The House on Everley Street (Death Herself Book 2) Read Free Page B

married someone who'd once been on a reality TV show. Nearby, on a table, dozens of copies of his new book were waiting for guests to admire
    “So are you finally going to answer my question?” Aaron asked suddenly, stepping up behind him. “Have you, famous horror novelist John Myers, ever seen an actual ghost?”
    John paused, before turning to look at him. “Not yet,” he said after a moment, forcing a smile. “You never know, though. There's still time.”

Chapter Two
    Twenty years ago
     
    “What are you doing?”
    Hearing his grandmother's voice in the hallway, John immediately slipped his notebook out of sight and pretended to be reading a magazine. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the page, even as he heard his grandmother shuffling closer. A moment later, she snatched the magazine from his hands and took a look at the cover.
    “What are you reading about television shows for?” she asked haughtily, clearly not approving of the subject matter. “What have television shows got to do with anything?”
    “I just -”
    “You should be reading about proper things,” she continued, flicking through the magazine. “Cultural things, things that'll improve your mind. This is just garbage.”
    “It's -”
    “You're going to end up with a soft brain,” she added, dropping the magazine into his lap before turning and making her way slowly to the sideboard. She was in her nightgown, ready for bed, which was always when she seemed most uppity. “You'll end up like your mother, achieving nothing in life and wasting all your potential. You're directing your energies in all the wrong directions.”
    “Mum didn't waste her potential,” he replied, watching as his grandmother's trembling hands unscrewed the lid on the sherry bottle. “If she hadn't died, she'd have been a writer.”
    At this, his grandmother gave a derisory laugh.
    “It's true,” John continued. “Dad said she won competitions in magazines. He said she was working on something and that one day she'd get published.”
    “Rubbish,” the old woman hissed. “Your mother had all these fancy ideas, but she was never going to get anywhere with them, she'd never have finished that stupid book, even if she'd lived to be a hundred. No wonder she ended up weak in the head. I did everything I could for her, I tried to put her on the straight and narrow, but sometimes you just can't help someone. Some people are just doomed to failure on account of their own personalities.”
    “She was -”
    “Do you want to end up like her? Locking yourself in the bathroom and downing a bottle of bleach?”
    John shivered a little as he heard those words. Looking back down at the magazine, he suddenly felt a little hollow, as if his grandmother's words had struck at his core. Any mention of his mother's suicide was always enough to knock him off kilter.
    “You're lucky you were too young to remember,” she continued. “ I remember. Course I do, I'm the poor soul who had to hear the screams and break down the door. I'll never forget the moment I saw her writhing in agony on the floor with blood pouring from her mouth, while you cried in your room. That's the problem with suicides, they're so selfish, they never think about the people who have to find them.”
    “Mum wasn't selfish,” John said quietly.
    “What was that?” she asked, raising her voice. “What did you say?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Did you say she wasn't selfish? What do you know, eh? She was weak and pathetic, and rather than buckling down to a proper life, she decided to take the easy way out.” Finishing the glass of sherry, she poured herself a second. “You don't know what you're talking about. You don't even remember your mother.”
    “I do,” he replied, a little defensively. “I mean, I remember... flashes. I remember what she looked like.”
    “Lucky you.”
    “And I remember the sound of her voice.”
    “She was always a whiner.”
    “She had a lot of self doubt,” John continued.