AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’d been here!
Marlie had been right in this very spot.
And the text and voice mail she’d received had been right.
She was alive!
“Kara?” A sharp voice caught her attention. “Kara McIntyre?”
Kara’s stomach dropped and she saw the reporter approaching. An eager, smiling woman in a red jacket, a cameraman following with a shoulder cam, the call sign for Channel 3 visible.
“Kara McIntyre?” someone, a man, repeated. “Isn’t she the kid who was locked in the attic? Jonas McIntyre’s sister?”
“Oh, God.” Kara started to panic.
“Could you spare a minute?” the woman, Sheila Keegan, said, her toothy smile seeming so genuine as she approached.
The answer was no.
A definite and firmNO.
“Sorry.” Kara took off. Before more people caught on. Before more attention was cast her way. Before it becamea thing.
“Kara McIntyre’s here?” she heard as she hurried away, skimming the perimeter of the crowd, avoiding the pools of light cast, the snow providing a curtain of cover as she tried to blend into the shadows.
She was late, she knew. Tate could already have driven off, and then she’d have to figure out another way home as her crumpled SUV was most likely in a police department’s garage somewhere. Not that it could be driven in its current ruined condition, no doubt a totaled wreck.
She couldn’t worry about it now as she cut down a side street, parked cars iced over, snow piled on their hoods and roofs. Windows glowing, casting illumination onto the frigid white lawns. Strings of lights winked and blinked around eaves and glowed from beneath a white mantle covering the shrubbery.
Christmas.
Kara’s most hated time of year.
And no one was about.
People were tucked snugly into their houses, but the street itself was empty, devoid of life.
Just her, walking swiftly, her boots clicking unevenly on the packed snow of the sidewalk. And yet she didn’t feel alone. A chill swept through her and she sensed that someone was watching her, maybe even following her.
Get over yourself. It’s just that it’s been a hard couple of days. Your nerves are raw and fraying, your senses hyped, that’s all. You’re always super tense this time of year.
The Christmas season was always the worst.
This year would be even more so.
Twenty years had passed.
A milestone.
The “anniversary” of the McIntyre Massacre. There were already plans to dredge it all up again. Reruns of the TV specials about the brutal tragedy, books reissued, magazine and newspaper articles written back then dredged up again, a brand-new hyping of the Christmas horror show with poor little Kara McIntyre cast as the tragic heroine.
“Bullshit,” she muttered, her breath clouding as she spied a snowman leaning precariously near a porch decorated with a sagging blow-up Santa and his overflowing bag of toys. As she passed the plastic Santa Claus, it sprang to life.
“Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!” it called, rocking a little as it inflated, the toy sack, too, filling with air.
“Oh, Jesus!” Kara physically jumped.
For a second she thought the sudden animation was a cruel joke, that someone was manipulating the horrifying display. But no, while her heartbeat skyrocketed into the stratosphere, she realized she’d been caught in some hidden camera’s eye and inadvertently activated a motion detector sending old Kris Kringle into his full stature. Even so, with a glance at the Santa’s shiny face she felt a niggle of fear snake down her spine. His painted eyes seemed outlandishly round and ogling, his red lips beneath a painted-on beard appeared to grin with fake, toothy intensity. Like an evil clown in a house of horror.
