Let Him In (Let Him Trilogy) Read online

  Let Him In

  Copyright © 2013 Sharon Davis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Stephanie White / stephscoverdesign.com

  Table Of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Let Him In

  Table Of Contents

  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

  About The Author

  Chapter 1

  One cow, two cow, three cow, four...

  Lacey Chase’s knees popped as she thrust her legs out as far as the unmovable, tilted seat of the 1992 Chevrolet Cavalier would allow. Stretching her arms out behind her, she arched her back, which made a sound like a foot stomping down on a sheet of bubble wrap. When her ragged fingernails snagged on the drooping overhead fabric of the car, she exhaled sharply.

  ...this place is going to be one huge ass bore.

  Folding her arms over her chest, Lacey shifted her narrowed gaze from her father to the ocean of grass surrounding them. “Forty-eight.”

  “When we get there, kiddo.”

  She arched a brow at the forty-year-old man hunched over the steering wheel like Quasimodo. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll make us some noodles wh—”

  “I said forty-eight, not when do we eat.”

  “Oh.” After a lengthy yawn, he looked at her. The cognac-colored irises of his eyes were framed by red veins in varying lengths. “Forty-eight what, kiddo?”

  “Fifty-seven now.”

  Lacey jabbed a finger in the direction of a herd of black and white cows grazing next to a barn sporting a fresh coat of paint in make-your-eyes-bleed red. The two-story farmhouse next to it however didn’t look like it had been painted since the Mexican Revolution. In the backyard, a white-haired man wearing only a pair of dirty bib overalls tended a small garden. His wrinkled, sun-darkened skin made her think of beef jerky, which made her empty stomach growl.

  “Wow, Clint—an actual person. I was beginning to think they were extinct here.”

  He chuckled. “I guess we now know why the town’s called Hermit.”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “Witty.”

  He yawned again and then shook his head, making his shaggy, toffee-colored curls bounce. “It will be peaceful.”

  “So would death,” she grumbled, shifting her glare from him to the dirt and bug splattered windshield. The world beyond was made up of broccoli colored pastures peppered with golden hay rolls and clusters of trees in shades of honeydew and avocado. Fluffy clouds of white drifted across an endless, crystal-blue sky.

  The whole damn place made her feel as though she’d stepped through a dimensional portal like The Marshall’s had on the mid-seventies television show “The Land of the Lost”, so much so that she wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if a Sleestak suddenly jumped out from behind the cows and tried to eat the old man.

  Just what in the hell was she going to do to pass the time in this rural community? Peel bark off trees? Count blades of grass? Tip cows?

  Letting her head fall back, Lacey’s exasperated sigh was cut short when her hair caught on the seat’s ripped vinyl fabric. “I really hate this stupid car.” Grinding her teeth, she jerked open the faded denim purse between her legs. “And I know I’m going to hate this stupid house.” She yanked out the ugly fuchsia Ipod she’d found a month ago in the bathroom trash can at her former part-time job. “In the middle of stupid nowhere.”

  “Couldn’t swing an apartment in town this time, kiddo.” Clint raised his hand at the first vehicle to pass them in what felt like centuries. “Everyone wanted—”

  “First month’s rent plus security deposit,” Lacey finished. Blah, blah, blah. She scrolled to a random song, pressed the play button. “That wouldn’t be a problem if we had more time to save up.”

  “You know that we can’t let the trail get cold, ki—”

  “Cold?” She laughed, a short, sharp sound devoid of humor. “We could go ice skating on the damn trail.”

  “Lacey—”

  She jammed the Ipod’s ear-buds home, cranked the volume. Pat Benatar’s voice filled her head as she sank down in the seat. The singer was wrong: Love wasn’t a battlefield but a prison, the only one where the inmates were self-admitted and retained the key, which they rarely used, to their own freedom. But unlike her father, she was determined to ditch the heart-patterned jumpsuit she wore that had his name written all over it. All she had to do was figure out how to get the stupid thing off.

  Lacey closed her eyes as her intestines began to churn. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly.

  When the car lurched to a sudden stop a few minutes later, her squishy stomach shot into her throat. Swallowing it back down, she removed the ear-buds as Clint pulled the emergency brake.

  “Home sweet home,” he said, his tone as flat as her numb behind felt.

  “No such thing,” she mumbled, looking up. Her chin dropped as she sat bolt upright. “Oh my freakin’ God.”

  “Come on, kiddo—it isn’t that bad.”

  “Not for someone filming a horror movie!”

  “Lacey—”

  She shot out of the mustard yellow sardine can to gape up at Leatherface’s dream home. “Does it even have indoor plumbing?”

  “Very funny, kiddo.”

  Lacey snapped her head in his direction. “How many times do I have to ask you not to call me that? It sounds like something you’d call a retarded goat.”

  “Sorry, force of habit.”

  The car door squeaked in protest as Lacey slammed it. With a sharp expulsion of breath, she charged up the short gravel driveway to the teal scooter parked at the front, circling it with a critical eye to make sure the movers hadn’t scratched or dented it.

  Between work and playing detective, Clint was too busy to take her anywhere so her only mode of transportation had been a worn-out pair of Reebok’s, which wasn’t a problem living in town with everything within walking distance. Upon learning that they’d be moving to the boondocks where the nearest town with actual employment opportunities was approximately eight miles away, she’d had to come up with an alternate method of getting around. Even if she would’ve been able to buy a clunker like her father’s, she wouldn’t have been able to afford the insurance or the gas, so a car hadn’t been an option.

  Two week
s before they were to set sail for the Island of the Dead, Lacey had overheard a coworker (Steve? Leve? The Beave?) ask another coworker (she definitely remembered his name: Larry. Or had it been Barry? She vaguely remembered long hair, so it could have been Mary...) if he knew of anyone who wanted to buy a scooter for two hundred bucks. When the possible she-male said no and left her and The Beave alone in the employee lounge that was roughly the size of a Saltine cracker, Lacey had pounced.

  “Two hundred?”

  The boy’s bushy brown eyebrows had resembled a giant caterpillar as his forehead creased. “You talking to me?”

  “No, him,” Lacey replied, shifting her gaze to the empty chair beside The Beave. “The ghost.”

  The lanky teen didn’t move his head to look, only his now bulging eyes. “Ghost?”

  Lacey slapped her forehead. “My bad—I see stupid people, not dead ones. I always get those two confused.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You wanted two hundred dollars for the scooter, right Einstein?”

  Gritting his teeth as his cheeks turned a dusty rose, he snarled, “Two fifty.”

  Lacey wondered if she’d be able to make the empty soda can she held fit up one of the punk’s flared nostrils. “One fifty.”

  “No way!”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “Dude, it’s like new!”

  “Dude, I don’t care,” she said, standing up so fast her chair toppled over.

  Lacey could feel the boy’s beady eyes boring into her as she charged toward the door. She was only a few inches from it when The Beave hopped in front her. “Fine,” he had groused, “one fifty.”

  If only everyone was so easily persuaded, Lacey thought as Clint appeared beside her. “It’s half the rent of an apartment and the landlord doesn’t care what we do to it.”

  “Great! Any matches in the car?” she asked with an enthusiastic grin.

  “Lacey—”

  She charged up the narrow weed and dirt footpath leading to an uneven porch that creaked under her weight and sent something beneath the weathered boards darting to the opposite end.

  Great, probably a baby Sleestak.

  Clint sighed as he joined her at the peeling front door. “Lacey—”

  “As much as I would love to hear pep talk number thirty-one, I’d like to get inside before the sun sets.” She snorted as she scanned the darkening woods surrounding them. “Although getting eaten by a bear or attacked by a horde of rabid raccoons is damn appealing at the moment.”

  With another sigh, Clint slid a rusted key into the lock. Jiggled the knob. Slammed his shoulder against the door three times before it finally wobbled open. He slid his hand along the inside wall and after a hollow sounding click the small, dusty foyer revealed itself under a fuzzy yellow glow.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said, darting past him to race up the creaking stairs.

  A musty scent stabbed her brain like a couple of shish kabob skewers rammed up her nostrils as she reached the second floor landing. Covering her nose and mouth with her hand, Lacey shuffled to the first door, pushed it open with her foot.

  What remained of the day’s light seeped in through a small window above the pea green commode—the bathtub and pedestal sink were the same disgusting color that made her think of the projectile vomit scene in “The Exorcist”—and covered the cramped bathroom like a fuzzy, gray-blue blanket. She pulled the frayed string dangling from the middle of the ceiling. In the pale yellow glow of the low wattage bulb the walls looked like something that could have been beige at one time, probably in the 1960’s. The way off-white, cracked and peeling linoleum was dotted with faded gold flowers.

  Note to self: Bleach. Lots of it. Nostril hair singing strength.

  Wrinkling her nose at the tobacco-stained walls, Lacey shambled down the hall like a death row inmate heading to the electric chair. Reaching the second and last door on that side of the house, she murmured, “Let’s see what horrors await behind door number two.”

  The deep, rich mahogany of Amelia’s French Victorian bedroom furniture should have given the bedroom some measure of warmth, but not even it could defrost the disheartening chill created by the eggshell walls streaked with yellowish-brown stains, the dirty and cracked windows repaired with thick strips of clear tape, and the faded wood flooring riddled with scrapes and gouges. A small cluster of boxes with CLINT written on them in black marker were piled around a nine drawer, three mirror vanity. Amelia had spent hours in front of it every day, her hazel eyes proudly caressing the perfectly proportioned features reflected back at her as she brushed the flowing mass of mocha curls cascading over her tawny shoulders.

  I traded fame and fortune for a wedding ring and diapers.

  Amelia’s breathy voice was so thunderous inside Lacey’s mind that she thought for a moment she’d actually heard the words out loud. After a hard shake of her head, she gave the vanity her middle finger and then crossed the hall to kick open the only door on that side.

  Twice the size of the other bedroom, it had the same dirty walls, cracked windows and worn-out floors. What remained of her possessions didn’t even fill half of it: A twin bed, an oval night stand, a small desk with a chair. Inside a large black trash bag on top of the bed was a teal comforter and matching pillow. Next to that was a box that contained an alarm clock, a small white lamp with a teal shade, a portable stereo, a stack of music CD’s, a few Stephen King books, several notebooks of paper and a pack of pens. Except for another slightly larger box marked CLOTHES and the pile of hangers on top of it, that was it.

  Lacey kicked the door shut with the heel of her foot and then flicked the light switch with her index finger, a candle able to put out more light than the bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling did. Charging over to the bed, she glimpsed her reflection in the window, prompting the addition of another item to her mental note list: curtains.

  But was that a necessary expense?

  Their only neighbors were trees and critters after all, and she doubted if a squirrel would be offended if it caught a glimpse of her pale white ass. Hell, it would probably think it was just looking at the moon, set in the sky a little lower than normal.

  Plus, she had only one-hundred twenty-four dollars and ninety-two cents to her name and didn’t know when, or even if, she’d be able to get another job. She could work only on the weekends and evenings after school—

  Lacey cringed. School. In two and a half months, she was going to be a twenty-one-year-old senior. Twenty-one! Unable to keep up because of the constant moving, she’d failed the eighth, ninth and tenth grades. Not seeing the point in continuing her education when she’d never be able to have any type of real career relocating four or five times a year, Lacey had told her father that she wanted to quit school. He’d said no, rambling on for a few minutes about how nowadays even the most mundane jobs were starting to require a high school diploma before he had agreed to cut down on the moving until she graduated.

  She’d been stupid enough to think that relocating only twice a year would allow them to spend some time together, but now when her father wasn’t working he was traveling to every town within a two-hundred mile radius, which meant she saw him about as often as the big-breasted blonde got away from the knife-wielding maniac in a horror movie.

  Closing her eyes, Lacey fisted her hands in her hair. “Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care,” she whispered. “I like being alone. No—love. I don’t care because I love being alone. Love, love, fucking love it.”

  She took a deep breath. Gagged. The musty smell was stronger—Of course!—in her room. A can of air freshener might be a must-have. She preferred candles but they were expensive, at least the good ones were; she liked anything that smelled like cookies or cake. At the mouth-watering thought, the starving gremlin inside her stomach began growling and clawing.

  Ignoring the sharp pangs she’d grown accustomed to, Lacey unzipped her teal hoodie. When she slipped it off her bare shoulders invisible teeth made of ice bit into the
m, making her shudder so violently she pulled a neck muscle. “Damn it!” She yanked the hoodie back on, zipped it all the way up to her chin and then pulled the hood down over her head before stomping so hard the windows rattled. “A tent has more insulation than this dump!”

  Sixty-five degrees outside and it felt like fifty in her room. When winter came she’d have to sleep in flannel pajamas plus a sweatshirt and sweatpants or risk waking up with frostbite. And she didn’t even want to think about showers that were apt to be as painful as a root canal without Novocaine.

  Exhaling sharply, Lacey yanked the portable stereo out of the box on top of her bed. After a quick scan she grabbed the Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker’s Greatest Hits CD and then carried both items over to the desk the movers had placed in front of one of the room’s two windows. She plugged the cord into the coverless outlet, loaded the CD, skipped to track seventeen, cranked the volume and then jabbed the PLAY button. Her scalp prickled and skin pimpled as the guitar intro to Mary Jane’s Last Dance filled the room. If she had body hair, she’d look like a freakin’ porcupine.

  Lacey sang along as she quickly unpacked the box on the bed, the lyrics like ice water seeping into her bones. This will be my last dance, she thought, a shiver ripping through her.

  No more father-daughter tangos after this.

  Shaking her head in emphasis, Lacey dragged the box of clothing over to the tiny closet. All of her things fit into it with room to spare. She left her socks, bras and panties in the box along with a single pair of flannel pajamas in a black, white and magenta plaid.

  Turning away from the smeared and cracked glass of the full-length mirror nailed to the back of the closet door, Lacey reluctantly peeled off her clothes. The removal of her bra made her nipples pop out like the temperature indicator on a turkey. As she pulled the pajama bottoms up and over her Winnie the Pooh underwear she wondered if they actually still came with those red button-like thingies. The last turkey she’d seen had been almost nine years ago, on the last Thanksgiving celebrated by The Chase’s.