A Place So Wicked by Patrick Reuman (life books to read txt) 📕

as well, she suspected. How many families had fallen victim to this place? She didn’t want to imagine.

The time to leave for the doctors was quickly approaching. She headed upstairs to wake everybody. She thought she may need help getting Trevor and Robbie up, so she went to her parents first. They both lay there, apparently asleep. She approached her mother’s side of the bed. Her eyes were closed, her skin pale. Paisley placed her hand on her mother’s shoulder and shook lightly. Her head bobbled lifelessly.

“Mom?” she said. “It’s time to wake up.”

Paisley shook her again, this time a little harder.

“Mom, please wake up.”

Her mother’s eyes opened but rolled back, glossing over. She was alive but barely, it seemed. She hurried around the bed to her dad’s side and shook him, much harder than she had her mother. His eyes opened, but they were blank, as if empty of something she couldn’t fully understand.

“Dad, wake up. There’s something wrong with Mom!”

His eyes continued to look but not see, staring into hers but somewhere else altogether. Terror was welling up inside her. She pulled out her phone and clicked on Toby’s name but then stopped, her finger hovering over the call button. What if she called him and interrupted something? What if her call somehow spoiled their plan to find the key? Or worse?

She noticed the time on her phone. It was already past when they were supposed to be at the doctors. But how? Had they really missed their chance for help? It seemed like she had just gone upstairs to wake everybody up. Her mind was hazy, the smell of the house seeming to get worse by the second now. Panic was setting in.

A phone rang, the jingle startling her. She hurried over to the stand where her mother’s phone vibrated loudly. Doctor’s Office read across the screen. She grabbed it quickly, tapped the answer button, and thrust it to her face.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello, Mrs. Cunningham,” a woman’s voice said. “We wanted to check in because you’re late to your appointment.”

“I need help!” Paisley said. “My parents won’t get up.”

“All right, stay calm.”

The phone blinked and then at the upper corner of the screen, a little battery symbol flashed red. The phone was dying. Paisley glanced around for the charger but saw it wasn’t there. It must have been sitting this way all night at least, who knows how long before that.

“Are you there?”

Paisley put the phone back to her ear. “Yes, I’m here.” The battery symbol glowed again and then the entire screen went dim. “The phone’s going to die. I have to take them to the hospital.”

“No!” the woman shouted. “Don’t leave.”

Paisley wasn’t sure what the lady meant. Before she could ask, the phone flashed and said Powering Off before the screen went fully black. She stood there staring at the darkened screen for a long moment as if trying to will it back to life. She finally snapped out of it and set the phone back on the stand. She had no idea why the woman had told her to stay there, but she couldn’t. If she didn’t get them all help now, she didn’t want to even imagine what would happen.

With adrenaline coursing through her veins, she pulled the blanket off her parents, sat her mom up, turned her to the side, wrapped her mother’s arm around her shoulder, and lifted her from the bed. Her mother groaned words, but they were unintelligible, muffled, jumbled things. She opened the door with her free hand and dragged her mother out into the hall.

Paisley’s warm breath became white clouds as it exited her into the suddenly cold air. The stench was so heavy now, even more so than it had seemed literally seconds earlier. Only, now, something seemed to be different about it. Something horribly different. The smell wasn’t only coming from the house but her mother as well. It was coming off her in waves of decay, as if everything inside her was already dead and her mind just wasn’t aware of it yet.

Tears flowed, washing over her eyes until everything before her was nothing but a watery blur. Paisley almost tripped as she carried her mother down the stairs, but they made it, reaching the front door in one piece. The vehicle was left unlocked, so all she had to do was pop the door open and lay her mother down on the back seat. She tried to sit her up, but she kept laying right back down.

Realizing she was wasting far too much time, she let her mom lay down and hurried back inside. Her dad was exactly how she had left him. Bringing him down to the car was even more difficult because he was heavier, but she managed it. Carrying him around to the other side of the vehicle, she put him in the back seat with her mom, letting him lean over onto her.

She was out of breath now, her body exhausted from the lifting. She wasn’t sure how she was going to fit the other two, Trevor and Robbie, into the vehicle. Back inside, she decided to go for Trevor first, her body yearning for a slight break from the heavier weight. A surge of sadness ran through her at how easily she lifted him from the bed, his body having lost so much weight in the last couple of days. As she carried him down, his eyes drifted open and closed, and he said something she couldn’t quite make out.

“I’m getting you out of here!” she said, hurrying them through the open front door.

At first, she was going to try and fit him in the back seat with her mom and dad, hoping his small size would allow it, but she quickly saw otherwise. There was no way that would work. Her only