Free The Summoning by Mark Lukens

flickering lights and shadows that the TV made on the ceiling.

CHAPTER SEVEN
1.
    At six o’clock in the morning Ryan went down to the kitchen. He halted for a split second when he saw Tom and Victor sitting at the small table. They were both hunched over plates of breakfast that Carol had made for them. He didn’t know why they were up so early; he didn’t think that either one of them worked, but he wasn’t sure. They never told him anything about themselves.
    “Good morning,” Ryan said and he smiled at them.
    Victor and Tom both stood up without a word to Ryan. They took their plates to Carol. “I’m done, Carol,” Victor said. “That was a wonderful breakfast.”
    Carol glanced down at their plates. “You didn’t even finish all of your food, Victor.”
    Victor shot a glance at Ryan, and then he looked at Carol and gave her a smug smile. “Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite.”
    Tom nodded in agreement. “I need to get going. There’s some stuff I need to get done.”
    Carol eyed Tom. “You don’t do anything except sleep all day. What could be so important now?”
    Tom stared at Carol, his mouth moved as he tried to think of an answer. He glanced at Victor for help.
    Carol shooed the two older men away and gave them a disgusted scowl. “Go on, then. Get out of here.”
    Ryan moved out of the doorway to give the men room to scuttle out through the doorway. He entered the kitchen and stared at Carol. “If I’m disrupting things around here, I can find somewhere else to stay.”
    Carol scraped the plates of half-eaten food into the small kitchen waste can. “Nonsense,” she snapped at him. She gestured at the small table. “Go on. Sit down.”
    Ryan sat down in the chair, his body rigid and tense. “I can tell they don’t want me here.”
    Carol looked at Ryan. “This isn’t their house, is it? It’s my house. They don’t make the rules, I do.”
    She poured Ryan a glass of orange juice and brought it to him.
    Ryan took a sip, but it didn’t taste the same. Everything seemed better yesterday, fresh and new and exciting, but today the dark dread was washing over him, clouding everything, ruining everything.
    “You okay, Ryan?”
    Ryan nodded and gave Carol a half-smile. “I just haven’t been sleeping too well lately.”
    “Something wrong with the bed?”
    “No,” Ryan answered quickly. “It’s just me.” He smiled at her and then added: “I’ll be fine.”
    There seemed to be something in Carol’s expression that Ryan was trying to pinpoint. She seemed concerned about him, overly concerned for a total stranger. But there were other emotions mixed in – sadness and fear underneath her expression. And there was something strange about Carol; she seemed to know things about him, but she didn’t seem to want to reveal too much, and for that reason Ryan felt it was best not to reveal anything to her either.
    Did she know something? Ryan asked himself. How much did she know? Was she going to help him or hurt him? Could he trust her?
    Carol must be a part of this, he thought. He was sure of that; he just didn’t know what role she played right now. And since she wasn’t going to volunteer anything, he would have to find out more before he could trust her.
    He sipped his orange juice as he watched her prepare a plate of breakfast for him and another bag lunch with two sandwiches inside.
2.
    Ryan needed to get away from Carol’s house, and driving to the construction site made him feel a little better. He looked forward to the hours of mundane work ahead of him; tasks that he could totally concentrate on instead of letting his mind wander and torture himself with questions about his past – questions that he couldn’t answer right now (or didn’t want to answer, his mind whispered). It was blissful to just work and forget about everything for a while.
    After Ryan parked his silver Chevy Impala, he walked across the dirt parking area to the buildings. He met up with the