Rockinghorse by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

16

Although none of the adults would admit it aloud, all were glad to see the morning light slowly creep through the landscape of the Georgia countryside. The four professors had returned home, after being thanked for their assistance, and the kids had been put to bed. The adults slept for a few hours, with Lucas and Kyle taking turns standing watch. The intruders from the Brotherhood—if they had been from the Brotherhood, and none doubted it—did not return that night.

Sitting alone on the front veranda, his loaded shotgun by his side, Lucas was attempting to make some sort of sense out of all that had taken place since they had arrived in Edmund County. He was having one hell of a time doing so.

Ira is dead. I killed him, Lucas thought. He was buried the same day. That does not make any sense. No investigator from any office has yet been to see me about the killing, and I have this vague feeling no one ever will. Now Ira’s body is gone, and Kyle says the pictures he saw show the grave was broken out of, not into. That makes even less sense, speaking from a purely scientific and legal point of view. Of course, wooden rocking horses that jump around and attack people and bleed after being shot don’t make much sense, either. Ira shows up at my kitchen door. Something showed up at the kitchen door that night. Now one of the Woods’ Children is supposedly named Ira. Any connection? Wouldn’t surprise me at all. The men and women who live in the Gibson house are not our enemies, but our friends. Grown men and women, all college professors, playing silly games. Or it is silly? Maybe not. I burned the rocking horse. But it refused to burn. Now what was left of the shot-up and ruined hobbyhorse is gone. Where did it go? And, more importantly, how did it go?

And what in God’s name is the Brotherhood and how does it tie in with all that’s happened?

“It is not very old as old goes,” Louisa’s voice came from behind him.

Lucas suppressed a shudder. Forcing himself to appear at least outwardly calm—due to his exposure to other psychics he was not surprised they could get into a person’s head—he said, “You move very quietly, Louisa.”

“Yes. Yet another of my . . . gifts.” She spoke the last very sarcastically.

“Oh? Do I take that to mean you wish you did not have them?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. But I do think it must be nice to be normal.” She sat down in the chair to Lucas’s right.

“How old is old?”

“Three hundred and fifty years. The Brotherhood was originally formed in England. It was brought to America by some of the earlier settlers. When the witch hunts of Salem began, some of those suspected of being witches and warlocks fled southward. Some settled north of here; others stayed in the deep, uncharted wilderness on their way south.

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