Free The Haunted by Bentley Little Page B

she held in her hands.
    Old Maid.
    He looked nervously at the battered red box. He’d never liked Old Maid. It wasn’t the game, which was kind of fun; it was the Old Maid herself, the way she was depicted on this particular pack of cards. All of the other characters were humorous caricatures of cartoonish boys and girls. But the Old Maid was
old
, and the expression on her wrinkled face was one of barely suppressed rage: a flat hardness in the small eyes, a mouth set in a thin, angry line. He’d been afraid of that visageever since he’d been little, and while he wanted to tell himself that he wasn’t afraid of it anymore, he knew that wasn’t true.
    She was on the cover of the box, and even seeing her eyes peering out over Megan’s fingers gave him the creeps.
    He sat down on the floor as his sister took out the cards, shuffled them, then dealt them. He was directly across from her, and before picking up his own pile, he watched her sort through her cards. Megan was not good at hiding her emotions, and he knew he’d be able to tell whether or not she’d gotten the Old Maid. Seeing her smile after she’d fanned out the cards in her hand, he knew that she hadn’t.
    And he had.
    He looked down at the flat blue backs of the cards on the floor before him, not wanting to pick them up, wishing he’d continued on to his own room, where, right now, he could be happily playing
Star Wars
on his DS, or
LEGO Harry Potter
. But he reached down, gathered up the cards from the floor and turned their faces toward him so Megan couldn’t see.
    There she was.
    Between Hungry Henry and Sleeping Sam was the wrinkled countenance of the Old Maid. He could see only the left half of her face, but that was enough. Divorced from its twin, her left eye had an even crueler cast, and the flat portion of wrinkled mouth that was visible seemed not merely angry but malevolent. He pushed Sleeping Sam over so that the dozing boy was covering the Old Maid, then sorted through the rest of his cards, looking for doubles. He found two sets and discarded them, then, holding the remaining cards in front of him, fanned them out in his right hand and told Megan to pick.
    Unfortunately, she did not pick the Old Maid. In fact, she never picked the Old Maid, and at the conclusion of a surprisingly short game, James ended up holding in his hand the one card he didn’t want. He turned it facedown, placing it atop his discards, then stood. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said.
    Megan shrugged. “Fine. This is boring anyway.” She said it loud enough for their dad to hear, and once again James thought he was probably just a pawn in his sister’s bid for more freedom.
    He walked over to his room, automatically closing the door as he went in, and picked up his DS. Through the window, he saw an elderly couple walking down the sidewalk. The woman turned her head to look at their house, but James quickly looked away, not wanting to see her. In his mind, she looked like the Old Maid, and, feeling cold, he walked back across the room, opening the door wide before turning on his DS and hopping onto his bed.
    They ate that evening in the dining room. Ever since they’d moved, his mom had been on this kick, because she’d read somewhere or heard on the news that kids from families who ate dinner together every night turned out happier and more successful. In their old house, she’d been a lot more flexible. Sometimes he and Megan would eat in the living room and watch
The Simpsons
while his parents ate in the kitchen. Sometimes his dad would eat on the couch while watching the news or a basketball game. Sometimes James would play with his DS while he ate. Things weren’t so rigid then. But these days, they all ate together, and more often than not, James found himself wishing that they didn’t.
    Tonight, Megan kept kicking him under the table while maintaining an expression of calm interest on herface as their mom endlessly described a lawsuit she was