HIGH STRANGENESS-Tales of the Macabre Read Free Page A

ground, seething.
    "You don't know the future. You're just a dumb freak playing a little game. I wouldn't even trouble to spit on you i f you passed me in the street. You're garbage they forgot to take out. You're the fetus they neglected to abort. You're nothing and I'm not afraid of you. Either of you."
    Not afraid? You will be, MaryBeth, just give it a little time. You see, I brought all of you in here. I created your desire and curiosity. I brought in a woman who kills her many husbands for insurance money. I brought a church deacon who is a cat burglar and sexual pervert. I brought in an escaped convict who committed murder and now rob s little old ladies. And just before you, I brought a madman who is an imposter doctor. He gets his jollies by injecting unsuspecting patients so they die ugly, unnecessary deaths.
    "Worse than me!" MaryBeth made a move to leave again. "What do I care?"
    Not one of them are worse than you, not a single one.
    "How can you say that? They've killed too. They ’ re mad criminals, insane people, and murderers."
    It ’ s true, they are, but your ambition is unrestrained, MaryBeth. It's so strong, it's the most dangerous of all obsessions, don't you think? You were willing to kill family. You turned on your own blood. You weren't born with a conscience. Your heart is blackest of all, black as a cave deep in a mountain, black as the outer void beyond the universe.
    "You are no thing but a ridiculous freak. I don't have to believe a word you say. This is all a setup, some kind of trick. Now back off."
    For the third time she turned to go, holding her bony shoulders back, her chin up, her head high.
    They will exhume your sister, Ma ryBeth. Your father suspects you. He's not as unobservant as you think. You're going to get caught, locked up, and you won't get out of prison until you are a very old woman. They will try you as an adult.
    This time MaryBeth kept walking, her head high, he r mind shut against the warning.
    She exited the tent and hurried to find her father where she had left him on the midway looking for her while she had sneaked into the sideshow.
    #
    It was only days later the circus freak ’ s prediction came true. Her father braced her with questions she tried to answer, but he kept interrupting her excuses, accusing her of wrongdoing. He said, "I knew something was wrong, MaryBeth. You're the only one I confided in about my terminal condition. You knew I hadn't long to live. You hated your brother and sister, didn't you? Didn't you! If your mother were alive, she would die of horror at what you've become."
    MaryBeth ran to her room, weeping crocodile tears. Once behind her door she began to plot.
    #
    It was hours later, night eng ulfing the quiet mansion in shadow, when MaryBeth crept down the stairs to make sure her father was asleep in bed. It was true, she decided, what the sideshow monster had told her about the future. Her father's suspicions were at their highest peak ever a n d even if it meant his fortune would have to be left to charity, he was sure to bring her to justice for her crimes. That was the kind of father fate had saddled her with in this dreary, horrible life. Not only was she the youngest child, she was indisput a bly the ugliest. Not only had her siblings been brilliant, they had also been beautiful. She hated them with a passion from early childhood and that passion burned bright as a dying star. If she had it all to do over again, she would still find a way to m u rder them.
    She left the stairs and tiptoed into her father's library. She went to the secret panel and the safe there. She would have to take as much cash as he had stashed and disappear before the exhumation. For although he hadn't threatened it, she knew he would come around with the idea it had to be done, if only to satisfy his suspicions. She would have to start a new life before he went that far. She cursed her father, cursed her destiny. Why couldn't anything ever go her way? Her father