Helltown Read Online Free PDF

cleaning.”
    “Fancy rich chap like you can pony up a couple bucks.”
    Steve stumbled down the last few feet and stopped beside Jeff, who had produced a mickey of vodka from the inside pocket of his now beer-stained jacket. Jenny appeared next, emerging from the fog like a wraith. She was moving slowly, cautious of where she stepped. Her leather pants clung to her long legs, the black elastic top to her small breasts, outlining the triangular cups of her bra. She frowned at the vegetation as she passed through it and said, “I hope there wasn’t any poison ivy in there. I got it once as a kid. It bubbles between your fingers.”
    Steve said, “That’ll make gross anatomy interesting.”
    “I know, right? No one will want us on their dissection team if we can’t hold a scalpel.”
    “Yo, nerds,” Jeff told them, “check it out.” He pointed to the bridge’s piers and abutments. “That’s the foundation from the original bridge.”
    “The original one?” Mandy said, pushing through the last of the ferns. Then, higher pitched: “Oh shoot! My tights!” A good-three inch tear had appeared in the yellow Spandex high on her upper right thigh, revealing white flesh beneath. “Stupid branch!”
    “Are you wearing underwear?” Jeff asked.
    “Jeff!”
    “I can’t see any.”
    “Stop it!”
    “Anywho,” Jeff said, “the original bridge was an old wooden thing that washed away a while back during a flood. This one replaced it.”
    “Isn’t that bad news for your ghost?” Steve said, trying to ignore Mandy, who was fussing over the tear and inadvertently making it bigger.
    “What do you mean?” Jeff said.
    “Ghosts haunt old places. Once something’s gone, they’re gone.”
    “You’re an expert on hauntings now?”
    “When was the last time you heard of a ghost haunting something new? You don’t go out and buy a new Ford and find it comes with a poltergeist in the trunk.”
    “You’re blind wrong there, my dear castaway. Ghosts haunt the places where they died. The baby died here, so it haunts here. It doesn’t matter if this bridge is rebuilt a dozen times, it’s still going to haunt here.”
    “What’s so scary about a baby haunting anyway?” Austin opined. “I’m telling you, I see any baby ghost waving its spectral rattler at me, I’m gonna punt it so far downriver it’ll shit its diapers before it touches down again.”
    Steve ducked beneath the bridge and was surprised to find almost no fog there at all, as if the area was somehow off limits. And was it cooler? Or was that his imagination? He took a box of matches from his pocket and ignited a match off his thumb, illuminating the sandy loam before him.
    “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…” Austin sang.
    Ignoring him, Steve troll-walked forward. The dried riverbed was littered with dead leaves that had blown beneath the bridge. He heard someone following him and turned to find Jenny there.
    “Where are you going, mister?” she said, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears.
    “Seeing what’s under here,” he said.
    “I imagine we would have heard the baby by now if there was one.”
    “I’m expecting a Garbage Pail-ish thing.”
    “Cindy Lopper.”
    “Bony Joanie.” She paused. “Hey, where’s the fog?”
    “Strange, I know.”
    The bridge was less than twenty feet in diameter, and Steve could make out the other side where the inky shadows gave to the mist-shrouded night once more.
    He didn’t see the baby shoes until he was nearly on top of them.
    They were newish, white, and so small they would only fit a newborn.
    “What is it?” Jenny asked, moving up beside him. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “Baby shoes!”
    “Some kids probably left them there to propagate the legend.”
    Jenny studied the ground ahead of them, then turned and studied the ground behind them. “There aren’t any other footprints except for ours.”
    She was right, he realized. “Guess they raked them away.”
    “It doesn’t look like