SHUDDERVILLE SIX Read Online Free PDF

matter what.
    Crazy, he knew.
    But true. As true as his heart could fathom.
    He drove for hours, heading into Vermont, until he could feel Bella’s presence very close and pulled over to the side of the road. It was late afternoon. He sensed this was the place. An old farmhouse surrounded by woods, and a well-maintained barbed wire fence that delineated the property, with “No Trespassing” signs posted every dozen yards or so.
    He breathed steadily through his nose. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face, and he wiped it away with his thumb.
    Benjamin could smell spruce and cedar as he trudged through the woods. The voice had stopped as soon as he’d stepped out of his truck, and that concerned him. It had been building and building, and now it was gone. Bella was in great pain. She needed him. And yet there was nothing but silence now.
    The fence was a good one, the barbed wires strung tightly together. He walked along the perimeter for while, until he found a place where the fence sagged beneath the weight of a fallen tree. He climbed over the tree to the other side and followed an old trail laced with snow. The coyote tracks were a few days old. He crossed a partially frozen streambed, stepping on gray round rocks worn smooth by millennia of rushing water and slippery with ice, and made it to the other side without falling in.
    A network of untamed paths trended downhill, past old-growth trees and boulders and drop-offs. Benjamin hiked down the treacherous slope through the thinning woods. He knew where he was going, although he didn’t really know where he was. Hard to explain. He let his feet take him. At last, he found the farm through the thinning trees.
    He parted the maple branches, loose snow drifting to the ground, and shuffled through knee-deep drifts as he crossed the field, a blanket of white. He stepped over a crumbling stonewall that marked an obsolete boundary and caught his breath. The world was as silent as prehistoric rock. He wanted to reassure her that help was near.
    “Hello? Bella?” he signed. “Are you there?”
    Nothing.
    He became concerned. Maybe he’d arrived too late? That had happened a few times before. He shook off the dread and horror of that thought, and forged his way across the snowy pasture toward the farmstead.
    The dairy farm consisted of a large red barn and a dozen ramshackle outbuildings. The farm was isolated, with nothing but woods and pastures for miles around.
    Benjamin swung the gate open, forcing it into a snowdrift, and strode along the frozen dirt road toward the farmstead. A rusty Chevy pickup truck was parked in the driveway. The dilapidated two-story farmhouse was washed in sunlight.
    He felt a chill as he looked at the old sheep’s pen with its broken split-rail fence. The place seemed deserted. He waited with a mounting tension and expected to hear from Bella any second now. Nothing. It upset him that she might be dead.
    He felt a shadow drifting over him and looked up at the sky. He shielded his eyes with his hand and saw a large bird, a hawk or a raven, perhaps even an eagle, soaring higher and higher on air currents until it finally disappeared behind some clouds. He lowered his gaze and noticed the footprints in the snow, leading from the house to the barn. The barn doors were open, and he headed off in that direction. He crossed the courtyard, where a rusting tractor and fertilizer spreader were parked. There was an abandoned blue trailer used for delivering silage, and a dung bund full of manure. The cement wall surrounding the dung bund prevented the filthy water from seeping into a nearby stream, and the barnyard smelled of ancient animal urine and silage.
    Benjamin paused and searched for the voice in his head. Gone. She was gone.
    Was he too late? He didn’t want that to happen again.
    The barn doors were battered and scratched. He cautiously ventured inside the dilapidated structure. The air smelled thickly of pickled grass. The floor was