Charnel House Read Online Free PDF

when he was a kid, and that was what, thirty-five years ago? It was the kind of place where something hidden would stay that way. There was a better than even chance the damn thing wasn’t even standing any longer, but if it was he needed to get his ass in gear before someone came along and proved him wrong... and before he chickened out and changed his mind. There was nothing that could help the kid now; he was just a bag of bones. The only one who could be helped here was Garraty himself, by avoiding prison and taking another shot at life. Cut back on the drinking, get a new—better—job, and maybe even work on making things right with Tina again, if that was possible. All that stood between him and happiness was this one little bit of unpleasantness.
    He turned off the Maglite and trot-staggered up the road to the Prius. Keeping the lights off, he started the engine and backed down the incline to the body. He shone the Mag down into the emergency kit. Tina had said something about a poncho when she gave it to him. That ought to help keep the carpet clean. Instead of the poncho, however, he found something even better—a Mylar emergency heat blanket. She really thought of everything . The packet said the thing was seven feet by five feet. More than big enough to protect the interior of the car. Marveling at the weight of the flimsy plastic—the package couldn’t have weighed more than a couple of ounces—he got out of the car and went to the tail end.
    Pinpoints of pale yellow from the trunk bulb shone in the dead boy’s eyes when Garraty raised the lift gate, giving them the appearance of life. He tried to ignore the feeling of being watched as he tore open the plastic packaging of the emergency blanket and unfolded it. God, but it was loud! The crinkle of the Mylar as he spread the silver sheet over the floor of the trunk filled the night, and seemed to echo off the hillside. When he stooped to pick the body up off the wet pavement he got a snootful of the stench rolling off the kid and nearly gagged. Gonna need to fumigate the trunk when I clean it . The boy’s head rolled loosely when Garraty stood, and the body sagged in his arms and tried to slip through them. The kid was still warm. That bothered Garraty more than the gore, more than the stink.
    He held the boy like a groom carrying his new bride across the threshold and walked to the waiting trunk. When he bent to lower the body into the opening, it pitched forward and flipped from his grip, folding itself into the tight space with a sickening fluidity of movement. The Mylar crackled gleefully as the body tumbled onto it. Garraty lunged to catch the kid and the jagged splinter of bone poking out of his arm jabbed him just below his left nipple. He grunted from the pain and jerked back. The boy’s head fetched up against one of the Mylar-covered wheel wells, cocked at an obscene angle to his shoulders, so that he seemed to stare up at Garraty through his half-open eyes. Smears of blood and mud marred the beige plastic across the back of the car where he slithered across it, and his shattered arm hung limply over the bumper.
    Garraty squeezed his eyes shut against the tableau and thought about his new life. The one where he wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit with a number on it. He pushed the kid’s arm back into the trunk, then used the Maglite to find the missing sneaker. It was laying in the tall grass lining the side of the road. The CSI guys would have had a field day with that, my man , he thought, pitching the shoe into the back of the Prius. He shut the lift gate. The sound seemed as loud as a gunshot in the night.
    The first thing Garraty did when he got behind the wheel and started the car was lower the windows to clear the outhouse smell. Jesus, it was bad. He put the vehicle in gear and turned around on the narrow road, so that he was pointed back down the hill, then crept along the edge of the asphalt looking for the gap in the trees that would