Read Online House by Frank Peretti - Free Book Online Page B

his shadow extending behind him as he stood mesmerized, wondering, guessing—but only for an instant.
    Whoever was driving that old heap opened the throttle. The vehicle lurched forward, accelerating up the flagstone walk.
    Right for the front door.
    â€œLook out! Look out!”
    They scattered to the left and right, running for cover, knocking things over, tripping in the shadows and smoke.
    Jack was close to the dining room and fled in that direction, the headlights burning against his back, his frantic shadow running in front of him.
    The engine’s roar, the smashing and splintering of lumber, the screech of metal, the shattering of glass, the crunching of wallboard, trim, and fixtures, all melded into one bone-jarring, earsplitting crash as the truck climbed the steps, leaped over the veranda, and punched its way through the front wall of the house. Jack heard screams as he dived and hit the table as bits of wallboard, shards of vases, and a spray of rotten food rained down on him from a roiling cloud of plaster dust.
    The skewed lights from the truck flickered, then died.
    â€œStephanie!” he yelled.
    He pulled his feet under him and stood, unsteady, unsure which direction the foyer was. Turning, squinting, searching through the dark and dust, he sighted a fuzzy center of orange light bouncing and swinging in the haze. He followed it, stumbling on debris.
    â€œLeslie!” Randy called, the light moving about in the murk as Randy searched. “Leslie!”
    â€œOver here,” came Leslie’s voice.
    The light zipped across Jack’s vision, across the foyer into the dining room.
    â€œYou’re bleeding,” Randy cried.
    â€œStephanie!” Jack called. “Are you all right?”
    â€œI’m okay,” she answered, and then he saw her emerge as out of a fog, meeting him in the middle of the foyer. He held her and, under the circumstances, she let him.
    The oil lamp returned to the foyer, floating in the cloud, held high in Randy’s hand. Randy was helping Leslie along with his other arm. She held a hanky to her forehead. A trickle of blood stained her right cheek, a mirror twin to the cut she’d sustained during dinner.
    â€œI’m all right,” she kept insisting, as if trying to convince herself. “I’m all right. It’s just a scratch.”
    Randy turned his lamp toward the damage. The front doorway was gone—no frame, no door, no lintel. Shards of glass, splintered molding, broken pottery, and dashed houseplants lay everywhere; puzzle pieces of wallboard dangled from shreds of wallpaper. In place of the door was the battered, crumpled nose of a brown truck, its windshield cracked like a collage of spiderwebs, the roof collapsed, the fenders folded back, the headlights broken and walleyed. Steam hissed from the radiator as water trickled onto the hardwood.
    Randy let go of Leslie. “Where’s the shotgun?”
    Nobody saw it.
    Randy spun, casting the lamplight in all directions. The dust was still thick in the air. “Where’s the shotgun?”
    He held the lamp high, letting the light penetrate the crack-webbed windshield and the collapsed cab.
    No sign of the driver.
    For several long seconds they stood in the gritty air with the taste of dust in their mouths and the pricking particles in their eyes—staring, disbelieving, and then realizing that the front wall had sagged and closed around the hulk of the truck, sealing off the exit.
    Jack could read in their silence what he was feeling himself: the game had not ended. If anything, it was just beginning. “I think we should try to find that shotgun.”
    â€œFind the shotgun,” Randy said, starting to search again.
    â€œLooking for this?” came a rumbling voice out of the haze.
    The other lamp came their way from the living room, illuminating two ghostly, furrowed faces. Betty was holding the light. Stewart was holding the shotgun, loading