Chain Letter by Ruby Jean Jensen

Author:Ruby Jean Jensen [Jensen, Ruby Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-951580-29-2
Publisher: Ruby Jean Jensen

* * *

Karen brought the mail in, but Abby watched her from the door and began looking over her shoulder as Karen separated letter from letter.

They still weren’t speaking much, though Abby was no longer mad at her sister. Still, she hadn’t brought herself to offer an apology for accusing her of being responsible for Chuck’s death, and so Karen was kind of giving her a cold shoulder. In short, she was making no effort to even act as if Abby were in the house. She looked through the mail as if no one were within half a mile.

“Anything for me?” Abby asked, her voice friendly and quiet, offering its own silent apology.

“No,” Karen answered in an abruptness that meant she wasn’t going to be that soft. It was going to take a spoken apology. But then, “You can have these if you want them.” She held two sweepstakes envelopes back over her shoulder.

Abby considered not taking them. In fact, in a brief flash, she saw herself reach out and shove them hard against her sister’s face, pushing her earring so sharply into her ear that a drop of blood would appear.

She gasped, thinking in horror of that flashing desire, wondering where it came from. Was this her, Abby, who was thinking all these things lately? She didn’t understand herself anymore.

She didn’t want the sweepstakes envelopes. She was beyond that now. The previous year she had answered every one of them, going over them carefully, ordering more magazines than her mother had liked. But this year she was bored with it. Still, because she had thought a bad thing against her sister, she took them.

Watching yet over Karen’s shoulder, she saw that Karen had gotten two letters. One of them was from a Sergeant Bishop, a guy Karen had never met, just one of a half a dozen overseas servicemen that she corresponded with. The other letter was printed by hand, with no return address. Karen opened it first.

There was no salutation, and the sheet of paper had the same neat printing as the envelope. But the first few words jumped out at Abby, like an evil come back to haunt her.

Whosoever possesseth

Abby reached over Karen’s shoulder and snatched the letter out of her hand. “Let me see that.” She read it swiftly. It was different from the letter she and Brian had sent, yet it was basically the same letter. “Who sent this?” she demanded.

Yet she knew.

There was only one person who could have sent it, now that Chuck was dead.

Dina, his sister.

A terrible fury began in Abby’s heart and grew and grew, so that she felt as if she were going to burst. How dare she! How dare she send this letter to her sister Karen.

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