Read Online Where the Dead Talk by Ken Davis - Free Book Online

at, hoping that his younger brother might have escaped to it – it was empty. He’d left his pack there – the straps had dug deep into his shoulders – and went to the river again, and followed it south to his uncle’s.
    He ducked back behind the building and followed the wall until he pushed in the back door, slipped inside. Stepping around the gears and large wooden axle that the wheel drove, he found the wall with the tools, hung on pegs. He pulled down a lantern and lit it, then went through to the house. The entryway was all angles and shadows and silence. The hissing of the lantern was loud. He walked from room to room. His shadow spun up behind him on the walls and ceilings, following. It didn’t look as if anyone had been there for days.
    He stopped outside of the back study as a piece of glass crunched under his foot. In the room, shattered glass was strewn across the floor; the window was knocked in. He knelt down. A few scratches marred the boards, but he found no blood or signs of what might have happened to his uncle. He went to the stairs. In the lantern light, a clump of soil sat on the second step. It was dry, with a tuft of grass still on one side. He started up and found more bits of earth as he went. The narrow stairway took a ninety-degree turn to the right. Coming up to the floor level above, Jonathon stopped. The hallway led straight back, the far end heavy with shadow. Rooms opened off of the hallway; a bench and a chest filled the landing space next to the top of the stairs. A foul odor hung in the hallway. The doors were all closed, but for the last one on the right.
    "Uncle Joseph?" he said.
    Silence. A breeze stirred against his face. There was a window at the very end of the hallway, he knew. It was open. The lantern didn’t cut the darkness that far down the hall. Another three steps and he stood at the top. He wrinkled his nose. The smell was strong, wet clay with an unpleasant undertone like rotting meat. Mud was tracked on the floor. He took a few steps down the hallway, the lantern out in front of him.
    Something slid across a floorboard behind one of the closed doors.
    Jonathon jerked the lantern. The sound had come from one of the rooms on the left. The first room was his cousin Nathan’s; the room was disheveled. Blankets were thrown across the floor, and the bed was flipped on its side. The window was open. Dried dirt smudged the sill. The lantern flickered in the wind from outside. Below, the yard swept down to the slow moving waters after the falls. He turned and looked over the room. Other than disturbed blankets and bed, it was empty. Back at the door, he stopped, listening. A rustle of cloth came from the hallway. Jonathon poked his head out. Nothing moved. He crossed the hall to the door opposite, then bowed his head and listened. Hearing nothing, he opened the door. A narrow closet shared the space with the bricks of the chimney from below. Folded cloth lined a shelf. Boots were arranged on the floor next to a pile of candles.
    A thud came from behind him. The skin on his neck began to tighten. He wanted suddenly to get out of the house, to run. Like a swift change in air pressure before a fast summer storm, the atmosphere in the house shifted. He looked toward the stairs. The chest on the landing was open, its lid leaning back against the railing behind it; it had been closed when he’d come up the stairs. Then he saw it: a figure sat with his back to the rail, shoulders hunched, the face a pale dough above dirty clothes. He raised his head and Jonathon yelled. It was his uncle Joseph, dark circles around his eyes and mouth, his skin a drained white. His eyes shone in the light of the lantern with a glimmer of cold quicksilver.
    "I had naught to lose," he said, his voice dirt-choked, "because we already lost everything at the burning, when it settled on us. On me, on you."
    "Uncle Joseph?" Jonathon said.
    The figure began to lean forward, to get slowly to his feet, moving