by Laura Del
Danville Horror
A Pat Wyatt Novel
Laura Del
Copyright © 2016 Laura Del
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1530477387
ISBN 13: 9781530477388
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016904393
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
Prologue
Home again, home again…
When life gets you down, you can always return home, right? Even after all hell breaks loose, you can feel safe knowing that you have something to run to in your hour of need. After all, the people you love are there, waiting for you to walk through the door. But what if your home is filled with ghosts and what if it’s permeated with the people in your past that you never wanted to see again? Or if you just don’t want to deal with all of the horrors of your childhood?
Horrors or not, going home for me was an enormous step toward normalcy, until the ghosts from my past met the horrors of my present.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
chapter
ONE
Usually driving relaxes me, but as I made my way to the familiar street, the clouds loomed above, threatening to do terrible things at any moment. I felt the muscles in my neck and sides tense in pain. When I tried to take a deep breath, it was stopped by a jab of pain that struck my ribs as if someone plunged a dull knife into my flesh. I just couldn’t get the goddamned air into my lungs.
“Jesus H. Christ,” I hissed to myself, “two seconds in this town and I’m already thinking like my father.” My father. The sheer thought of him made me cringe. When he sees the way I look, he’s going to scream first and ask questions later. I so did not need that. I mean, I almost died for God’s sake!
That’s right, I, Patricia Anne Wyatt, almost died by the hands, or claws to be more specific, of a horrific monster. His name was Elliot Sagmore, who also happened to be my editor in Louisiana and was the Alpha of a werewolf pack that my boyfriend, Mike Wolf, was, and is, a member. Did I also mention that I had to take a break from Mike because he tried to eat me? And if it weren’t for another werewolf named Angle, I would have been wolf chow. As it was, my chest looked like raw meat still on the bone, and the bruises made me look like a screwed up version of the Bride of Frankenstein.
I figured enough was enough, so I left. The saddest part of it all was that I lost my baby. I hadn’t really had time to process any of it, but here I was driving to my childhood home to be the Matron of Horror. I mean, honor, to my father’s fiancée, Cindy. Oh, joy of joys.
As I drove through Danville, Pennsylvania, I realized it was as if I had never left. While I navigated the streets, my nerves were on edge, and my heart thought that the conga was a good rhythm to follow. As quaint as the town was, my mind still reeled around my father marrying someone so much younger than himself. It was bad enough that I barely knew the woman, but to have a thirty-year-old as a stepmother with me being almost twenty-seven… I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. And to top off the awkwardness, she had made me the central part of her wedding party.
A moment of pure unadulterated hatred went through me, but not for Cindy, for the whole situation. Especially for the bucket of bolts the rental car place had given me. It was driving me to my frilly dress, flower arranging, dry cake tasting doom.
Turning up Erin Drive, my heart dropped into my stomach. I felt the panic set in as I parked on the street in front of my father’s house. It had been years since I had thought of it as my home, and I knew I wouldn’t truly call it home again anytime soon. I sighed, thinking of how long it would take me to get my bags up the gravel drive. “Fuck it,” I said to myself, “I’ll live out of the trunk.” It wouldn’t be that long anyway. A week tops.
Taking a deep breath, I picked my big fluffy coat off the passenger seat, and I stepped out of the car, walking up to the oldest brownstone on the street. Everything was the same. From the white painted frames on the windows to the tall, chipped columns of the porch; even the green door was the same. A little darker than before, but still that same puke green that my mother always hated.
I stood there shaking my head. “Typical,” I muttered. Only my father would keep something the way it was because my mother didn’t like it. Not that he didn’t love her, it was just he loved to watch her face when he did something that annoyed the crap out of her.
Finally, when I stepped up onto the porch, I tripped over the stupid lip that my father always refused to get fixed. “Just pick up your feet,” he used to say, and his voice in my head brought back a memory.
Sitting on the window seat in my living room, I waited with baited breath. Every now and again, I would tap the cool glass impatiently, and my knees would shake. And as I placed my cheek against the cold window pane, I tried to get a better look at the oncoming traffic in the street, but nothing was moving out there.
“Patricia,” my mother’s light English-accented voice made me jump as she placed her hand on my shoulder, “he won’t come if you keep sitting there. You know what they say—”
“A watched pot never boils,” I finished. “Yes, Moms, I know. But I’m just too excited!”
She pressed her soft, warm cheek against my glass-cooled one. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sure he is too.”
“I sure hope so.” I could hear myself getting upset, and my mother squeezed my shoulders reassuringly. She always did that when she could see me growing agitated. It was just one of the things I’d miss when she was gone.
I remembered it was the winter of my senior year of high school, and he had been gone for almost four years. I missed him so much that I cried half the nights he was away. Of course, he called every now and again, but it wasn’t the same as seeing him every day. After all, he didn’t even come home for holidays. The school was just too far away. I was a love-struck teenage girl, and nothing short of him being home would make me feel any better. And when he told me that he had graduated college with honors, I was so excited I couldn’t breathe. Then he said that he was coming back home, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I would finally see him after all this time and on my birthday no less. You know, if he didn’t get stuck somewhere. I mean, the man could get lost in a parking lot. He seriously had no sense of direction.
As I sat there, I thought of all the things that could go wrong. He was already fifteen minutes late, and instead of paying for the plane ride home, the idiot had decided to drive with snow being a serious, and dangerous, possibility. I swear, the only thing worse than him driving was him trying to save a buck by doing something stupid. Knowing him, he could get into an accident and be dead at the side of the road somewhere. I had visions of him sta
nding out there, in the snow. Then a stranger would pull over and he’d get into the car and be murdered. Crazy, but that’s what I was thinking about when his car pulled into the gravel driveway.
“He’s here,” I screamed as I jumped up from the window seat, hugging my mother. “He’s here, he’s here, he’s here!” She laughed as I flung her aside to open the door, throwing all caution to the wind. I didn’t even attempt to put on a coat.
“Jim,” my voice was so high it could have shattered glass as I ran out of the house and jumped on him. We landed in a heap on the ground, laughing as we descended.
James Robert Collins hadn’t changed a bit in his four years at college. He still had his boyishly handsome face, except for the five o’clock shadow he was sporting. And from what I could tell, he was just as tall with only a little added muscle to his slender frame. Surprisingly, he still looked like the handsome wrestling captain who left me.
“Patty Melt,” he managed to say, even though I was squashing him. “You gotta get off so I can give you your present.”
I laughed, jumping off him just as quickly as I had pounced, not caring that I was shivering and slightly damp from the cold ground. “Present,” I said as he stood up. “What kinda present?”
He shook his head, wiping the wet leaves from his jacket. “No, you don’t get it that easy.”
I pouted and saw that he wasn’t alone. “Jimmy?” a girl in a bright yellow, cropped, down coat with matching mini skirt, said as she stared daggers at me. She was tall, thin, blonde, and drop dead gorgeous.
“Um, Jim, there’s a stranger on my front lawn,” I whispered to him.
He laughed again. “Sorry. This is my girlfriend, Amanda. Amanda,” he said, wrapping his arm around her, “this is Patricia.”
“Girlfriend?” I asked, my eyes wide. What the actual hell?
“Yup. She’s my girlfriend.” He gave me a look as if to tell me to be nice, so I forced a smile. Even back then, I wasn’t good at forcing emotions.
My heart dropped into my stomach. In an instant, my mother was by my side, wrapping my coat around my shoulders. She always knew when I was in trouble. It was sort of spooky how she did that. “Hello, Amanda,” she greeted her, and I nodded. “I’m Mrs. Wyatt.”
“So nice to, like, meet you,” Amanda whined. “Jimmy Wimmy told me so much about you both. His little sister-like friend and her mother, you guys were, like, a legend in the dorms.”
“Jimmy Wimmy?” my mother asked.
“Sister?” I cocked an eyebrow, and Moms and I exchanged a look.
He smiled, his perfectly white teeth making me cringe as he beamed at us. “Yeah,” he answered to both questions.
My smile faded, fists clenched at my sides. Moms held onto my arm, speaking for me. “What a pleasure meeting you, Amanda. You will excuse us for being shocked, as your Jimmy Wimmy didn’t tell us that you even existed.” That was Moms, graceful and funny under pressure.
Me? Not so much. “Excuse me,” I breathed, pulling away from Moms as I walked back inside, tripping over the stupid lip of the porch, and finally running upstairs to cry my eyes out. I didn’t stop until the next day. He had totally ruined my eighteenth birthday; even my mother couldn’t get me to come out for the chocolate cake she had made, which was one of my most favorite things in the world. I just sat in my room crying all night. In the morning, I sobbed some more until I was so tired that I slept all day. Luckily, it was the weekend because there was no possible way school was an option for the way I was feeling. After a good five hours of sleep, someone finally knocked on my bedroom door, waking me up.
“Go away,” I yelled through my pillow.
“Patty Melt,” Jim’s voice was muffled by the door, “you’ve been in there all day, are you okay? Your mom and dad are really worried about you. Hell, I’m worried about you.”
“Go away,” I screamed again, this time throwing a pillow at the door.
“Don’t be like that, Pat. Come one,” he pleaded, “let me in.”
“Fine,” I huffed, getting up and unlocking the door. Then I sat back down on the bed, folding my arms. “Come in.”
“Hey,” he said as he walked in carefully, making sure I wasn’t packing any teddy bears. As if I would throw Mr. Albert at him. I loved Mr. Albert. “You came up here yesterday and never came back down,” he continued, shutting the door behind him, walking toward me. “May I?” Jim pointed to the bed, and I nodded. He sat down with a sigh. “You’re scaring me, Patty Melt. You all right?” I didn’t answer. “Listen,” he said into the silence, “I know you. Something’s wrong, and I think I know what it is. You don’t like Amanda, do you?”
“Amanda’s fine,” I huffed, punching him in the arm. “It’s her boyfriend I’m not too crazy about.”
He rubbed his arm. “Ouch! What was that for?”
“You promised, Jim!”
“Promised what?” he asked, confused.
I hit him harder. “You know exactly what!”
“Ow,” he screeched, jumping off the bed. “Seriously, Pat, stop doin’ that.”
“I will not,” I hissed, getting to my feet, pushing him back until he was against the door. “You promised me you’d wait. You lying, cheating snake!”
He looked surprised. “Oh my God! You waited?”
“You’re damn right I waited,” I cursed at him, and his eyes widened further. “That’s right, I cursed. Deal with it.”
“How was I supposed to know you waited?”
“You could’ve asked just me. You called enough.”
He opened his mouth and then closed his eyes. “You’re right. I could have. I just didn’t think any guy could resist you. I mean, fuck, Pat, all you have to do is bat those hazel eyes at people and they do whatever the hell you want. You could’ve gotten any guy you wanted.”
“I wanted you,” I growled, pushing on his shoulders again so he knocked into the door.
His face fell. “You don’t want me anymore?”
“No, I don’t. Now, get out!”
“No,” he said, folding his arms, “I will not.”
“Get out!”
“No!”
“Get the heck out of my room!”
“No,” he screamed in my face, holding my shoulders. “I’m not going anywhere!”
I shoved him. “Yes, you are!”
“No,” he repeated quietly this time as he held my arms like a vice, pulling me to him.
“Let go,” I said, feeling my heart in my throat.
“Make me,” he whispered against my mouth, and I could barely breathe. Jim kissed me so gently that I couldn’t feel his lips at first, then he forced his tongue into my mouth and I could no longer think.
We kissed like that for all of two seconds before he was putting me down on my bed. “What about Amanda?” I asked, coming to my senses for a minute.
“Who’s Amanda?”
I bit my lip, and he pulled out protection from his back pocket. “Be careful,” I whispered, and he understood what I meant. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t worried, I knew I’d be safe in his hands, and I could feel that I was losing my virginity to the right man.
He kissed me again, and it sent me flying. “Happy Birthday, Pat,” he whispered against my cheek, and at that moment, he was mine, and I was his.
I had to lean my forehead against the front door to compose myself before I walked into the house all keyed up. The memory had been so vivid that I could feel everything he did to me as if was happening in the present. Taking a deep breath, I prepared myself for what was inside. But when I opened the door, it was dark, and the house looked desolate.
Pops said that the door would be open for me, but he forgot to mention that no one would be there. Typical Pops, he always forgot to tell me everything.
“Hello,” I called out to no one, shaking my head. Looking around,
I noticed the Christmas decorations were still up. It was probably the theme for the wedding. Winter wonderland. Vomit. My disgust was soon replaced with a feeling of happiness. To my right was the living room with its beautiful fireplace strewn with holly and tinsel. Pops had even put our stockings up. Luckily, I had remembered, after I landed, to get him a little something at the airport shop.
Peering into the living room, I saw nothing had really changed. Pops still had that ugly as sin-brown recliner in front of the fireplace, but a flat screen TV had been added above the mantel. It didn’t look safe up there, but knowing Pops he talked the installation guy into doing it that way.
Walking a little farther into the house, I placed my handbag down on the bottom of the stairs to my left while taking my coat off and throwing it over the banister. It led up to the second floor, and my room was at the very top. I had the urge to run upstairs and take a nap but thought better of it. Moving past them, I ran my fingers against the garland-laden pegs, hearing the soft pangs of the wood. It was as sweet as on old lullaby almost long forgotten, and I smiled to myself.
“Hello,” I repeated, walking through the archway into the kitchen/dining room area. “What? No party?” I mumbled to myself, and, as if on cue, the lights went up and there was a collective, “Surprise! Happy New Years Eve!”
I jumped a mile and winced as the pain shot through my very bruised body. “Holy mother,” I breathed, “you scared the living daylights out of me.”
Pops ran up to me before I could see everyone, and he bear- hugged me. “How are you, baby girl?” he asked as he squeezed me tighter, and I nearly fainted from the pain.
“Not good, Pops,” I whispered to him. “Not good.”
“We’ll talk later,” he whispered back, letting me go so I could breathe.
“Is that Patty Melt?” a gruff voice came from behind my father, and as I looked behind Pops, I could finally see him.
“That can’t be Bob’s Big Boy,” I said, straining to look up at him. He must have grown a foot since I last saw him, and he looked quite handsome in his Army fatigues. Robert Anderson must have just flown in from his post, wherever it was at that point. The last time I saw him, he was going into Special Forces. By the looks of him, he definitely got in. I mean, even his muscles had muscles.
