Free Supernatural: Night Terror by John Passarella

wrong?”
    “The tree... it was moving...”
    She approached the window and stood there for a few moments. Suddenly, the tip of a tree branch swayed far enough to scrape along the windowsill. To Daniel’s ears it sounded like fingernails—or claws. He shuddered.
    “It’s nothing,” she said in a soothing voice. “Getting breezy out there. The tree branch brushed your window, that’s all.”
    “It scared me,” Daniel said. “Looks creepy.”
    Hands on her hips, she stood over him and shook her head. “Daniel, you’re perfectly safe here. You can’t be afraid of every little shadow and bump. Okay?”
    “Okay,” he said glumly.
    “Be a brave boy for me?”
    Daniel nodded. “I’ll try.”
    “That’s what I like to hear,” she said and kissed his forehead again. “I’ll ask your father to trim that tree in the morning.”
    “Okay.”
    This time, on her way out, she left his door ajar, so she could hear him better if he called for her. Accepting the compromise, Daniel tried to sleep again. He rolled onto his side, back to the window so he wouldn’t see the shadows, and drew his knees up close to his chest.
    Wind and shadows , he told himself. No reason to be scared ...
    Another yawn, wider than before, and he was drifting off to sleep much sooner than he would have expected after his scare.
    With his eyes closed and sleep tugging him down into unconsciousness, he failed to notice the nightlight flicker and wink off. Seconds later, he was oblivious as a splotch of darkness in an upper corner of his bedroom uncoiled and drifted toward him like tendrils of obsidian and impenetrable smoke. The darkness flowed across his bedcovers, passed over his face and gathered over his bed’s headboard. Slowly, as the darkness condensed, a shape began to emerge, like a silhouette, but in three dimensions. First a head formed, dark and unknowable and, beneath it, a pitch-black arm extended from the center mass, the tip stretching to coalesce into a hand and shadowy fingers that splayed across the boy’s forehead.
    Outside Daniel’s home, the wind picked up, gusting as with a coming storm and the white oak’s branches stirred and swayed and became agitated, reaching for the house and the boy within...
    Dean brought a cold six-pack of beer back to the motel room, stuffing a few bottles in the packed ice bucket to keep them chilled. Considering he had two other six-packs, he needed a much bigger bucket. Or an ice chest. The local supermarket would have a cooler. He sipped from a bottle as Sam perused old news stories on the laptop computer.
    “Found it,” he said eventually and spun the computer around for Dean’s benefit.
    “That accordion was a ’68 Dodge Charger?” Dean asked.
    “That’s what it says.”
    Dean peered at the screen.
    “Color matches. Cherry red, white racing stripe.”
    Sam turned the laptop around again, scrolled down through the story.
    “Hit a retaining wall. Driver’s side took the brunt of the impact.”
    “Even if it was possible to repair that damage,” Dean said, “doesn’t explain how the car can disappear. Could be a lookalike car but unless it belongs to a magician...”
    “Maybe it’s a vengeful car, not a vengeful spirit.”
    “All we need. Car with a grudge. Christine comes to Clayton Falls.”
    “Kid lived with his paternal grandmother,” Sam said, relaying information as he skimmed through articles. “Mother died in childbirth. Father and son lived in New Jersey. Father died five years ago. Massive heart attack. Heavy smoker. Grandmother only surviving relative. Took the boy in.”
    “Lot of tragedy in that family.”
    “That dead teenager is the only connection we have to any of these sightings.”
    “If it’s not a vengeful spirit,” Dean said. “Maybe we need to concentrate on the living.”
    * * *
    Daniel Barnes squirmed in his bed.
    Lost deep in REM sleep, his eyes darted back and forth beneath his eyelids, tracking the stuff of nightmares. Removed from the