The Turning Read Online Free PDF Page B

less far away. I heard your voice inside my head, saying, “Only two months!”
    But two months had already begun to seem like an eternity. Maybe anyone would have felt edgy, heading into a dark, spooky house where he was going to spend the summer. Anyone would have felt jumpy leaving the comfortable kitchen, where Linda was putting away paper towels, a normal thing that normal people did in any normal household. I felt like I did when my dad and I went to the amusement park for my birthday, when I was eight. Following Miles and Flora, I felt those stomach flutters like when they belt you in for the haunted house ride, and the car starts rumbling along the track, and all you can think about is how soon you’ll enter the dark tunnel and the ghosts and monsters will start popping out of the walls.
    What made me feel even worse was that it seemed as if all the light had decided to stay behind in the kitchen. A thick velvet curtain covered the door that led to the rest of the house, and when it swung shut behind us, I went semiblind for a minute until my eyes adjusted. Miles and Flora ran ahead. They certainly did seem to know their way in the dark. Maybe it didn’t seem dark to them, and maybe soon it wouldn’t seem dark to me, once I got used to it. I reminded myself how places and people look different, once you get to know them. Remember how, when we first met in the school lunchroom, I thought you were stuck-up and snobby and you thought I was a weirdo nonstop talker?
    The halls weren’t exactly pitch-black, but they were pretty dim. All the windows were covered by heavy curtains. The lamps that worked were so low-wattage they could have been candles. And nothing was laid out the way you’d expect. Wouldn’t you think that a hall would eventually lead to a room? But some halls led only to other halls that right-angled and doubled back. We went up a winding staircase and down a corridor, then up a staircase, across a sort of bridge, and down another staircase. I couldn’t tell how far we’d come or what floor we were on or if the kids were messing with my head by taking me the long way. We passed a lot of doors that were closed and looked as if they hadn’t been opened in a long time. Maybe they were locked. Miles and Flora weren’t exactly giving me the guided tour of all the interesting parts of the house we passed on the way to my room.
    I felt as if Miles and Flora were the grown-ups, and I was the child, being led through the maze to the center of the labyrinth, where the witch or monster waited. I thought, You should be dropping bread crumbs or M&M’s or any of the secret markers that smart children in fairy tales use when they’re being led into the forest and they want to find their way home. But Miles and Flora knew exactly where they were going, and all I had to do was follow. Still, my duffel bag was getting heavier by the minute, and I could only imagine how heavy my backpack was beginning to seem to little Miles.
    “We’re almost there,” Miles said.
    Suddenly the corridor dead-ended at a door. This one was definitely locked. Miles tried to open it, then Flora, and then I turned the knob and even banged on the door, though I knew it was stupid. There was no one behind it. I hoped.
    “What’s up with this?” I asked them. “What’s inside the room?”
    The kids exchanged another one of those looks I’d seen pass between them in the kitchen.
    “Don’t worry,” Flora told me. “There are other ways. We can go around.”
    I said, “Whoever designed this place must have been pretty twisted.”
    Miles said, “It happened over a long time. Our great-great-grandparents and then my great-grandparents kept building new additions and firing and hiring architects, so the floor plan got kind of scrambled.”
    “Why did they hire and fire so many?” I said.
    “I thought the architects all quit!” said Flora.
    “You heard wrong,” Miles said quietly. “You often do.”
    Flora was silent after