The Dead Husband by Carter Wilson (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

to shower before I lose all motivation.

After the shower, I brush my hair out, knowing I’ll sleep on it wet and it’ll be a tangled mess in the morning. I put on an oversize Nirvana T-shirt and heavy sweatpants with the Tufts logo on the left leg. Tufts is Cora’s first-choice college, and Dad bought us both a pair. Cora wants to stay close to home. My ideal school is located anywhere that requires a flight from here.

I end up choosing a book over a TV show. Stephen King’s Insomnia, which is the latest in my collection of his. Another beast of a novel, nearly seven hundred pages. I’m a hundred in and like it but don’t love it. There’s plenty of story left for that to change.

The house is silent, and as happens every now and then, I might not see any of my family tonight. I’m completely comfortable all alone, often preferring it that way. I sometimes think I’m going to be like my father when I’m an adult. A solitary animal.

I’ve read about thirty more pages when that comforting sense of solitude turns into fear, without warning or reason. Nothing has changed except the thoughts in my mind. My coziness is now a chill. The silence has become a weight on my chest.

Why does my brain have to become a weapon against me?

I cast an eye down at the book in my lap.

Damn you, Stephen King.

I close the book.

The clock tells me it’s a few minutes after nine.

I get up, knowing everything is fine but realizing I never set the house alarm. If I’m going to be alone as I fall asleep, I’m setting the alarm. Bury is safe, but I’m not jinxing anything.

I trot down the stairs from the third floor past the second, my feet cool against the hardwood steps. I catch a sudden scent on the final flight of stairs, a wisp of perfume.

Cora. She’s wearing Calvin Klein’s CK One, and its aroma is unmistakable.

Her room is on the second floor. My father’s, on the main level. The fact that we all live on different levels of the house sums up our family perfectly. Comfortable. Distant. Wasteful.

I stop my descent.

“Cora?”

No response. Just the heavy silence from before. Maybe even heavier.

I wait for a moment. Two. Three. Four.

I’ll check her room on the way back up.

Down to the first floor. Night has finally arrived, so I flip the switch for the chandelier that hangs over the foyer. Light pierces, cold and harsh. I make my way to the alarm keypad, just on the inside of the massive front door.

The alarm. It’s on. Set to Stay.

I don’t know why this unnerves me. Clearly either my dad or Cora came home and set the alarm when I was in the shower. No one called upstairs or came to my room to say hello, but that’s not a shock. Sometimes I go two or three days without seeing my father.

I’ll go and see if Cora’s here. Must be her.

I turn around and start heading back up, leaving the chandelier light on. Someone else can turn it off later; I don’t want to be in the dark anymore.

Halfway up the first flight of steps, it happens.

The scream.

An awful, primal, visceral scream.

It’s not Cora. The tone is deeper.

It…it sounds like a man.

I’m frozen in total and absolute fear. The sound of the doorbell would have been enough to set me off, but the scream exists beyond my ability to reason. This must be a dream. I fell asleep with that stupid King book, and now I’m having a nightmare.

But I know that’s not really true, which is the worst part of all.

No dream is as real as this.

The scream stops as quickly as it started, but it echoes in my mind. I don’t know which way to go. Up the stairs? That’s where the scream came from. Or down?

Cora.

Oh my god, something’s happening to Cora.

I have to move. I have to do something.

But my limbs are locked, a rigor mortis of fear.

I squeeze my eyes closed for a second and tell myself this: Push through the fear. This is the kind of moment that defines who you are. Who you’ll be for the rest of your life, no matter how long or short it may be.

My legs suddenly unlock, as if I suddenly touched a live electrical wire and reanimated. I race up the stairs to the second floor. I pause and flip on the hallway light switch. Five can lights blaze from above, illuminating the long second-floor hallway that ends at Cora’s bedroom.

I’m thirty feet away from her closed door but can hear a fresh volley of noises coming from behind it. Groaning mixed with short, staccato shouting. It doesn’t sound like Cora. It sounds like…

Like a monster.

My fear of opening that door is only quelled by my need to help my sister. I’m just about to race down the hallway when Cora’s bedroom door opens.

A man.

No, not a man.

A boy. Teenager.

And…I know him. His face is distorted in terror, but I still recognize him.

He goes to my school. A senior, like Cora.

He spots me and his eyes widen, then he extends his arms as if he’s bobbing in a stormy sea and I’m a life raft just out of reach.

His name is Caleb. Caleb Benner.

His body is soaked in blood. White T-shirt. Bare arms. Crotch of his jeans.

All blood.

He lunges toward me. Stumbling on unsteady feet. Bloodied right hand printing the wall as he tries to keep from falling.

“Help me.”

His voice is a gurgle.

The rigor mortis sets in again. I’m unable to move as he scrambles down the hallway toward me.

Then I see her.

Cora, in the doorway. Materializes like a ghost.

And this thing. This tiny little thing that’s scarier than the blood or the gurgling, the lunging or the prints. Even more horrifying than the scream.

It’s the smile.

Cora’s smiling. Gentle, genuine.

As if posing for her yearbook photo.

Thirty-One

October 31

Present Day

I’m not in a festive mood, but when you’re