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

Black paint had been used in the lettering, and the wooden plank that it had been written on had faded to a dull gray, making it unreadable from inside the car. So Dell unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out.

With the headlights from the cruiser illuminating his path, Dell dropped to a knee in front of the sign and wiped away some of the crud that had collected over the wood’s surface. Beneath it, he found the doctor’s address.

Dell looked down the road that the sign marked and found that its path was even narrower and less maintained than the dirt road behind him.

Back in the car, Dell reversed a few feet and then carefully turned down the narrow path, which climbed upward on a steep incline. The cruiser’s tires slipped multiple times on the way up, the seatbelt over Dell’s chest tightening with every jerk, and twice the decline backward nearly resulted in contact with one of the thick maples that lined the road. But Dell maintained a slow and steady pace, and eventually the gravel gave way to more compacted dirt, which allowed for a smoother ride.

Maintaining a crawling pace forward, Dell kept his eyes peeled for any other signs or roads that veered off his path. But the longer he drove up the hillside and through the forest the more his confidence shrank.

The address Faye had pulled from the system was three years old, which meant that the doctor could have moved somewhere else. It wasn’t uncommon for the elderly to flock south, selling off everything they owned, and disappear to warmer weather without notifying the appropriate agencies of their departure. It was an easy way for them to avoid certain tax payments.

A lot of them also rented out their houses through the winter and fall to tourists, which helped pay for their tiny beach condos down in Florida. So the possibility that Dell was about to walk into a winter-break holiday party with a house crammed full with wasted college kids was just as likely as waking up an old man from his bed in the dead of night.

The rough path continued for another mile, and just when Dell was about to find a spot to turn around, he saw a break in the path ahead, and beyond that break was a shimmer of taillights.

Dell breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the truck was parked at the end of a long drive, blocking the path toward a small cottage nestled quaintly in a grove of trees.

With no sign of a family or college kids inhabiting the place, Dell parked his cruiser directly behind the truck in the long drive.

Dell’s vision adjusted to the darkness, the features of the forest taking shape as he scanned his surroundings on the walk toward the front door.

Leaves rustled from a steady breeze coming down from the northwest. The cold stiffened Dell’s movements. He kept one hand on his service pistol, the strap over the handle already unbuckled in case he needed to draw quickly.

The windows of the cottage were darkened, and the closer Dell moved toward the house, the more he saw its age and imperfections. The rain gutters were clogged and overflowing with leaves, and the small plot of land that had been cleared in the trees was overgrown with grass and weeds.

A three-foot-high, rusted iron fence surrounded the house, a lattice with dying ivy leaves crawling over it acting as a sort of bridged entrance. The gate’s hinges groaned as Dell entered, and a few critters scattered from the untouched landscape.

The grass was so overgrown that there wasn’t even a worn path from the gate to the front door. He approached warily and checked the window to the left of the door. The view was limited, the interior even darker than outside.

Unsure if anyone was even home, Dell pounded his fist on the door, rattling the old wood and ending the quaint silence of the forest. “Doctor Wagner, Redford Police Department. Open up!”

Dell waited for a response or the flick of a light but saw no movement inside the house. He peered through the window again, hoping to see an elderly figure heading his way, but there was nothing. He pounded on the door again.

“Doctor Wagner, this is Deputy Dell Parker with the Redford Sheriff’s Department!” With his hand still on the handle of his service pistol, he stepped back, examining the sides of the house, and then looked back toward the truck down the worn drive.

Dell pounded again. “Doctor Wag—”

A light flicked on, and mumbled groans penetrated the sleepy, sagging walls of the cottage, followed by the noisy turn of the lock. The door opened only a crack, and Dell stepped back when he saw that he was staring down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun, held by an old man with a walker standing in front of him.

“What do you want?” Doctor Wagner asked, his expression a snarl ensnared by hundreds of wrinkles that puckered his face like a raisin.

Dell slowly raised his hands, knowing the old man’s bark was worse than his bite. “I’m Deputy Dell—”

“I already heard that,” Doctor Wagner spat from behind the crack of his door. “I’m old and immobile, not deaf and dumb. What do you want?”

Dell stared at the shotgun. “Do you mind lowering the weapon, sir?”

Wagner grunted and reluctantly complied with the request. He opened the door and set the shotgun in the corner near the entrance, both hands now gripping a silver walker that looked as fragile as the man who used it for support.

“Thank you,” Dell answered. “May I come inside?”

“Fine.” Wagner spun around, shuffling toward the kitchen as Dell entered the foyer. “I was finally drifting off to sleep when you started pounding on my door!” He flicked on a light as he entered the kitchen, Dell watching him through the tiny cutout in the wall overlooking the sink. “You know how difficult