Read Online Malice by Robert Cote - Free Book Online

rang.
    Lysander turned to head for class “Sam, you’re the best!”

Chapter 12
     
     
    Derek hobbled up the creaky stairs of the old McMurphy house in search of a bathroom, in the back of his mind wondering whether Lysander was all right. Of course he is, he chided himself. He’s with Sam.
    He reached the top and surveyed his surroundings. A hallway stretched out before him. He spied a room at the end, and for some reason Derek wasn’t sure why, he hated that room. It seemed to be pulling away from him, retracting like some living organism. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise into hackles. An odd noise was trickling out from the edges of the closed door, like the sound of hissing static on a radio.
    But this house hasn’t had power in years, right?
    That was when he remembered the dream he’d had last night. He was being attacked by a shark, its teeth gnashing the air inches from his face. He could see rotting flesh between its teeth, with a smell like a slaughterhouse on a hot summer’s day. But it hadn’t really been a shark. No, it had been a man, he was sure of that now—with pointed teeth, milky, pupiless orbs for eyes and his face, painted up to look like a circus clown.
    Derek stopped before the door at the end of the hall and he pressed his ear against the decaying wood. Silence. He turned the handle and pushed the door open. He had the overwhelming feeling that he was being lured inside, that something had been conspiring from the moment he had ascended the staircase. Or maybe even before that.
    The room was dark, lit by a single octagonal stained-glass window which bathed the room in a red glow. The corners were wreathed in cobwebs.
    Doesn’t every soggy house need at least one dry room? he wondered nervously.
    On Derek’s right were the torn-out guts of an old bed. Near the bed was an old dusty fireplace. Furniture was piled everywhere. Derek found his attention drawn toward an old rolltop desk in the corner. He went to it and pushed the top up. It slid open easily enough. The desk was filled with papers, some of them see-sawing to the ground around him.
    How old was this stuff? he wondered vaguely.
    Older than his parents had been when they died. His fingers registered something hard lying amongst the loose pages. He pulled it out. It was a journal of some kind. He fanned open the pages, kicking up a cloud of dust. Derek let out several violent sneezes. He wiped his hand against the back of his pants and peeled the cover back. When he saw who the book belonged to, it nearly dropped from his hands. At the top of page one, in highly stylized script, was the owner’s name.
     
    James Andre Patrick McMurphy
    A door somewhere slammed shut. The noise startled Derek so much that he nearly slipped on the loose papers piled at his feet.
    Lysander? Sam?
    He fought back the urge to call out their names. What if it wasn’t one of them? He crammed the journal down the back of his pants and crept along the hallway and down the stairs to where he kept his things. Someone was in the house. He could hear them clearly, shuffling about in the back somewhere. He gathered what little he had and threw the rest into the green sleeping bag. He tossed that into the closet by the foot of his bed. Derek was under no pretense that he was the world’s smartest person, but he knew enough to cover his tracks. He was pulling on his grease-stained jeans and shirt when he heard footsteps in the room next to him. He withdrew to the front door, his heart climbing into his throat. He pushed it open and closed it carefully behind him. Then he took off at a full run. Less than two paces away, his foot sank into the rotted hole in the front porch and sent him careening ass over teakettle. He tripped mostly because he had caught sight of the police cruiser parked out front, its engine still ticking down.
    Despite the searing pain in his shoulder as he landed, he was on his feet a second later, racing past the cruiser. He