Free Shadowshift by Peter Giglio Page A

happened. I don’t think I could have afforded it anyway. Hannah was pretty upset about missing the funeral, but she got over it.”
    “At least they got to connect. That’s something. Closure maybe?”
    “ Closure ,” Tina whispers. “I hope that’s right. Because if anything Chet did messes with my little girl’s future; if his shit fucks up her mind and hurts her in any way, I’ll track the bastard down. And if he’s dead already, and I pray to God he is, I’ll dig him up and kill him again.”
    “You’re starting to sound like one of your books,” Kevin says.
    Tina chuckles mirthlessly. “You need to reread my work, sweetheart. Every death I write belongs to Chet.”

CHAPTER 9

    The cold and dark theater had never bothered Chet before. He always kept his attention on the screen, where the action unfolded. From his seat, he had witnessed his parents fight. With every lash they gave or took, he turned colder inside, until he stopped caring about them altogether. They were monsters, plain and simple. But watching them unload on each other grew tiresome fast. That aside, Chet still had a reason to catch frequent matinees and late shows.
    His father had a habit of hiding money around the house. Although Chet didn’t understand this strange behavior, his fascination had bloomed. He kept a journal of hiding places, looking for a pattern in his father’s madness. If he couldn’t love the man, maybe he could at least understand him; or, more importantly, learn how such a terrible human being could sire such a special son.
    He had watched his mother, too, but her quirks were far less interesting. She divided her day between trashy romance novels, laundry, and delivering violence as well as she took it in the bedroom. Molly Mitchell had a shockingly strong left hook—fun to watch, but hardly illuminating.
    Alas, years of study brought no insight, leaving Chet with an empty answer to a loaded question. His abilities were not inherited.
    On his eighteenth birthday, he burned his journal and stole the money he’d watched his father hide—a little over than ten thousand dollars. The cash moved him to Cincinnati and set him up in a nice apartment for a while. He never talked to his parents again.
    Waiting for Tina to appear on the screen, Chet grew fidgety. Here he was, thinking about his parents. He hated remembering, and his wife’s tardiness was fucking everything up. None of this was necessary, he knew, but old habits die hard, and knowing half his wife’s secret was not enough. He needed everything. While hidden cameras worked, they were a waste of money and employed technology Chet despised. Recorded footage often incriminated those who employed it, but his mind never would betray him in a courtroom, not that he planned to end up in one. As long as he kept his secret hidden, he was too slick to ever get caught.
    He suddenly felt something— bugs? —crawling on his ankles. Bending down, unable to make out anything in the darkness below, he reached up his pant legs. He felt nothing more than hairy ankles. When something slithered across his chest, he stood and lifted his shirt, but only succeeded in uncovering his toneless torso.
    The screen remained free of Tina.
    Chet had never spent this long in the theater, and the place was starting to spook him. The walls seemed to close in. The screen shrank. And the sensation of things crawling on him intensified.
    Clawing at his body, he shouted, “Come out and play, bitch. You’re starting to piss me off!”
    Things began burrowing in his ears. He tasted dirt. Then the screen darkened, and the shrouded theater ignited with the rising din of chattering insects.
    Unable to endure more torture, Chet concentrated on his bedroom in the apartment, anxious to return home and forget his freshest failure, but that only intensified the torment.
    His mind’s eyes showed him the wan reflection of his eighteen-year-old self in a steamed mirror. His younger self’s hand