Read Online The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman - Free Book Online Page A

there, of course. Just a boy on roller skates, cruising by with a bright orange hula hoop around his waist. Probably Tommy.
    Was she expecting somebody? She wasn’t even sixty yet, too young to be getting senile. She turned the porch light on, slotted the door chain in. That relaxed her a little.
    She opened the freezer and cracked grape juice ice cubes from the tray, plonked these into a glass. Poured grape juice a little too fast; a drop splashed up and dotted her white, flowered blouse.
    She wondered what was on the television, but a noise stopped her hand before she reached for the
TV Guide
. Had something shifted in the attic? It was such a faint sound she was tempted to disregard it. And yet it had not been a creak or a groan or any of the normal sounds an old house makes. Something had shifted. A box? She stood still with her ear cocked up toward the ceiling for a moment, then reached for the
TV Guide
, shaking her head at her skittishness.
    A creak now, coming from the second floor.
    She moved to where she could see the door to the attic in the hallway above the landing. As she watched, a black, rectangular mouth opened in the ceiling and the ladder came down. Her heart beat fast. A pair of white feet came down the rungs. What to do? Dirty toenails on those feet. Call the police? Get a knife from the kitchen? That was ridiculous, she could never stab a person. Not even the woman with the mousy hair who was now walking down the staircase as a pair of dirty work boots started down the attic rungs. So
that
was where thedirt on her rug had come from, she thought, realizing that her mind was fixing on anything it could to avoid the subject of the strangers in her house.
    The girl went around now, weasel-quick, and pulled all the curtains. Something bad was about to happen. She was in a crime, a real crime. She should yell for help but couldn’t. All she could make herself say was “What . . . ?” Her heart banged so hard in her chest she thought she might faint.
    That was when she got a good look at the owner of the work boots.
    She relaxed when she saw him, realized she recognized him, although it was hard to say from where.
    â€œHello?” she said.
    The man answered. Was it that man? The man who didn’t want breakfast? Her legs shook and she wondered again if she should go to the telephone, though now the woman had placed herself between Betsy and the kitchen.
    She didn’t look at the eyes of the woman, a skinny creature who smelled bad and looked like she’d have relations with anyone at all, but she did look at the man’s eyes.
    â€œAre you the man who didn’t want breakfast?” she said.
    He’d said he never ate breakfast, but it had been kind of her to ask.
    â€œYou were here this morning,” she said. “I let you in.”
    He thanked her for doing that. Told her it was nice to meet somebody unburdened by suspicion. Asked her to sit down. She did.
    She didn’t know why her chin was wet, but it was. Now she saw a tall man in a ball cap helping a confused-looking colored down the attic ladder. The colored had something in his hand. The bald man with the work boots told him to walk over to Betsy, saying he wanted to make introductions. The colored took the steps slowly, his minder behind him, holding his shoulders steady. Now he stood over her,swaying, empty-eyed, spit running out of his mouth. Should she get up and run? She wasn’t a very good runner.
    She remembered a little bit about these people. Someone had rung her doorbell at five in the morning; she remembered looking out the window to see who was there and then everything went hazy.
    She had forgotten them, just as they asked her to, but seeing them again jarred them back into memory.
    What had she done all day? Had she even left the house?
    Now she saw the dirty girl rooting under her sink, saw her stand up with Betsy’s biggest pot, the wide one she made pot roast in, saw her