Phantoms Read Free Page A

how to smile and laugh again. During the past few days, she had seemed like her old self. And now this.
    Jenny took the girl to the secretary, urged her to sit down, then squatted in front of her. She pulled a tissue from the box of Kleenex on the desk and blotted Lisa’s damp forehead. The girl’s flesh was not only as pale as ice; it was ice-cold as well.
    “What can I do for you, Sis?”
    “I’ll b-be okay,” Lisa said shakily.
    They held hands. The girl’s grip was almost painfully tight.
    Eventually, she said, “I thought… When I first saw her there… on the floor like that… I thought… crazy, but I thought… that it was Mom.” Tears shimmered in her eyes, but she held them back. “I kn-know Mom’s gone. And this woman here doesn’t even look like her. But it was… a surprise… such a shock… and so confusing.”
    They continued to hold hands, and slowly Lisa’s grip relaxed.
    After a while, Jenny said, “Feeling better?”
    “Yeah. A little.”
    “Want to lie down?”
    “No.” She let go of Jenny’s hand in order to pluck a tissue from the box of Kleenex. She wiped at her nose. She looked at the cooking island, beyond which lay the body. “Is it Hilda?”
    “Yes,” Jenny said.
    “I’m sorry.”
    Jenny had liked Hilda Beck enormously. She felt sick at heart about the woman’s death, but right now she was more concerned about Lisa about anything else. “Sis, I think it would be better if we got you out of here. How about waiting in my office while I take a closer look at the body. Then I’ve got to call the sheriff’s office and the county coroner.”
    “I’ll wait here with you.”
    “It would be better if—”
    “No!” Lisa said, suddenly breaking into shivers again. “I don’t want to be alone.”
    “All right,” Jenny said soothingly. “You can sit right here.”
    “Oh, Jeez,” Lisa said miserably. “The way she looked… all swollen… all black and b-blue. And the expression on her face—” She wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. “Why’s she all dark and puffed up like that?”
    “Well, she’s obviously been dead for a few days,” Jenny said. “But listen, you’ve got to try not to think about things like—”
    “If she’s been dead for a few days,” Lisa said quaveringly, “why doesn’t it stink in here? Wouldn’t it stink?”
    Jenny frowned. Of course, it should stink in here if Hilda Beck had been dead long enough for her flesh to grow dark and for her body tissues to bloat as much as they had. It should stink. But it didn’t.
    “Jenny, what happened to her?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “I’m scared.”
    “Don’t be scared. There’s no reason to be scared.”
    “That expression on her face,” Lisa said. “It’s awful.”
    “However she died, it must have been quick. She doesn’t seem to have been sick or to have struggled. She couldn’t have suffered much pain.”
    “But… it looks like she died in the middle of a scream.”
     

Chapter 3
    The Dead Woman
     
    Jenny Paige had never seen a corpse like this one. Nothing in medical school or in her own practice of medicine had prepared her for the peculiar condition of Hilda Beck’s body. She crouched beside the corpse and examined it with sadness and distaste—but also with considerable curiosity and with steadily increasing bewilderment.
    The dead woman’s face was swollen; it was now a round, smooth, and somewhat shiny caricature of the countenance she had worn in life. Her body was bloated, too, and in some places it strained against the seams of her gray and yellow housedress. Where flesh was visible—the neck, lower waist, hands, calves, ankles—it had a soft, overripe look. However, this did not appear to be the gaseous bloat that was the consequence of decomposition. For one thing, the stomach should have been grossly distended with gas, far more bloated than any other part of the body, but it was only moderately expanded. Besides, there was no odor of