The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror Read Online Free PDF Page A

to see if they were all right.
    The back of her left hand swiped a tear from each cheek, then regripped the wheel while her right hand plunged into her purse to find a cigarette. By the time it was between her lips and burning, she had slowed down, and was frowning, leaning forward and staring through the windshield at the view ahead.
    It was impossible, but nothing seemed damaged beyond the spot where she’d stopped. The blacktop was unmarred, the trees were still standing, and when the blinking amber light came into view at the T-intersection turn into town it wasn’t even swinging. As it should have been—perhaps even dashed to the ground—if in fact the earthquake had actually happened.
    Don’t be ridiculous, Liz; you were there, for god’s sake!
    There, and terrified, and she could have been killed by that slow falling tree had the quake continued. Right now she could be broken and dead at the side of the road.
    Her arms went suddenly and frighteningly cold, her legs went numb, and her eyes began to blur. She pulled over and turned off the ignition. She could walk now if she had to. Though there were trees on her right, on the left side of the road was the backyard fence of the first Meadow View home. She couldn’t recall who it belonged to, but there was wash hanging from a line strung from the back door to a weeping willow. A pudgy woman in a pink floral robe was pinning a sheet to the cord.
    Up ahead, beyond the warning signal, a county maintenance truck came toward her. When it was abreast of the BMW she stared at it, at the men sitting in back amid rakes and shovels and pots of steaming tar. They grinned, one whistled, and she half turned to watch until they disappeared around the bend.
    Ordinarily, she would have ignored them.
    Ordinarily, she wasn’t caught in a New Jersey earthquake.
    “It happened.” She reached out to touch the windshield’s crack. “Damnit, it happened!”
    She restarted the engine, pulled off the shoulder, and drove to the brick pillars that marked Meadow View’s entrance. She took the rest of the way at walking speed, to the last house in back. A split-level mock Tudor. Green fields behind it, green lawn in front shaded by the two red maples Ron had planted the afternoon he died. He had been standing by the last one, hosing water over the roots when suddenly his face paled, his mouth opened—he looked at her on the steps, and he keeled over.
    The doctor said he was dead before he hit the ground.
    Six years ago, at thirty-five, his heart had given out.
    She pulled into the driveway, sat for five minutes trying to see if she would scream, then opened the door just as her children ran out of the garage.
    Keith was eleven, husky, and blond, wearing coverall jeans and a Conan T-shirt; Heather would be fourteen in December, and was in one of her father’s denim workshirts, and a pair of red shorts. Both were barefoot, both demanding her immediate attention, and both were stunned when she threw her arms around them and hugged so tightly Keith began to gasp.
    “Mom, are you all right?” Heather asked when she finally extricated herself. “What happened to the car? Did you have an accident? Are you okay?”
    “Did you hit a tree or something?” Keith said, staring in astonishment at the crack in the windshield. “Jeez, you musta been going ninety. Jeez.”
    “Fine, I’m fine,” she said shakily. “I . . . didn’t you feel anything here, about twenty minutes ago?”
    “What,” Keith said, wrenching his attention from the wrecked car to the wreck his mother was. “An earthquake?”
    She almost nodded, then changed her mind. Instead, she hugged them again and her son protested loudly.
    “Hey, can’t a mother hug her kids when she wants to?”
    “Child abuse,” he muttered, and danced out of the way of her stinging palm.
    She watched them rush inside, and followed slowly, looking around until she was dizzy, finally convinced that whatever that nightmare was, it hadn’t