Free The Loveliest Dead by Ray Garton Page A

for the teddy bear. He knew it was down here, and he just wanted to find it and play with it, probably because we don’t have any of his toys here in—”  
    He snatched the bear from her hands and said angrily, “Jenna, will you stop it!”  
    She flinched, and the outer corners of her eyes crinkled.
    Quietly, he said, “You’re talking crazy.” He tossed the teddy bear down on the fallen boxes. “He’s gone, Jenna, and he’s not coming back. You’ve got to stop this, because I can’t take it, I really can’t. Do you understand? I feel bad enough as it is. If you keep this up, you’re gonna start to scare me, you know what I mean? We can’t afford any counseling right now. And I really don’t think we need it—I think we’re pretty normal, under the circumstances. But if you keep this up, you’re gonna tear me apart, okay? So please, you’ve got to—”  
    “I’m sorry.” She put her arms around him. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
    He put an arm around her and they stood that way for a while. Then he said, “Come on, let’s go upstairs. It’s freezing down here.”  
    “Aren’t you going to change the bulbs?”
    “I did. They blew out again as soon as I flipped the switch. I think there might be something wrong with the wiring.”
    Her tone was wary. “Something wrong with the wiring?”
    “Yeah, but don’t worry about it. We just won’t come down here until we—”
    “We’ll have an electrician take a look at the wiring, then.”
    “We can’t afford an—”
    “Mom will pay for it.”
    Mom will pay for it . David was beginning to hate those words. He needed to find a job before he started hating Jenna for saying them.  
    “David, we don’t know anything about electrical wiring, and I’m going to be worried sick if I think there’s an electrical problem in this house.”  
    “All right, all right. Talk to your mother about it.” He pushed her gently toward the stairs. “Go on. I’ll be up in a minute.”
    Jenna hesitated, stepped around him, and went over to the teddy bear on the dirt floor. She bent down to pick it up. “I’d like to take this and—”  
    “No.”
    “But I just wanted to—”
    “ No . The bear stays down here with the rest of this junk. After I clean up the garage, I’m going to come down here and throw all this stuff out.”  
    Jenna took one last look around in the dark, then went upstairs.
    The breaker box was on the wall at the foot of the stairs. David opened it, turned the flashlight on it. It looked like a regular breaker box to him, but Jenna was right—he didn’t know any more about electrical wiring than she did.  
    He turned and went to the center of the basement and aimed the light upward. There were exposed pipes overhead, and a chain dangled from a single light fixture hung from a cord without a bulb.  
    He passed the light over the mess once again. Of the boxes that had toppled, a couple had broken open. Some toys and old magazines had spilled out onto the floor. An old wooden high chair was leaning against a stack of boxes near the corner. Its wood was splintered in places and its black paint was peeling like dead skin. Part of one leg was missing. But there was something odd about it. David stepped over to the chair. Six black leather straps dangled from it, three on each side, three with buckles.  
    What kind of high chair has leather straps ? he wondered.  
    He reached down and pulled the high chair away from the stacked boxes. Old cobwebs clung between it and the boxes.
    David suddenly was overwhelmed by a deep feeling of growing horror. Like a current of electricity, it traveled up his arm from the chair itself and filled his entire body. Something about the chair felt so wrong, so corrupt, that he let it go, let it drop back against the boxes. He stumbled back a step, chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.  
    The basement’s cold seemed to sink into his bones. The darkness around him appeared much darker,