Brain Child Page 0,133
responded, slewing around Lisa, charging across the pavement, leading for the ditch and the wall of the ravine beyond.
Straighten it out!
He spun the wheel the other way.
Too far.
The car burst through the guardrail and hurtled over the edge of the ravine.
“Lisaaaa …”
Now Alex needs a miracle and thanks to a brilliant doctor, Alex comes back from the brink of death. He seems the same, but in his heart there is a coldness. And if his friends and family could see inside his brain, they would be terrified.…
HELLFIRE
Pity the dead … one hundred years ago eleven innocent lives were taken in a fire that raged through the mill. That day the iron doors slammed shut—forever. Now, the powerful Sturgiss family of the sleepy town of Westover, Massachusetts is about to unlock those doors to the past. Now comes the time to pray for the living.
The silence of the building seemed to gather around her, and slowly Beth felt the beginnings of fear.
And it wasn’t just her friends.
Her eyes shifted away from the group of children gathered around the computer to the small grandstand that faced the pool from the other side.
Sitting on the benches were at least fifty of the college students, and they were watching her, too.
Amy felt herself burning with embarrassment. Were all these people really here just to watch her? But why? What was going to happen?
Behind her, she heard Hildie’s voice. “Are you all right, Amy? Do you want to go ahead?”
What Amy wanted to do was fall through the concrete and have the earth swallow her up. Why were all these people here? Why wasn’t it just the kids in the seminar, who were at least people she knew? And what would happen if she turned around and ran back into the locker room?
They would laugh at her.
All of them. They would know she was a coward, and even though they might not laugh out loud, inside they would be laughing at her.
Tonight, in the dining room, she would hear the clucking as all the rest of the kids made chicken sounds.
Even her friends would laugh at her, and she would feel just like she had back in public school, when everyone acted as if she was some kind of freak or something.
No!
She wouldn’t let it happen. Somehow, she would get through it.
She took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “I—I’m okay,” she managed to say, but even she could hear the trembling in her voice. “I just didn’t—who are all those people?”
Hildie smiled reassuringly at her. “They’re from one of the psychology classes. Dr. Engersol invited them to watch the experiment.”
“But he didn’t tell me,” Amy wailed.
Sensing what was going through the little girl’s
She listened, and after a moment, as the darkness began closing in on her, the sound repeated itself.
Panic surged through her. All her instincts told her to run, to flee back up the stairs and out into the daylight. But when she tried to move, her legs refused to obey her, and she remained where she was, paralyzed.
Once again the sound came. This time, though it was almost inaudible, Beth thought she recognized a word.
“Beeetthh …”
Her name. It was as if someone had called her name.
“D-Daddy?” she whispered again. “Daddy, is that you?”
There was another silence, and Beth strained once more to see into the darkness surrounding her.
In the distance, barely visible, she thought she could see a flickering of light.
And then she froze, her voice strangling as the sound came again, like a winter wind sighing in the trees.
“Aaaammmyyyy …”
Beth gazed fearfully into the blackness for several long seconds. Then, when the sound was not repeated, her panic began to subside. At last she was able to speak again, though her voice still trembled. “Is someone there?”
In the far distance, the light flickered again, and she heard something else.
Footsteps, approaching out of the darkness.
The seconds crept by, and the light bobbed nearer.
And once more, the whispering voice, barely audible, danced around her.
“Aaaammmyy …”
For Beth Rogers, the voice seems like a nightmare, yet not even a little girl’s fears can imagine the unearthly fury that awaits her in the old, deserted mill. Soon all of Westover will be prey to the forces of darkness that wait beyond those padlocked doors.
THE UNWANTED
Cassie Winslow, lonely and frightened, has come to False Harbor, Cape Cod to live with her father—whom she barely knows—and his family. For Cassie, the strange, unsettling dreams that come to her suddenly are merely the beginning … for very