The Frighteners Read Online Free PDF Page B

tell him you said that,” Ray replied.
    “I wish you would tell him. Tell him that before he starts working out, he should come in to have his blood pressure checked and have a stress test. An EKG wouldn’t hurt either. You don’t want the man dropping dead in your gym, would you?”
    “Aw, you’re a worrier. All the guy needs is to work up a little sweat.” Ray lay alongside her and slapped the bedcover between them with the palm of his hand. “Come over here, honey. I’ve got a friend who wants to meet you.”
    Lucy put her book aside and let Ray pull her down into an embrace. Nuzzling her neck, he said, “I made reservations at Bellisimo’s. Our favorite table . . . remember? Tuesday?”
    Ray suddenly paused and looked down in irritation as he plucked a business card from the folds of the bedclothes. “What the hell is this doing here?”
    It was Frank Bannister’s business card, now back in one piece. Lucy glanced at it disinterestedly, then shrugged.
    Ray was puzzled. “This is the creep who dug up the lawn this morning. I told you about him.”
    “Oh. Is he fixing it?”
    “He will or I’ll fix him. But hey, I tore up this card. Did he come back to the house?”
    “Who is this, now?”
    “Frank Bannister, the moron who took out the hedge,” Ray said again, angrier this time.
    “What’s he do? What does it say on his card?”
    “You mean he wasn’t here today?”
    “Not as far as I know. You were the one who talked to him.”
    “He’s a psychic investigator, whatever that means. But I know I ripped up his card, and here it is in one piece again.”
    “Maybe he gave you two and you forgot the other one,” Lucy said, trying to be helpful.
    “Hey, a man finds another man’s business card in his wife’s bed, he has to think . . .”
    Lucy didn’t have time to be offended by this remark. For as soon as the words left Ray’s mouth, the bedclothes flew into the air like a magic carpet, tossing him onto the floor between the bed and the rowing machine. They hovered four feet above an astonished Lucy, gently billowing around the edges.
    She screamed.
    “Holy shit,” Ray yelled, in a panic.
    “What’s happening, Ray?” she yelled back, suddenly alone in her nightgown atop the bed.
    The hovering bedclothes began to rotate then, slowly at first and then faster. Lucy and Ray watched, too frightened to speak for a time. Then the bedding suddenly shot across the room and slammed into the wall.
    Ray grabbed Lucy and pulled her to the floor as the bedclothes, balled up this time, zoomed over their heads and darted around the room like a trapped fly.
    “I had this chickadee that got trapped in my Camaro once,” Ray stammered.
    Then the bedclothes suddenly lost power and dropped onto Ray and Lucy’s huddled figures. The falling fabric spread out at the last minute, draping the horrified spectators. From below the blankets, Ray stammered, “Tor . . . nado. Some kind of localized air current.”
    Lucy jumped to her feet, throwing the bedclothes away. She looked around the room and, seeing that nothing else was disturbed, said, “a mini-tornado that doesn’t touch anything else, only the blankets?”
    “I . . . I dunno.”
    She backed away from the bunched-up bedclothes, rigid with fear, collapsing on the bed. Trembling, she said, “Our windows are shut. How can it be an air current?”
    At that moment the bed itself lurched into the air. Lucy screamed and clung to it as it spun around slowly, four feet off the ground.
    “Oh, my God,” Ray swore.
    Lucy cried out, “Ray! Help me! Get me off!”
    He hurled himself onto the bed, grabbing his wife, pulling her off. They both crashed onto the floor, where they huddled in horror for several minutes while their bed rotated above them. Sometimes it moved fast, sometimes it rotated slowly. Occasionally it wafted all the way up to the ceiling and stuck there, as if glued. Then, without warning, as if unseen hands dropped it, the bed crashed to the floor