Midnight Grinding Read Online Free PDF Page B

her, some toddling off balance, others crawling on all fours. The maddening noise of old rattles and squeaky toys pressed against her ears. Her screams drew their attention and, with an infantile mewing, they started up the hill toward her. The only source of escape was the tree. Limb by limb, she ascended the magnolia, glimpsing the pale little forms between the clusters of thick leaves.
    When she finally reached the top, she thought herself to be safe. But she was not. Hearing a faint stirring in the leaves above her, she looked up and saw her baby brother, Timothy…his chubby face ashen…his Winnie the Pooh pajamas soiled and dank with fresh earth. And, as he reached for her, she recoiled from his cold little hands…and fell.
    Deanna awoke, drenched in sweat, and her mouth was cotton dry. Trembling, she turned on the hall light and crept downstairs to the kitchen for a drink of water. She was filling a glass under the tap, when she heard a noise on the other side of the back door. It was a dry sound, the sound of tiny beads clattering within a plastic shell. A sound much like dry bones rattling within a casket. Small bones inside a small casket.
    Don’t look outside, she told herself. Just go back upstairs and crawl into bed and forget all about it.
    But that annoying little voice—Miss Curiosity—whispered insistently in her mind’s ear. It could just be an old newspaper blown against the screen door, maybe a jackrabbit scratching against the concrete steps, wanting a carrot from the fridge. She walked slowly to the door and unlocked it. For a second, she simply stood there. Remember what you saw the last time you looked , she told herself. But she opened the door anyway.
    Nothing was on the backdoor stoop. No crumbled newspaper. No bunny rabbit. Nothing but…a single pink bootie lying in the center of the newly-cast concrete.
    Cautiously, she picked up the knitted article of baby footwear and examined it. It was old…very old. Its cotton threads were rotten and reeked of soil, like the peat moss Daddy had spread around the shrubs last Saturday. And there was something else…something alive. She tossed the bootie away with a cry of disgust.
    There had been squirmy white things crawling between the interlacing fibers. Maggots.
    Then, as she was about to step back inside, she heard the faint rustling of the high weeds at the far end of the house. It was pitch dark that night, no moon at all. She strained her eyes until she actually began to see them. Tiny, pale splotches against the deep shadows of the pine grove. Not emerging from the thicket, but retreating.
    “Deanna,” someone whispered behind her.
    She nearly screamed, but recognized her mother’s voice before she could. She ran to her, quivering in the warm comfort of her arms. “What’s the matter, darling?” Mom asked, bewildered. “Were you sleepwalking again?”
    Deanna said nothing. She just continued to cling with all her might.
    Mom had come down to fix Timothy’s three o’clock bottle. When the milk had been warmed and tested on the inside of Mom’s forearm, the two mounted the steps to the upstairs hallway.
    The nursery was strangely quiet as they stepped inside. Mom felt along the wall for the light switch. “Surely he didn’t fall back to sleep,” she told her daughter. “He was screaming like a little banshee only a few minutes ago.”
    A click and the light came on. The nursery was revealed: lacy blue curtains, dancing clowns painted upon the walls, and in the crib, beneath a dangling mobile of Sesame Street characters, lay…
    Mom screamed.
    The baby bottle slipped from her hand and rolled along the hardwood floor.
    Deanna could only stand there and stare…and think about the magnolia tree.
     
    ***
     
    The Milburne pediatrician said it was something called “crib death.” Deanna didn’t know exactly what that was…only that it happened every now and then in Glover County. Her baby brother’s passing had been disturbing for