Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF

to the east of our property, he using words like “metamorphic” and she looking politely rapt.
    I sat next to Carlo on the camelback couch that Mallory had advised me to keep. After answering just enough of Mallory’s respectful questions about the funeral and the state of the survivors, we moved on and she made us laugh with stories about the Pugs’ sleepover. They had curled up beside Owen on the bed, she said, and he seemed to like that even if he couldn’t say so.
    The Pugs had come back in the house and were nestled up against me, one glued to my thigh and one of them half-draped around my neck and half-reclining on the back of the couch, his breath hot and smelly. They reminded me of Mallory’s invitation extended at least a month before the funeral. “Are we still on for that fund-raiser?” I asked.
    “Which one?”
    “Only you could say that. You said you bought a table for the Humane Society thing.”
    Mallory said, “You know, I might disinvite you. It could be awful.”
    “You, the hospitality queen, having an awful evening? How’s that?”
    “I didn’t want to bring it up with your sister-in-law’s death and all. Remember those people I told you about a while ago, whose son drowned and they left the church because they were pissed at everyone? Just before you joined?”
    “Kind of. The woman who went a little crazy.”
    “That’s the one. She blamed everyone. The church, the other kids in the youth group, the rector’s wife. The thing is, her husband is Owen’s doctor and he’s really good. So I sort of want to patch things up, and I thought enough time has gone by, this will be neutral territory, and maybe she’s not insane anymore. They agreed to come. But like I said, it could be awful.”
    “Oh, come on. Don’t make me miss a chance to watch you flounder socially. It would be a first.”
    Mallory backed down then. “Gemma-Kate would be welcome,” she said. “We can make room.”
    “That’s really nice of you,” I said, and turned to get Gemma-Kate’s agreement.
    She had gotten up from where she’d been sitting by Carlo and gone into the kitchen to refill her glass, which I noted with a little interest. After swigging a bit of it, she had been circling around the room for the past several minutes, like a fish that would die if it stopped swimming. At the moment I asked if she’d like to come to the fund-raiser, she had finally paused, her back to the room, at one of the back windows looking out at the life-sized statue of St. Francis in the backyard. Was she actually staring out the window or was she staring at her reflection? In it I was the only one who could see she wasn’t smiling now. I wondered, for her sake, not mine, whether it had been the best idea to pull her away from her father and grandparents so soon after her mother’s death.
    Right now Carlo and Mallory had begun watching her as closely as I was. “Gemma-Kate?” I said, to get her attention.
    “I’ll be okay,” she said. “I like it here.” She turned back to us, or rather, to Carlo, her smile reconnected. “I was just thinking. Should I call you Uncle Carlo, Father Carlo, or just Carlo?”
    Somehow I could feel the three of us breathe again, and I was aware that we all had been a little on edge, watching Gemma-Kate without letting on to the others that we were doing so. We were all concerned for her, I thought.
    Carlo smiled back and said, “No one has called me Father Carlo in a long, long time, Gemma-Kate. Rather than make a formal decision, why don’t we just wait to see what comes up at the moment?”
    “All right,” she said.
    Just then the Pug draped around my shoulder tried to french my nose, and I swatted him away.
    “The Pugs adore Brigid,” Carlo said, his attention swaying back to me. He put his hand over mine and left it there.
    I’m sure I was the only one who noticed Gemma-Kate watching Carlo’s hand on mine and the way she stiffened a bit.
    She said, “Dad says animals don’t