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

The makeup she applied every morning had been wiped away, leaving a wrinkly old face and sagging skin that looked ready to drip from her skull. She was an old hag, and what was worse, she knew it. But things could change. She just had to right the ship that was her family’s destiny.

The knock at her door was expected. She’d heard the commotion downstairs and chosen to stay out of it. She was nearly ninety years old, and by the time she tried to make it down the stairs, the commotion would have been over with. But judging from the glass shattering and the sheepish knock on the door, Iris figured that whatever news was coming was bad.

“It’s open,” Iris said.

The doorknob turned, the latch disengaged, and the hinges groaned slowly as Iris caught Dennis’s reflection in the mirror. He kept his head down, shoulders slumped, like a child who knew the punishment for his failure. A bloodied bandage covered his arm, and crimson stained his clothes.

“She’s gone,” Dennis said.

Iris set the brush down and then turned, her old bones creaking like the hinges and the frame of her family’s house. “Has she been marked?”

Dennis nodded.

“Then she has nowhere else to go.” Iris returned to the mirror, the cloudy reflection scarred with black marks from chipped-away flecks of the mirror. “He’ll call her back to the house, and then it will be done.”

Dennis raised his head. “There’s something else.” He flexed his fingers nervously and shuffled another step toward her. “The letters are gone.”

The confidence from Iris’s face vanished, and the old woman forced her creaking joints up and out of her chair. “I told you to burn those.”

As Iris walked closer, Dennis refused to look her in the eye. “He wouldn’t have liked it.”

“I don’t care!” Iris thundered, the anger and violence in her voice mismatched against the frail body that spoke. “You’ve exposed us! Do you know what is in those letters? Do you have any idea what could happen if she shows those letters to anyone? Everything could be undone!” She grabbed hold of his chin, and Dennis finally looked her in the eye.

“I’m sorry.” Dennis’s eyes watered and reddened.

Iris calmed herself then patted his cheek with three hard slaps. “It won’t matter.” She returned to her seat and the mirror, picking up the brush again and continuing her grooming ritual. “We’re too close now. We only require one more. And he will make sure that she comes back to us.”

Dennis wiped his eyes, moving deeper into the room. “You really think that this will finish it? That this is the end?”

Iris gently grazed her weathered and aged cheek and then turned toward the family pictures on the table, her attention on a photograph that had one of the faces scratched off. “It will be. One way or the other.”

67

The late hour didn’t lessen the lights and sounds of the big city. From the air, New York’s skyline was beautiful, and the city was peaceful, the lights twinkling in the darkness and creating a brilliant brightness that challenged the night. But closer toward the city’s surface, the beauty faded.

The cracks and stains and smell of human shit and piss ran rampant along the streets. Homeless people begged for change and slept on the streets. Gangs roamed in small packs, defacing any piece of property they didn’t own.

Sirens screamed in the night, alerting the city to the crime that plagued the poor and broken neighborhoods on the island. Gunshots accentuated the anger behind the hands and people that wielded them, violence the only expression in their repertoire.

Authorities struggled with the violence and masses that flocked to the island of Manhattan every single day. The city was a living, breathing entity that required constant attention lest it choke on its own spit and die, killing the millions that clung to its back for survival.

And tonight, among the many that reveled in dark deeds, Brent Alvarez walked down the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, the bright silver zipper pulled all the way to the top, and his jet-black hair slicked back with gel.

He moved quickly and deliberately, his dark-brown eyes trained on the run-down apartment building ahead. Steam rose from the sewer grates behind him, and he exhaled his own icy breaths. He’d always loved the cold, ever since he was a kid. Winter brought death.

While everyone else grew weak in the cold, he grew stronger. He was drawn to death and violence like a fly to shit. Few other things gave him as much joy and excitement.

Brent ascended the front steps of the apartment building quickly, removed his gloved hand from his pocket, and twisted the doorknob, which he found locked.

He checked the street, ensuring he was alone, and then removed a small lock-pick set from his other pocket. He inserted the tiny metal prongs, blindly guiding them around the four-tumbler lock. Thirty seconds later, he was granted entrance at the sound of a light click.

Television chatter and screams penetrated the paper-thin apartment walls as he moved through the foyer. Keeping one hand in his pocket, Brent ascended the steps, the stairs groaning from the weight, but aside from the old wood giving its protest, he moved toward the third floor quietly and skillfully.

It had taken him a long time to obtain his status, and at thirty-five, he was finally captain of his own fate. No man or law could prevent him from accomplishing a goal. If he wanted something, he simply took it. He even had his own crew.

They had carved out their own section of the city, and nothing happened without their approval. But last week they had to make an unsavory, and unexpected visit. It should have been routine. His crew were well versed in shutting people up. But during the job an unforeseen complication had arisen, and it had been Brent who’d caused it.

He had tried to take care of the problem quickly, but