THE
HAUNTED
Bentley Little
A SIGNET BOOK
Copyright © Bentley Little, 2012
All rights reserved
THE
HAUNTED
One
“They’re here again, Dad.”
Julian came out of the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, and walked across the living room to where his son, James, was holding on to the edge of the curtains, peeking through the crack and out the front window. Julian reached for the cord to pull open the drapes.
“What are you doing?” James cried, panicked. He flattened against the wall so as not to be seen.
Ignoring him, Julian opened the drapes. Sure enough, three skateboarders were on their driveway, one of them flipping his board into the air and then landing on it, the other two preparing to race down the sloping concrete to the street. It was the second time in two days that this had happened, and though theirs was the only driveway on the street not blocked by permanently parked cars or pickups (their vehicles went in the garage), that didn’t give neighborhood punks the right to use it as their own personal skate park. Angry, he started toward the front door.
“Don’t go outside, Dad. Please!”
“Get some ’nads,” Megan told him. She was sitting on the couch watching TV—a tween show on the Disney Channel—and she smiled derisively at her brother before turning back to her program. The two of them fought constantly, and even before Claire had become pregnant with James, Julian had known this would happen. He and his brother had battled throughout their entire childhood, especially during the teenage years, when his dad would sometimes have to break up honest-to-God fistfights. They still didn’t get along today. But Claire had read in some parenting book that it was better for siblings to be near in age, and she insisted that if they were going to have two children, the kids had to be spaced twelve to fourteen months apart. “That way,” she told him, “they’ll be closer. And when they grow up, they’ll be friends.” She’d since seen the error of her ways, although, of course, she would never admit that she’d been wrong.
“Did you hear what she said?” James cried, pointing at his sister.
“I heard. Megan, knock it off,” Julian admonished.
She snickered.
“Megan,” he warned.
“Ground her!” James said.
Julian opened the front door. “Both of you. Stop.” Walking outside, he closed the door behind him. On the driveway, the three teenage boys were spinning in circles, the backs of their boards scraping the ground, the fronts thrusting proudly in the air. He recognized one of them as Tom Willet’s kid from down the street, and though he didn’t know the other two boys, they were the same ones he’d had to kick off his property yesterday. “Excuse me!” he said loudly.
The Willet boy glanced casually over at him, spinning around. “Hey, dude, where are your daughters?” He stressed the plural, laughing, and Julian hoped James wasn’t listening.
“Get off my driveway.”
The three skateboarders ignored him.
“Now.”
“Make us.” The Willet kid stared back defiantly, still spinning.
Julian felt a hot rush of anger course through him, though he knew the boy had him trapped. He could yell at the skateboarders until his voice was hoarse, but if they didn’t listen, there was nothing he could do, since any attempt he made to physically remove them would have their parents calling the cops and filing assault charges. A middle solution suddenly came to him and, without saying a word, he walked over to the faucet at the end of Claire’s flower bed, turned on the water and picked up the hose. He twisted the nozzle three clicks, from “shower” to “jet,” and squeezed the trigger handle. A stream of water hit first one skateboard, then the others, as he swung his arm from side to side. He aimed higher, and the water shot into the boys’ legs.
The skateboarders started yelling.
“Hey!”
