had seen what happened.
    She sat down but couldn’t make her trembling fingers open the milk carton.
    Then, after what seemed an eternity, the hum of conversation began to rise again as people found something else to do besides watch her.
    Except that now, she was sure, instead of staring at her, they were talking about her.
    It doesn’t matter, she told herself.
    Shutting out the hum of the chatter around her, and refusing to look anywhere but at the table in front of her, Sarah finally took a small bite of her sandwich.
    It tasted almost as bad as she felt.
    The perpetual storm inside Nick Dunnigan’s head fell suddenly quiet as he took the first bite of his lasagna, and for a moment the unfamiliar calm inside his head unnerved him. Then, without even looking around, he knew that the girl he’d seen at the door of the Garveys’ house yesterday had walked into the cafeteria.
    How did the voices know before he did?
    Nick felt a sudden urge to run to her, to cling to her, but all he managed to do was glance up from his solitary table at the back of the room. She looked every bit as awkward as he always felt as she struggled with her tray and her backpack while everyone else in the room just stared at her and wouldn’t even let her sit at their tables.
    The voices in his head began their mumbling again, and at first Nick couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. But as the girl went from table to table, searching for a place to set her tray down, and was being turned away from seat after seat, the voices began to whisper to him about what he should do to all the kids who were shutting her out.
    Nick’s palms began to sweat.
    And then she looked over at him, almost as if she knew he was watching her.
    And knew what was going on in his mind.
    Their eyes met and every nerve in Nick’s body tingled as if a jolt of electricity had just run through him.
    The voices in his head quieted, too, as if they as well as he had been shocked into silence.
    Shamed, he looked down, but prayed that she would come sit with him.
    She didn’t, of course.
    And the voices began discussing among themselves what they would do to each of the kids sitting at Tiffany Garvey’s table.
    Nick looked over at Tiffany, and her face seemed to melt before his eyes.
    Bonnie Shupe burst into flames and her agonizing screams tore through his mind as the flesh on her skull charred and flaked off.
    Across from Bonnie, Beth Armstrong’s head—severed by an invisible machete—toppled onto the table and rolled between the lunch trays, her blank eyes wide open and staring at the other girls.
    And inside Nick’s head the terrible voices screamed in glee at the mayhem they were showing him.
    Nick clamped his eyes closed, bent over so his head was as low as he could get it, and squeezed his temples with both hands.
    Stop, he silently begged. Leave me alone!
    He wanted to rip his hair out, but knew it wouldn’t help.
    He wanted to scream back at them, to order them to silence, butthe last time he did that, his father had taken him to the state hospital, where things were even worse than what went on in his head.
    He opened his eyes, staring down at his cold lasagna, wishing himself invisible to everyone around him, when another sound, sharp and intermittent, slashed through the cacophony in his mind.
    The alarm on his cell phone.
    Nick groped in his pocket for his phone, silenced it,