Pitch Read Online Free

create action with a mere suggestion. To coerce with an idea. That was why Travis had gone so willingly into the house. In his mind, there had not been a choice.
    “I’m calling the police. I’m calling the police and they’re going to come and arrest you.” I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. The man slouched against the side of the doorframe and watched me, his expression bored.
    “Hello?” I said when I heard the click of someone answering my call. “I need to report a – um – a kidnapping! At – uh – 233 Turner Street. There is a man here and I think he’s dangerous and he –”
    The laughter cut me off. It cackled through the phone, raising every hair on the back of my neck. A woman’s laughter, high pitched and cruel. When the laughter stopped she whispered one word before the line went dead.
    Run .           

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    I Play a Game of Horse Shoes
     
    I ran. I left my best friend behind and I ran for my life. The screams chased me. They seemed to come from every house I passed. Horrible, gut wrenching screams for help, for mercy, for death. I stayed off the street and ran through stranger’s back yards. I ducked under clothes lines and crawled over fences, skinning my knees and ripping my hands apart with splinters. I tucked the pain and the fear and the terror away in some distant, dusty corner of my mind and allowed only one thought to circle round and round inside my head. One goal: get home, get Dad, and get Travis.
    Halfway across a neatly manicured yard I heard the back door slam and I dove into a cluster of bushes just in time. Helpless to do anything but cower in silence, I watched as a woman dressed in red jumped off the side of the porch and went sprinting across the lawn. 
    Something was chasing her. Something fast. Something dark. It grabbed her arm and swung her around like she was a rag doll, slamming her into the side of her own pool. She crumpled to the ground, motionless, ten feet from where I hid behind a rose bush.
    Overhead the moon shifted free of the clouds that had been binding it, allowing a trickle of silver light to bathe the fallen woman and I saw, I saw even when I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my mouth to keep myself from crying out, that she was not dressed in red clothes. She was dressed in blood.
    The thing that had chased the woman stopped and sniffed the air. It was human yet not human. A girl yet not a girl. She could have gone to my school. She could have sat next to me in math class. Her hair, brown and sleek and swept over one shoulder, was normal. Her clothes, blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, could have been worn by any teenager the world over. But her piercing blue eyes… and the blood that dribbled down her chin… That was about as far from normal as you could get.
    Her head swung towards me. Those unnatural eyes searched the bushes, traveling leisurely back and forth across my hiding spot. I held my breath. Just go inside , I begged silently. Just go inside and leave me alone.
    “I smell you little human,” she said in a sing song voice. “You smell like sugar and spice and something quite nice.”
    My right foot was cramping up. I flexed my toes, fighting off the pins and needles. The tiny movement nearly made me lose my balance. I wavered to the right and managed to catch myself. My fingers touched something hard. Something metal. Slowly, silently, I pulled it from the ground and clutched it to my chest. A horse shoe. The big, heavy kind people threw in sand pits. No, not a horse shoe. A weapon.
    “I want to play a game.” The girl pouted. She nudged the bloody woman. Sighed. “And now I’ve broken my toy. Come out, come out, wherever you are. I promise to be much more careful with you.” She started to walk in a big, wandering circle. When she turned away from me I attacked.
    Holding the horse shoe tightly in my right hand I launched myself at her legs, just below the knees. She went down instantly and I