Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror Read Free Page A

the same. Sometimes she would go for months without dating at all. And whenever she did meet someone she was interested in she knew that at some point, before the relationship became too serious, she would discover some fatal flaw. Sometimes she would find out the man was married. Sometimes she was forced to end the relationship out of sheer boredom. But whatever the reason, she seemed destined to meet nothing but jerks and losers.
    Until she met Stephen.
    Her first several weeks with him she was as nervous as a cat, fearful that at any moment she might discover some terrible crack in his seemingly perfect personality. But there was none. She even speckled her conversations with him with subtle and carefully worded questions designed to draw him out, but always he gave the right answers. More than that, every day with him, every hour and second, was an experience too wonderful to be true. During the day he would take her shopping at Bendel’s or to the designer boutiques at Saks and allow her to buy anything she wanted. At night they would go to parties at the Palladium, or at the home of some famous writer or movie star, and the next day they would have front-row seats for a private performance of a Broadway play. Indeed, just when she thought she had had the most nearly ultimate experience possible, Stephen would top himself again. He would fly them both to Paris on the Concord for lunch. Or fill her apartment with ten dozen red roses. Or leave a pair of diamond earrings from Cartier’s on her pillow. Or tell her he loved her at precisely the moment she needed to hear it the most.
    In the brilliant afternoon sunlight that filtered in through the window she looked at him, at his sculpted profile and curly black hair. It was an added plus that he was as good-looking as he was. He was tall and muscular and had the intensity of a young Marlon Brando, with a Roman nose, square chiseled chin, and limpid and arresting green-gray eyes. He was also one of the most alive people she had ever met. Constantly on the move and never tiring at the prospect of exploring something new, he always had a sparkle about him. He could be soft and tender when the moment demanded. He could be intellectual and discuss everything from Proust to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. But he could also just as easily drop the polite and boyish façade and exude a brute masculinity, a raw, take-charge sensuality that, although it embarrassed her to admit it, nearly took her breath away.
    She gave his hand another squeeze. Had someone told her a few months back that she would be quitting her job at People Beat and getting married again, she would have laughed in his face. She would miss working at the magazine, and she recognized what a profound change marrying Stephen had made in her life, but she was glad she had made the decision. She loved him more than any man she had ever met, and the fact that he loved her made her feel like the luckiest woman alive.
    From the backseat came the sound of a page turning, and she turned around to glance at her son, Garrett, his nose as usual buried in a book. Her only concern was how the eleven-year-old was going to adjust to all the changes that had taken place in their life. It had taken her days of talking just to get him used to the idea that she had married Stephen. When she told him they would also be leaving New York and spending the summer in the mountains, he had just about died. It was an understandable reaction. After all, she was all the family he had, and now he was going to have to get used to having a stranger for a father and to adjust to an entirely new environment as well. In the end he had begrudgingly consented to the move, but she knew that he was still far from happy about it.
    “What are you reading?” she asked, caring less about the subject matter of his book than about how he was feeling.
    “It’s about UFOs,” he returned.
    “UFOs?” Stephen said, puzzled.
    “It’s space,” she