08 - December Dread Read Online Free PDF

just beneath the soft freshfall, half crawls half runs into the house. She leaves a slipper behind in her terror-rimmed haste.
    It’s too late. The killer has already slipped inside.

Seven
Sunday, December 16
    If there’s a phrase scarier to a 30-year-old woman than, “Your room is just as you left it,” I have yet to hear it. I’d phoned my mom as soon as I’d made up my mind to come home. Of course she’d been thrilled, and here I was, arriving under cover of a soft, fat-flaked snowfall.
    After much hugging and clucking, she had walked me, Tiger Pop, and Luna up to the second floor of the old farmhouse. She’d lived in this house my whole life, situated in the rural area southwest of Paynesville, a desolate spot ten miles from any town, the nearest neighbor a country mile across winter-buried fields. She and my dad had bought the farmhouse plus fifteen acres back in the ’70s to “get away” from the big-city life of St. Cloud. The isolation had always made me feel claustrophobic rather than free, and yet I’d just last spring chosen to flee Minneapolis for the countryside outside Battle Lake. These thoughts raced through my head at jackrabbit speed as I pushed open the door of my childhood bedroom. There was no turning back. I watched with dread and anticipation as the contents of the time capsule were revealed.
    Yup. Exactly as I’d left it.
    I was greeted by Led Zeppelin and a Footloose -era Kevin Bacon on the wall, loaded bookshelves, a multi-colored dresser with Garbage Patch stickers down the front, worn quilt on wrought-iron bed with my childhood sock monkey perched in the center, and the lingering smell of AquaNet and Love’s Baby Soft. It set me back on my heels. Imagine gathering the most embarrassing person you’ve ever dated, a supposedly secret videotape of you acting out every 1980s MTV music video, and your junior high diary. Got those three things? Okay, mash them into one big pile of shame, stir them, pour them into a paint can, and let’s call the color “Time Machine Teal.” That’s what my bedroom walls were painted with. The trim was “Mortification Mauve.”
    “Jeez, mom, you could have redecorated.”
    “It’s not mine to redecorate.” She’d always been solid about personal boundaries, my mom. That also hadn’t changed. “Would you like some supper?”

Eight
Monday, December 17
    She’d left me to reacquaint myself with my blast-from-the-past bedroom and had given me space until this morning, when she couldn’t stand it any longer. She woke me up at 7:00 AM and began stuffing food into me anew, peppering me with questions, stroking my arm as if to make certain that I was actually sitting at her dining room table. It became annoying, but I had to admit her scrambled eggs were even better than I remembered.
    “Thanks, mom.” I accepted the pancakes and orange juice she passed my way. “Fattening me up for the oven?”
    She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, the same beaming smile that had been lighting up her face since we’d arrived.
    “You could use some thickening,” she said. “You’re skin and bones.”
    “Check this out.” I pulled up my shirt and pooched out my belly. I could pull off lean with the right clothes, but I had an Uncle Fester stomach. “Pretty impressive, hunh? No bones there.”
    She shook her head like she didn’t know what to do with me. It was a gesture I’d grown up with. Seeing my mom had also reminded me that my genetic future would mean an Ants in the Pants body—skinny legs, round belly and butt, mysteriously absent chest—just like the blue pants that came with the game of the same name. Somehow, her perfectly curled and dyed brown hair, sweet bland face, and eternal smile complemented her body. You can’t fight your fate. In the meanwhile, I was going to enjoy this breakfast extravaganza.
    “Are you sure you have to go to that detective class today?” she asked. “We’ve hardly had a chance to visit. You