The Haunting of the Creole House by Blake Croft & Ashley Raven

Author:Blake Croft & Ashley Raven [Croft, Blake & Raven, Ashley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

— ∞ —

June 16th – 8:57 AM

Lakeshore Drive, Mandeville – Louisiana

S he ran, panic coating her throat now. She checked the living room, the reception room, the dining room and even the study where Richard was wolfing down a breakfast plate he had made himself while she was upstairs, but Aiden was nowhere to be found.

“Aiden!”

“Maybe he went to the beach,” Richard shouted from his study.

Visions of a hungry wave snatching her boy away to its murky depths burst forward in her mind. She shoved it to the back, in a blind panic.

Abbie ran to the back door and down the path that lead to the beach. A group of teenage boys and girls were busy picking up towels and dismantling tents by the water. The remainder of a fire was a black accusatory mark in the center of their camping site.

“Excuse me?” Abbie tried to control her voice but it was high and erratic.

They stared at her.

“Have you seen a small boy?” she asked, waving around the region of her thighs. “He’s this tall. Blond hair like mine.” A sob escaped her lips. “Did he come by?”

“No.” A girl with auburn pigtails shook her head. “We’ve been out here all night. We didn’t see any boy.”

“How’d you know?” a boy guffawed. “You were asleep all night.”

“I was awake.” A gangling boy with severe acne on his chin said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see anyone come down the beach until about dawn. But that was a man with a dog.”

“Old man Moonshine?” A girl piped up. “He might have seen something.”

“Where does he live?” Abbie tried to hold on to their words, to calm herself down but her eyes kept turning back to the roaring waves that crashed on the beach. How easy it would be for such a force of water to take her little boy and smash him against hidden rocks like a rag doll. She shook her head.

“The pink house down that road,” the girl said. “You can’t miss it. I really hope you find your boy.”

Abbie didn’t have time to thank them. She ran pell-mell up the beach and onto the road. She walked down the street to where the girl had pointed. Her entire body was cold, her hands were shaking, and she could feel black spots invading her vision. Her body wanted to shut down rather than consider the appalling fact that her son was missing. She fought through her own body’s survival tactics and pushed on.

After three minutes, the house appeared from behind a copse of trees.

The house was painted sugar pink, and was smaller than the one they had rented, but there was a dog outside and he began to bark as soon as Abbie turned the corner. A man sat on the wide porch eating an apple.

“Shut your hole, Pug!” the man shouted at the dog, but the animal was excited by the new face. “May I help you?”

“I’m… we’ve rented the house down the way.”

“The one with blue walls?” The man was in his late fifties, his skin tanned to leather.

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