Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Author:Joe Hill
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Ghost, Body, Ghost stories, American Horror Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction - Horror, Supernatural, Fiction, Mind & Spirit, Horror & Ghost Stories, Suspense, Horror - General, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, General, Horror
ISBN: 9780061147937
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2007-02-13T06:00:00+00:00

27

Jude took the wheel just before they crossed into Georgia. His head hurt, an uncomfortable feeling of pressure on his eyeballs more than anything else. The sensation was aggravated by the southern sunshine glinting off just about everything—fenders, windshields, road signs. If not for his aching head, the sky would’ve been a pleasure, a deep, dark, cloudless blue.

As the Florida state line approached, he was conscious of a mounting anticipation, a nervous tickle in the stomach. Testament was by then perhaps only four hours away. He would be at her house tonight, Jessie Price, née McDermott, sister to Anna, elder stepdaughter to Craddock, and he did not know what he might do when he reached the place.

It had crossed his mind that when he found her, it might end in death for someone. He had thought already that he could kill her for what she’d done, that she was asking for it, but for the first time, now that he was close to facing her, the idea became more than angry speculation.

He’d killed pigs as a boy, had picked up the fall-behinds by the legs and smashed their brains out on the concrete floor of his father’s cutting room. You swung them into the air and then hit the floor with them, silencing them in midsqueal with a sickening and somehow hollow splitting sound, the same noise a watermelon would make if dropped from a great height. He’d shot other hogs with the bolt gun and imagined he was killing his father as he did it.

Jude had made up his mind to do whatever he had to. He just didn’t know what that was yet. And when he thought about it closely, he dreaded learning, was almost as afraid of his own possibilities as he was of the thing coming after him, the thing that had once been Craddock McDermott.

He thought Georgia was dozing, did not know she was awake until she spoke.

“It’s the next exit,” she said in a sand-grain voice.

Her grandmother. Jude had forgotten about her, had forgotten he’d promised to stop.

He followed her instructions, hung a left at the bottom of the off-ramp and took a two-lane state highway through the shabby outskirts of Crickets, Georgia. They rolled by used-car lots, with their thousands of red, white, and blue plastic pennants flapping in the wind, let the flow of traffic carry them into the town itself. They cruised along one edge of the grassy town square, past the courthouse, the town hall, and the eroded brick edifice of the Eagle Theater.

The route to Bammy’s house led them through the green grounds of a small Baptist college. Young men, with ties tucked into their V-neck sweaters, walked beside girls in pleated skirts, with combed, shining hairdos straight out of the old Breck shampoo commercials. Some of the students stared at Jude and Georgia, in the Mustang, the shepherds standing up in the backseat, Bon and Angus breathing steam on the rear windows. A girl, walking beside a taller boy who sported a yellow bow tie, shrank back against her companion as they went past.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.