The Frighteners Read Online Free PDF

for her. She looked so sad.”
    “Lucy, she killed twelve people.”
    “And helpless,” Lucy continued.
    “Twelve people died at her hands.”
    “It was never proven that Patricia Bartlett was actually involved,” Lucy said, poking her finger at a page in her book. “She just fell in love with the wrong guy.
    “It can happen to anyone,” she continued dryly. “If she was sending her husband a message, he clearly didn’t get it.”
    She held up the book and twisted it around to show him the photo on the page she was reading. “Look at this,” she said, but he merely glanced over his shoulder without breaking his rhythm. The photo showed a grinning, twenty-two-year-old man, attractive looking but with a satanic gleam in his eyes. The caption below the photo read: Johnny Bradley, on the day of his execution. His last words: “I got me a score of twelve! Top that!”
    Ray said, “She was there with him for each of those twelve murders. They should have fried her when they fried Bradley.”
    Lucy turned the book back toward herself, then scrutinized a photo of a young Patricia being led out of court by her mother. “She was fifteen years old,” she said. “How smart were you when you were fifteen?”
    Ray sighed. Lucy shut the book.
    “I don’t think she’s been allowed out of that house in forty years,” Lucy said.
    “What do they do for food? Order in pizza?” Ray stopped the rowing machine and stood, sweat glistening on his well-muscled chest.
    “The old woman said she cut her fingers chopping vegetables, but I wonder.”
    “Yeah, me, too. I wonder if that murdering Patricia Bartlett didn’t use the knife trying to cut her mom’s head off,” Ray said.
    He stretched and then struck a pose in the mirror, showing off his muscles to, he hoped, an awestruck wife. But Lucy was still looking in the book.
    “I don’t believe Patricia Bartlett is capable of harming a fly,” she said.
    “Not a fly, maybe, but people she can kill by the dozens. An even dozen, anyway. Her and her boyfriend. I don’t see what you think is so appealing about her.”
    “She looked sad,” Lucy insisted.
    “Yeah, sad that she only has twelve corpses to her credit,” Ray said.
    Lucy frowned at her musclehead husband and thought how easy it was for a girl to choose the wrong guy. Ray had seemed like he had so many prospects when they met as undergraduates. He was a terrific athlete, all-college wrestler, and a standout soccer player, with a strong desire to go into sports medicine. They married with the plan that they both would go to medical school and, someday, start a practice together. She would concentrate on family medicine, he on sports medicine and orthopedics.
    But, like so many things in life, it didn’t work out. While Lucy sailed through med school and her internship, Ray languished. His grades weren’t good enough for medical school. He tried a master’s-degree program in physical education, but couldn’t stick with it. Not even able to qualify as a high-school gym teacher and coach, Ray got a job in a local gym and seemed content to spend his life as a fitness nut and personal trainer. Sometimes it seemed to Lucy that he was just happy being the husband of a doctor—and enjoying the chance to spend her income on fancy hedges and designer lawns.
    “Can we talk about something else beyond the Bartletts?” he asked.
    “Like what?” she asked with a sigh.
    “Like how amazingly well I did at work today.”
    “I’m happy for you. What happened?”
    “Guess who’s asked me to be his personal trainer?” He crawled onto the bed like a panther, flexing every muscle he could.
    “Who?” she asked, trying to sound interested.
    “Sheriff Perry,” he replied proudly.
    “That doesn’t sound like a training job, that sounds like a rescue job. The man is morbidly obese.”
    “So he’s a little on the heavy side.”
    “Honey, an elephant is a little on the heavy side. Walker Perry is fat.”
    “I won’t