Incident On and Off a Mountain Road by Joe R. Lansdale

Author:Joe R. Lansdale [Lansdale, Joe R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gere Donovan Press
Published: 2011-11-19T22:00:00+00:00

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If you enjoyed “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” we think you’ll like Cold In July, too. It’s a novel by the inestimable Mr. Lansdale, now available as an e-book from Gere Donovan Press.

Cold In July

That night, Ann heard the noise first.

I was asleep. I hadn’t slept well in a while due to some problems at work, and the fact that our four-year-old son, Jordan, had been sick the previous two nights, coughing, vomiting, getting us up at all hours. But tonight he was sleeping soundly and I was out cold.

I came awake with Ann’s elbow in my rib and her whisper, “Did you hear that?”

I hadn’t, but the tone of her voice assured me she had certainly heard something, and it wasn’t just a night bird calling or a dog working the trash cans out back; Ann wasn’t the frighty type, and she had incredible hearing, perhaps to compensate for her bad eyesight.

Rolling onto my back, I listened. A moment later I heard a noise. It was the glass door at the back of the house leading into the living room; it was cautiously being slid back. Most likely, what Ann had heard originally was the lock being jimmied. I thought about Jordan asleep in the room across the hall and gooseflesh rolled across me in a cold tide that ebbed at the top of my skull.

I put my lips to Ann’s ear and whispered, “Shhhh.” Easing out of bed, I grabbed my robe off the bedpost and slipped it on out of habit. Our night-light in the backyard was slicing through a split in the curtains, and I could see well enough to go over to the closet, open the door and pull a shoe box down from the top shelf. I put the shoe box on the bed and opened it. Inside was a .38 snub-nose and a box of shells. I loaded the gun quickly by feel. When I was finished, I felt light-headed and realized I had been holding my breath.

Since Jordan had been sick, we had gotten in the habit of leaving our bedroom door open so we could hear him should he call out in the night That made it easy for me to step into the hallway holding the .38 against my leg. In that moment, I wished we lived back in town, instead of here off the lake road on our five-acre plot. We weren’t exactly isolated, but in a situation like this, we might as well have been. Our nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away and our house was surrounded by thick pine forest and squatty brush that captured shadows.

It was strange, but stepping into the hall, I was very much aware of the walls of the house, how narrow the hallway really was. Even the ceiling seemed low and suffocating, and I could feel the nap of the carpet between my toes, and it seemed sharp as needles. I wondered absently if it were deep enough to hide in.

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