The Curse of Jenny Greene
Mandy O’Dell
Kimberly Loth
To Jane and Cyndi –
Jane for inspiring me to write this book and Cyndi for inspiring me to share it. I wish you both were here to see it.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
In the wispy dark of a foggy night, the children come. The children die.
Jenny Greenteeth croons to them, her keening call they cannot deny.
Prologue
October
Gram was dying, and it couldn’t happen soon enough. Not that I didn’t love her and wish she could be with us forever, but her frail body fought for each breath. The oxygen mask offered her so little relief; I didn’t think it was worth strapping it to her face. No one wanted to watch their beloved Gram die that way, drowning without a drop of water in sight.
Sam’s sobs drifted through Gram’s closed bedroom door. Dad had said eight was way too young to take part in the vigil, but we chose to keep Gram at home, so he knew what was happening. This room would always be haunted by Gram’s final breaths and Sam’s sobs.
Mom had long since stopped crying. I think she was numb. She sat in a chair next to the bed and stared at the blankets covering Gram’s small frame. I wondered if, like me, she wanted this whole ordeal to be over . . . for Gram to have some peace.
“She’ll finally be at rest,” said Dad. The scratch in his voice belied the stern set of his face. His normally bright, shiny eyes were dull with exhaustion and pain. Gray had crept into his hair in the last three months. Sometimes, I was shocked when I looked at him and saw how he’d aged.
Gram had been a constant in all our lives. She’d lived with Mom and Dad since before I’d been born. Last year, we had made the move to the northeastern coast specifically for her; she loved the sea and had wanted to return to her hometown.
Before the stroke, we used to take long walks on the pebbled shores, just me and her. She would tell me that “the waves have secrets”. After though, she lost her ability to speak in anything but sighs and grunts. There were no more walks for us.
I looked away from Gram as the hospice nurse, Lisa, came back in.
“It’s time for a little more morphine,” nurse Lisa said. She drew a little bit of the clear liquid into a syringe from a glass jar that was nearly empty.
Every hour, the nurse gave Gram a small dose to ease her suffering. Or maybe it was to ease ours. At this point, it was hard to tell. A little piece of each of us appeared to be dying with Gram. Dad was aging. Mom had stopped laughing. I quit taking pictures. Even Sam was a little quieter when he played.
We all held a collective breath while we waited for the morphine to take effect. Gram’s breath would slow even more.
At least it should have.
Gram’s eyes fluttered. Lisa frowned and placed her fingers on Gram’s frail wrist.
“Her pulse is speeding up,” she said.
Mom’s eyes widened. “Isn’t the medication supposed to be causing the opposite?”
“Is she having some sort of reaction?” Dad waved me closer to him and Mom. I wanted to run, to break out of the room of quiet inevitability and flee, but I wasn’t about to abandon them.
Dad and I each placed a hand on Mom’s shoulders. I gave her a gentle squeeze.
Surely, this was it. This was the end.
“I’m not sure. Callie, do you need something?” Lisa asked as if Gram could answer.
Gram raised both hands straight above her head and sat up.
I squealed and scrambled back to the opposite wall. Mom grabbed Gram’s hands and tried to yank them down.
“Please, don’t. Just rest, Mama.” Mom sobbed.
“Carly.” Dad pulled Mom away from the bedside. “Let Lisa work.”
Visibly flustered, Lisa fumbled and dropped the blood pressure cuff. It rolled under the bed. She grabbed the tubes that would connect Gram back to her IV. Gram’s eyes opened completely. Lisa froze.
Gram hadn’t looked that bright-eyed in weeks. No, months. Lisa dropped the tubes and backed away, knocking into the tray that held Gram’s water glass. It clattered to the floor with a crash. Gram swiveled her head around. Her gaze briefly touched on Mom crumpled in Dad’s arms. Then she looked past them, directly at me. Her brown eyes were clear. Her fixed stare never wavered. This was not what I expected the gaze of a dying woman to be.
“Sophie, love, you tell that witch she can’t have our boy.” Gram spoke as clear as she ever had.
“No, don’t try to talk. Please rest.” Mom wrestled free of Dad. She gently smoothed down Gram’s hair with one hand and cooed to her softly.
The doctors had told us that the end was near. They’d warned that Gram might call out or thrash. None of us were prepared for this. Heck, even the nurse was freaked out.
“Shhh. Honey.” Dad gently pulled Mom away from the bedside table. His eyes were wide and frightened. Not a look I’d ever seen on him. “Let the nurse work.”
That seemed to snap Lisa into action. Once again, she grabbed the tubes and began to hook up Gram’s IV.
“Do you hear me, Sophie?” Gram asked, pushing away Lisa’s hands. “Sophie?”
“I’m here,” I said. My voice sounded small and weak while I edged away from the wall, taking a couple of steps closer to the bed.
“You’d better hurry. Greenteeth is already calling for him,” said Gram.
“Who?” I didn’t have the slightest clue what she was talking about. Who was Greenteeth or our boy? Did she mean . . . “Sam?” I asked. “Connor?”
“The baby is too young. She wants Sam.” Gram pointed out into the hallway.
“Sam’s okay. He’s upset, but he’s gonna be fine,” I said. The hospice doctors told us to always reassure Gram that we could take care of ourselves. They’d said it was all right to give her permission
to go, to die. At the time, I had thought they were morons. I wasn’t telling Gram to leave me, but now, seeing Gram like this, I was too scared to know what to think.
“Go!” Gram screamed and thrust out her arm again. “I’m not going anywhere till you get him.”
“Gram . . . ”
“Get him,” said Dad. Mom had completely broken down, sobbing uncontrollably in his arms. It was all he could do to physically hold her up. “Gram needs to see Sam.”
Lisa looked at Dad then at me. “Sam’s not in the hall,” she said.
Of course, he was. My mind raced. I tried to piece together the evening’s timeline. Mom and Dad had been sitting there talking quietly with Gram when I came in and sat on the floor beside them. We heard Sam outside, whining and crying. The entire family stayed that way for hours, in a kind of holding pattern, in stasis, waiting for something to happen to force us to make our next move. Lisa had been the only one to come and go. She moved silently around us as she shut down the machines and did what she could to make Gram comfortable. She’d even gone to check on Connor for us so we could be at her bedside the exact moment Gram left. If any of us would have seen Sam lately, it would have been Lisa.
“What?” Mom stopped sobbing and turned to Lisa. “He was out there just before you came in.”
Lisa shook her head. “I haven’t seen him in a while. I thought he was in his room.”
“We’ve all heard him, though,” I said.
“Go, Sophie. Grimm Road. Greenteeth will have him.” Gram lowered her arms though she stayed sitting upright, completely freaking us all out. “I’ll wait.”
And with that, she collapsed back into Lisa’s arms. Her eyes closed, her breathing soft and steady.
I tiptoed out of Gram’s room and then ran down the hall to Sam’s. Gram’s warning rolled around in my head. The rational, calm part of my brain said she was hallucinating. The doctor had warned us she might do that. But her eyes had been clear, her words precise. If I could just see Sam, then I could breathe again.
Dad must have felt the same because he pounded down the hall in the opposite direction, toward the nursery, to check on Connor.
Sam’s door was ajar. I flung it aside. His bed was empty, and his blankets were thrown on the floor as if he had pulled them down or been dragged from them.
“Sam.” I fell to my knees. Yanking the blankets out of the way, I checked under his bed.
Nothing.
I jumped up and threw open the door to his closet.
Nothing.
Only dust under his desk.
No sign of him in the bathroom across the hall.
My breath jerked out in shortened gasps as sheer panic set in.
On the other side of the house, I heard Dad shouting, “Sam. Sam.”
Mom joined in. “Sam, honey, where are you?”
I checked my room and the linen closet. Every little nook and cranny I could think of. Sam had never been much of a hider, but he was doing a really great job of it now.
Mom, Dad, and I ran into each other in the living room. We froze when our eyes fell on the open front door.
The night breeze swirled crunchy fall leaves into the house.
For the space of a minute, we all stared into the darkness beyond the warm safety of our home. None of us moved . . . or breathed. I doubted our hearts were beating.
And in an instant, that moment shattered.
Mom crumpled to the floor and buried her face in her hands.
“I’m calling the cops,” I heard Dad say as I whipped back to my room.
“Sophie, where are you going?” roared Dad when he saw my car keys.
“Gram said Grimm Road.” I thrust on my Chucks and was at the open door when he grabbed my arm.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Sam didn’t make it out to Grimm Road on his own. That’s more than five miles away. He’s probably hiding in the back yard. Or he went over to his friend’s house. What’s that kid’s name?” Dad snapped his fingers. “Owen.”
“You look, Dad. I have to go. Gram told me to go.” My voice hitched up with each syllable.
Dad stared at me hard for a heartbeat then kissed my forehead. “Drive safe.”
Chapter 1
I spun on my heels and ran out to my Honda. The pavement was wet, but there wasn’t a hint of moisture on my car. The windshield was even dry. It was as if a giant puddle had come and gone. I didn’t stop to investigate, though. Dad would figure out what had happened at home. An instant later, I was on the road.
I hadn’t spent much time out on Grimm Road, but I knew how to get there. It was a dead-end beach road with a strange old house sitting on a bluff looking out over the ocean. Of course, Gram was sending me out to a place that came straight from an old black and white horror movie.
Two cop cars blew past me as I took the right turn onto Main Street on two wheels. Their lights were on and sirens blaring. They were going in the right direction, back to my house to find my brother, while I was off chasing down a dying woman’s final nightmare.
I rounded another curve too fast, keeping my foot pressed down on the accelerator. My breath felt like ragged tears in my lungs, I couldn’t drag in enough air. What the hell was I doing?
I slammed on the breaks.
Seriously, what was I doing?
Dad was right. There was no way Sam could have gotten out to Grimm Road. I banged my forehead on my steering wheel. My eyes burned with tears. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t have the breath, just the ragged scraps of air.
I lifted my head with every intention of turning my car around and going back to find Sam. But that’s when I saw her.
Standing in the middle of the road, not thirty feet in front of my car, was a woman with white hair blowing back like she was in some sort of fancy model shoot. She also wore a white dress that was wet at the hem. It was as if my headlights had washed away all her color.
But that wasn’t the strange part.
She had one arm raised in the air, her hand curled into a fist, and a ball of white light shot between her fingers. A ball of lightning that she was holding onto like a baseball.
I threw my car in park and opened the door. I didn’t say anything as I stood and stared. If I was going to see a witch tonight, this was her. Dread and fear settled in my stomach.
“It’s time again,” the woman said to me.
“For?” I asked, terrified of what her answer might be.
“She returns, and the cycle starts again.”
“Greenteeth?” I asked. I should have been asking – no, demanding to know where my brother was, but my voice and my brain were not communicating.
“So, you know of her already.” The woman smiled, her teeth were as white as her hair and her lightning. “You’re going to be trouble, I can tell.”
“Where is my brother?” The words finally tumbled out of my mouth.
She dropped her smile.
“Go home,” she said. “Go home and forget. You’ll be safer that way.”
She opened her fist and shook her hand like she was swatting at flies. The lightning she held broke off into hundreds of curled tendrils and spread in every direction. A blanket of electricity snapped and popped its way over the town.
Forget.
Forget what? Sam? No.
I shook my head.
“Oh, yes, you are going to be trouble,” she said as I got back into my car and slammed the door shut.
I wasn’t staying in town under her seeking streaks of lightning. If I had just seen one witch tonight, I was willing to have a little faith in Gram and drive out to Grimm Road to find another.
The woman kept her gaze straight ahead, she never even looked my way as I veered my car around her and sped away.
Grimm Road was paved for less than half a mile. Then my tires spun on gravel, and I was surrounded by gray dust. I slowed. The gray dust gave way to thick white fog, as white as that woman’s hair had been.
I stopped in the middle of the road and got out. Th
e fog was too thick. I couldn’t see much in any direction, but the wind moved the dense white waves along, and I followed it. I ended up on the edge of a pond. I felt drawn to the brackish water that quietly lapped over the toes of my shoes. The water was cold. But not cold enough for me to step back.
Behind me, the ocean roared. It screamed in agony as it pounded its frustration on the beach. I hadn’t heard it when I got out of the car. Now, there was no denying it.
The waves sounded so violent. The sound scraped against my skin. The pond, though, was so calm. The water didn’t move.
It was so still.
I needed to be that still.
I didn’t move a single muscle. I was afraid to even breathe too deeply. If I couldn’t be as still as that pond, I knew I was going to scream like the ocean.
The next morning, Dad and the police found me there, half-frozen and confused. I had come to this place for a reason. I just didn’t remember what that reason was.
Dad looked even older than he had during Gram’s vigil. His skin was gray, and the lines around his eyes had deepened. He didn’t smile as he wrapped me in the blankets the police officer handed him.
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