Something New Read Online Free PDF Page A

the closet and moved her hands around in the space in front of her, reaching until her fingers closed around the rope dangling from the closet’s ceiling . The attic. Yes. Daddy had made the rope ladder so she could climb in and out of the playroom just like a monkey in the jungle. She didn’t need to use the big ladder like they did. Mommy thought it was dangerous for her to climb up and down the rope on her own, but Daddy said kids need to get scrapes every once in a while and not to fuss. Abby agreed with her dad and even liked to hide in the attic playroom sometimes when people came over to visit.
    “Abby!” The devil voice sounded far away, but she could still hear him. “Are you here, girl? Come on out, and we’ll go get some ice cream. It’s an awfully hot day.”
    No. Abby didn’t want to do that. She fingered the rope in front of her again. Right this second, her heart beat faster than Easter Sunday at church when she sang a solo in front of everyone. She wrapped her hands around the highest point she could reach on the rope and hoisted herself off the floor. After finding the first knot with her bare feet, Abby pulled herself up, again and again, not stopping until she reached the entrance in the ceiling and climbed through. Quickly, she crawled around the opening and dragged up the dangling rope, clearing it out of the way.
    Only one more thing to do. Abby crawled around to the opposite side of the entrance and prayed for God to help her work in absolute silence.
    The closet door below squeaked as the accordion folds struggled to open on the ungreased tracks. Light from her parents’ bedroom streamed into the closet just as Abby eased the board that served as an attic door into its routed slot, blocking her completely inside.
    As the unnatural, terrible voice of evil continued to call for her, Abby curled her arms around her drawn knees and waited for God to help her one more time.
    * * *
    Abby jerked upright in bed, sucking in air as she tried to regain her equilibrium.
    The hand . She put her own to her chest as she tried to pull the last remnants from her dream into her dark bedroom. Something is wrong with the hand I saw pushing open the closet door in my dream . Something wasn’t as it should be. Abby pulled her knees up to her chest, closed her eyes, and tried to step back into the point in her dream that had taken place just before she settled the board across the opening in the ceiling.
    Instead of seeing that wrong hand again, Abby gasped as an invisible hand punched her in the chest and shoved her backward into her headboard. The pictures in her mind metaphysically hurled her through time and space, and she crash-landed hours beyond the correct place in her dream, right into the middle of a bloodbath.
    Everywhere Abby touched and looked filled her hands and eyes with puddles and sprays of crimson. Straight ahead, the wall looked like a giant red finger painting, but Abby’s mom would pitch a fit if Abby so much as put a crayon mark on her walls, so Abby knew it wasn’t paint.
    I know what it is.
    Her breath suddenly coming in shallow pants, Abby forced her focus across the awful colored splashes on the wall. Suddenly, a thick streak of red cut a line straight up and down the wall. Abby trembled all over as she followed it with her eyes, down, down, down, over a shock of red hair, and looked straight into glassy brown eyes.
    “Daaaddddyyy!” Abby’s legs went out from under her as she screamed. Her knees slipped in more of the squishy red covering the carpet. Abby reached out to steady herself, and her palm sank into wet, sticky goo. One glance down and Abby saw her fingers buried in a hole in her mother’s stomach.
    No. No. No. Abby yanked her hand out of her mother’s gutted belly and hid it behind her back . No. No. No. She squeezed her eyes shut. No. No. No. Rocking back and forth, she screamed and screamed and screamed . “Daddy!”
    Abby snapped back into the present, crying out for