The Girl Inside the Wall (Book #1 of Demons Among Us) by Patrick Quinlan

Author:Patrick Quinlan [Quinlan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2012-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

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Jessie rode her unicycle down a quiet, tree-lined side street.

The houses were small, but kept tidy with little front yards and trimmed hedges. This was a step up from Jessie’s neighborhood. As she rode along the street, she began to slow down. In a moment, she hopped off the unicycle, picked it up, and carried it as she walked. She was looking for something, but didn’t know quite what it was. For no reason at all, she stopped at a white house with gray trim, a two-story, with a narrow driveway running down the right side.

She stood in front of it. The upstairs window was round, like a porthole on a ship. That was the little girl’s room. This was her house. Jessie was sure of it. She had come straight here, as if she were tied to a string. She hadn’t known the address or anything about the place. She just knew it when she saw it. And she had come straight here.

She moved over to the top of the driveway. There was a low metal fence here. Down the right side of the driveway, all along a fence that ran beside it, was a little garden. The garden was mostly bare this time of year. A woman knelt in the garden about halfway down the driveway. She had a sun hat on, obscuring her features.

Jessie’s hand moved as if it didn’t belong to her. She lifted the latch on the gate and pushed it. It swung slowly open, making a creaking sound as it did so. Jessie walked down the driveway toward the woman. She walked all the way and stood directly behind her. The woman wore an old yellow pullover. Jessie stood and faced the woman’s back, the woman clipping something, hunched over her work, speaking softly to herself. Gray and brown hair fell from beneath the sunhat.

“Hello?” Jessie said.

The woman froze. She did not turn around.

“Hello?” Jessie said again.

Slowly, the woman turned to look at who had addressed her. Her face was at once young and old, pinched, and lined with worry. Her eyes widened as though she expected a blow across the head. They settled on Jessie and relaxed a little, but not too much. She looked down at her own gloved hands, the clippers in one hand, some cuttings in the other, as if they were foreign to her. She looked back at Jessie. She noted the unicycle and the knapsack. She didn’t say anything.

“Do you have a daughter?” Jessie said.

The woman gazed at Jessie quizzically, but still said nothing. She cocked her head just slightly to the side, as if listening to sounds that were far away, and which only she could hear.

Jessie took off one of her thin white gloves and held her small hand out to the woman. She hated to do it, but she needed to know. She had to find out. It seemed like this woman might never speak, and Jessie needed to know if what she had seen was real.

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