Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions Read Online Free PDF

road trip ever, according to Sally.
    Margie wonders when Sally will figure it all out. Figure out the truth of their life.
    Because it’s the end of summer, another big thunderstorm rolls into the valley the next afternoon. The sky glows a sickening green, and nothing feels right to Margie. Heat settles thick and humid, the wind holding its breath before the storm pushes in hard. Sally seems oblivious, sorting through the guidebooks, flipping through the pages with an almost manic intensity.
    “Whatcha looking for?” Margie asks. She crouches next to her sister but keeps glancing out the window. The air’s so saturated it’s hard to see much farther than the porch.
    “West Virginia.” Her voice comes out almost breathless, that kind of sound you get on the edge of panic. “I can’t find West Virginia. We haven’t finished the route through, and I need to find someplace where we can stay the second night or we’ll be trapped outside.”
    She looks up at her older sister with eyes wide and wet. “We can’t be outside, Margie,” she whispers harshly. “We have to be inside where it’s safe, and I can’t find the book of inns and hotels.”
    “It’s okay.” Margie lays a hand on her sister’s shoulder, but she shrugs it away. “We had it last night. It’s here.”
    “It’s not here!” Sally cries, shaking her head. “It’s not here,” she says again.
    “We’ll keep looking,” Margie reassures her. Beyond the window the storm finally hits, wind hissing and rain bending trees to the ground.
    Margie convinces Sally to skip West Virginia for now and figure out where they should stop in Maryland. “I’ve always heard they have great crab cakes there,” Margie says. She finds the Maryland guidebook and sets it on the table.
    The picture on the cover shows a faded blue bay and white sails, with a red crab bursting from the text. It makes Margie ache for something she’s tried to give up. It makes her feel lonely in a way she hasn’t before—an intense desire to share something as simple as a chair by the water with someone who understands.
    Sally keeps her head bowed low over the map, stringy tips of her hair brushing the crinkled pages. “After that we’ll go to Maine. It’ll be safer up north in the winter,” she says without looking up. “They don’t move as much in the cold.”
    Margie presses her lips together tight. She remembers planning vacations that didn’t revolve around monsters. When snow meant sledding and snowmobiles and fun. The aching part inside her wells deep, spreading fast and hard through her—pounding in her blood.
    “Right,” she finally says. “That’s right.”
    She leaves Sally sitting at the table and steps out onto the porch, where the rain beats against the ground as if to punish it. In two steps Margie’s deluged, letting the heavy drops sting her skin and mix with her tears. She feels helpless under this weight of water. The world’s too big for her to survive in, much less for her to keep another being safe.
    She knows a day will come when it’s too much. When she’ll trip up and miss a sign or signal, and that will be the end of that. She feels like a windup clock—and now she’s winding down and doesn’t know what to do next, how to twist herself back up again to keep on going.
    The storm shifts and the wind howls like the dead. They’re out there, she knows, climbing the mountain, pushing at the circle of laurel, tripping over strings of tins cans that beat and rattle in the storm.
    Eventually this tiny fortress will no longer keep them safe. She’ll have to tell Sally to plan the next trip, and they’ll move on, and the clock will keep ticking until the gears wind down to nothing.
    Margie climbs back onto the porch, every bit of her body soaked and cold with rain. Just as she reaches for the door, the glint of light off water makes her pause.
    There’s a puddle at the end of the porch with two ovals of mud dissolving in the middle, the edges