The Guest House Hauntings Boxset by Hazel Holmes (novel books to read txt) 📕

socks, gently touching the icy scales that shimmered on her heel, which had transformed her pale flesh to a frost blue. It was the only proof of her supernatural experience at the Bell mansion, but the doctors had dismissed it as frostbite.

Ghosts, demons, spirits, curses. The words swirled in her head and consumed her thoughts. She had run this far north to avoid trouble, not be caught smack in the middle of it. She ran her fingers through her blonde pixie cut and shut her eyes.

She hadn’t asked for this life. She had been born and then thrust into a situation in which she was forced to fight for her life every day. Growing up, she’d always hated the kids with two parents and a stable home. She hated them because she envied them. She would have paid any price to have that security, to feel loved, to lay her head down at night in her own bed and not have to worry about whether she was going to eat the next day or if her foster parents would beat her.

The past week on the road had been exhausting, but they were nothing compared to the past few days. Sarah wanted nothing more than to stop and rest, but she knew that if the cops had run her license through the system, then Brent would find out about it. The bastard had people everywhere, and he wasn’t someone who let things go. She needed to leave before he was able to track her down.

Before donning her shirt and pants, Sarah shut off the machines monitoring her vitals, and then plucked the sensors off her chest and fingers. She’d tried ripping them off before, but the devices beeped in alarm and brought the nurses to her room. Turning them off completely might raise some internal flag, but for the time being she was in the clear.

Dressed in her Carhartt jacket, jeans, and boots, Sarah reached for her backpack and positioned its straps over her shoulders.

“Sarah.”

The whisper tickled her ear, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she spun around, but the room was empty.

Disoriented, Sarah blinked a few times, shaking the voice from her thoughts. She had already watched the woman die, killed by that… thing. It couldn’t have followed her here, could it?

Sarah shut her eyes and whispered to herself. “It’s nothing. Just walk out the door and leave.” She nodded a few times to affirm her resolve and then spun around.

She opened her eyes on the turn and gasped as she stumbled backward into the foot of the bed. Blocking the doorway was a woman dressed in an old white gown that covered her skin from neck to ankle.

The woman pressed a slender finger to her pale lips, her skin whiter than Sarah’s but her cheeks dotted with clusters of freckles. She smiled, her thin lip drawn tight and nearly disappearing from her face. She was pretty, but it was the bright-red hair that flowed behind her in long, wavy strands that made her beautiful.

Sarah frowned, slowly gathering her nerves. She swallowed, finding her mouth dry. “Who the hell are you?”

“I was sent to help you.” The woman smiled. She was tall, close to six feet. She was lanky too, her arms and legs too large for her frame. “So you can help us.”

Sarah shook her head. “No. I’m not going back to that house. I’m done, you hear me?”

“You’ve been marked, Sarah.” The redhead glanced down to the foot with the icy scales. “He won’t let you leave now.”

“Look, I’m sorry to whatever happened to you, but I have my own problems,” Sarah said.

“You’ve always run, Sarah.” The redhead’s voice began to fade. “That’s all you’ve ever done since you were a little girl. But if you want to survive this, if you want to make it out alive, then you must face it. You must find the orb in the house.”

“I told you I’m done.” Sarah spun around and headed toward the door.

“She’s sacrificed herself to save you.”

Sarah stopped abruptly. Her stomach soured as she slowly turned around.

“Maggie sacrificed her soul so you could escape the house, so you could save those that have been damned.” The redhead slowly floated toward Sarah. “Can you really just walk away from that responsibility?”

Sarah grimaced. “People have walked away from me my whole life. It’s just how it is.”

Saddened, the redhead faded with her voice. “You’re the last soul he needs. Save us, and you save yourself. It’s… the… on…ly……” And then she was gone, disappearing as quickly and mysteriously as she had arrived.

Sarah reached into the space where the ghost had been but felt nothing. She rubbed her fingertips together, contemplating the redhead’s words. But the Bell mansion wasn’t her problem anymore. She needed to move.

But before she left, Sarah remembered the letters in her backpack, the ones she found on the forbidden fifth floor. She removed them from her backpack and set them on the table. Maybe the cops could use them in their investigation. She didn’t want to have anything to do with that house again.

At the doorway, Sarah slowly craned her neck around the doorframe. The authorities had stationed a deputy to guard her room, but Sarah spotted him at the end of the hall with his back turned, flirting with a woman at the nurse’s station.

With the pair distracted, Sarah hurried in the opposite direction and followed the emergency exit signs to a stairwell that dumped her out onto the side of the building and into the cold night air.

Thick woods backed up against the hospital, and Sarah followed the narrow strip of concrete that separated the two until it fed her out into the front parking lot.

She adjusted the straps of her pack and then flipped the collar of her Carhartt jacket, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone in the lot. But the late hour and small town offered little traffic. With some distance between herself and the