The Haunted Halls Read Online Free PDF

depiction closest to him resembled Abraham Lincoln sans beard. The name read: Alfred Greaves Jr. There was something menacing in the man’s eyes. Unsettling.
    There was a tingling in his solar plexus that often accompanied feelings of dread. Being a comic book nerd, he liked to refer to it as his spidey-sense . He hadn’t felt it since the night he came home to find his apartment back home in Sausalito, California broken into. Standing six-six and weighing in at a good two hundred and fifty pounds, Eric was big enough to take care of himself in most troublesome situations.
    He hadn’t been afraid that night, just uneasy, but ready. This was different.
    Butterflies swarmed in his stomach as he left the door to his room and crept down the hall, listening for the cries. Three doors down, he heard the whimpering. He looked at the room number– 211. He placed his hands on the frame and as stealthily as he could, easing his ear to the door. As if aware of his presence, the whimpering slowed. He took a step back. His spidey-sense was screaming at him to move on, to go back to his room and lock the door. Against those better senses, he returned his ear to the barrier, this time with more urgency, compelled, having to hear the cries again.
    What he heard on the other side was not crying, but a quiet cackle. His chest began thundering so hard he thought he might be having a heart attack at thirty-one. Then he heard her speak:
    “Come in, Eric. I’ve been waiting for you,” the icy voice of his new mistress welcomed him. Before he could decide his next course of action the door flung open. He was wrenched inward by a force that snagged his entire frame as if it were that of a ten-year-old.
    Behind the door to room 211, Eric Gentry’s screams were snuffed out. His eyes rolled into the back of his head at the sight of her true form.
    …..
     
    “Guest services, Jeff speaking. How can I help you?”
    “Yeah, this is Ben and Gale Thompson in 213. I don’t know what the hell’s going on next door, but it sounds like someone is getting killed over there.”
    Jeff’s skin attempted to physically crawl from his body. “Which room did you say?”
    He was met with irritation from the other end.
    “There’s something fucked up going on next door. Listen, my wife and I are paying good money to stay here. This is fucking ridiculous–Gale, Gale. Get back here.”
    “Sir,” Jeff started, “I’m going to ask that you and your wife both stay in your room. I’ll go check on–”
    Further from the receiver Jeff heard the man calling to his wife. “Gale, where the hell are you going? Let them take care of this. Gale!”
    Jeff hung up the phone and slipped the brass knuckles from his messenger bag into his pants pocket.
    As he rounded the corner of the desk, his eyes met Meghan Murphy’s beautiful deep browns. She sat behind the glass window of the computer room, smiling at him, but her eyes looked different, darker . He broke her gaze and jogged toward the elevator at the end of the hall.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    November 14, 1983
    Two days after running away from home, Christina met her new best friend, Sarah Ford. Late that night, with seven dollars left in her pocket, Christina hitched up Route 5. Tired, weary, and nearly ready to cave in and call her mom to bring her home, she was picked up, literally and emotionally, by Sarah Ford in her sugar daddy-rented red Pontiac Firebird.
    Since running away from home, Sarah had been living with her boyfriend in a shitty apartment in Denver. Something bad had happened. Some sort of fight or physical altercation between them, she hadn’t really wanted to talk about it. She’d taken a Greyhound from Denver to Boston. There, she said she met another guy, this one from Maine. He played in a band and brought her home with him after a show. According to Sarah, that relationship lasted for three months before she was forced to leave him. She wound up shacking up with a married man in