A Shiver At Twilight Read Free Page A

gruesome parody of bending before snapping with a sound like an explosion. It keeled with an equally loud groan and then crashed down, shattering glass and crunching metal as it struck. It happened so fast, neither of them had time to react, but when it was over, the white pickup lay in ruin beneath the tree.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
     
    “Holy crap,” Carly whispered.
     
    JD had other things to say and more creative ways to say it. He ran out and circled the destroyed vehicle, apparently searching for a way inside it, though it seemed a pointless foray to Carly. The tree had made a bizarre pancake of his truck, nearly cleaving it in two with the impact. There were no doors left to open, no way into the flattened mess. The roof of the cab and the bed in the back had been shaped into a V around the pine.
     
    “Fuck!” he shouted at the wreck.
     
    He raked his hands through his hair, leaving it standing on end. Then he crouched down and wedged a shoulder into the crunched opening of what used to be a window.
     
    While he struggled for access—to what end she had no clue—Carly shrank back on the porch, foreboding dogging her steps. She looked over her shoulder into the house, wondering about the old man. Where had he gone? Surely he’d heard the crash? But the stillness behind her rubbed against her skin like oily fur. She shifted, not liking the feeling of having her back to the gaping darkness of the open door.
     
    As she hesitated, she heard footsteps and JD stopped at her side, looking like he couldn’t quite believe what had happened. She couldn’t believe it either. What were the odds of lightning crashing down in just that place? Of lightning at all in a winter storm like this? A million to one? Ten million to one?
     
    JD shook his head and glanced away. She had the strange feeling that he’d heard her thoughts.
     
    “It looks like we’re going to be stuck here for awhile,” he said.
     
    And as if to validate the statement, the freezing, slushy rain thickened and came faster. It colored the driving wind a brilliant, blinding white. Soon there would be drifts and piles of it everywhere. It was the kind of snow that layered ice on black roads and isolated the unsuspecting driver.
     
    JD strode past the foyer into the room the old man had led her to—the one with the fireplace. At the entrance, he reached over, flipped a switch and a loud click echoed in the barren room. No lights came on.
     
    Carly drew even with him, wondering why the fire didn’t cast a glow. The answer struck her like something hard and sharp. No fire burned warmly in the grate, not even the remnants of one. Like the old man, the flames had vanished.
     
    All the skin on her body seemed to shrink until she felt like she’d been trapped in a constricting wetsuit. She’d thought she was cold before, but now . . . .
     
    JD turned on a flashlight—she realized that it must have been what he’d grabbed out of the cab of his truck—and the beam chased back all but the blackest shadows. She trailed him through the door on the other side to a kitchen as devoid of furnishings as the first room. Another click of an ineffective light switch. She felt a draft that made her shudder. JD’s light bounced off dirty countertops to a shattered window over an ancient porcelain sink.
     
    “You’re sure someone let you in?” he asked.
     
    “Either that or I imagined the door opening and the man leading me to a warm fire.” As she spoke, they both turned to the fireplace. “There was a fire,” she said. “And an old man with gray hair and a flannel shirt. He asked me if teenagers had forced me off the road.”
     
    JD continued to stare at her like she was crazy. She couldn’t blame him. There was no fire now. No old man.
     
    “I saw lights,” she insisted, her voice rising as she tried to convince them both. “When I was walking on the road. That’s how I found it here. I saw lights and smoke coming from the