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    The Neighbors
    The Neighbors
    The Neighbors
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    The Neighbors

    By Zach Bohannon

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A dark force is haunting this quiet, suburban neighborhood

    Overview
    Lakewood Drive is a quiet street in a calm, suburban neighborhood. Kids run around and play outside. Neighbors wave at each other in passing. And barbecue grills fill the Summer air with the inviting smell of charred meat.

    Everything is peaceful until one morning, a beloved teenage boy commits suicide, sending a shockwave throughout the community.

    Three houses down lives Spencer Robinson. He has a wife, a toddler, and a good job. Overall, he's a happy guy who loves his life and keeps to himself.

    But something evil has come to Lakewood Drive.

    The tragic loss of Spencer's teenage neighbor is only the beginning. Soon after, death strikes again on Lakewood Drive.

    And it's coming for him next…

    A creepy supernatural thriller by the bestselling author of the Empty Bodies series and The Witness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZach Bohannon
    Release dateApr 25, 2017
    ISBN9781386694274
    The Neighbors
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      Book preview

      The Neighbors - Zach Bohannon

      Prologue

      Death consumes us . We obsess over it. Obey it. We do our best to track its every move — impossibility in its truest form. Death seeks us out, all while we try to ignore it.

      But one cannot avoid death.

      Death is all around us. It’s that tickle you feel on the side of your leg: the one you slap, thinking it’s a spider, when nothing is actually there. It’s that presence you feel when you look back over your shoulder, thinking you heard something, but see nothing. And death is that burn in your throat that refuses to go away, no matter how many ounces of cool water you swallow.

      So why do we rush death? What is it inside humans that drives us to take our own lives?

      Is it pain that we feel will never leave?

      Is it a string of bad days that we are convinced will never end?

      Or is it just the loss of the will to live?

      It could be all of these, or none of these.

      I believe it is a dark spirit peeking over our shoulders. A being that will drill itself inside of our head, and will not stop digging until we see only one way out.

      If you ask me, this is what happened on Lakewood Drive.

      This is what happened to the boy with the rusted red pickup truck.

      1

      Lights

      My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m., just like any other morning. The subtle tone escalated, slowly drawing me out of a deep sleep. I reached over and turned it off, knowing I had a second one set for thirty minutes later. This is my routine, each and every morning. I like to lie on my back after my first alarm goes off, and begin mentally preparing myself for the day ahead. Though, those extra thirty minutes of lying awake with my eyes closed almost always seem like only about five.

      But, this morning, there would be no extra thirty minutes of rest.

      Because, outside, blue lights were flashing, utterly visible through our bedroom window.

      The lights didn’t seem to faze Julie, my wife. She’d been up just hours earlier when our fifteen-month-old daughter, Erika, woke up screaming. I’d started to get up to get Erika, but Julie had told me to get my rest. Spencer, you have to get up for work in like two hours, she’d said. She didn’t have to go to work in the morning, being a stay-at-home mom. That, in itself, had been an adjustment. For as long as I could remember, I’d always wanted my future wife to stay at home and raise our child, or children. But I wasn’t sure if I’d be in the financial position to allow for it, nor was I certain I’d find a wife who didn’t want to have a career. Julie wanted to raise her own child as opposed to sticking Erika with some stranger for eight hours a day. Yes, she’d eventually want to go back to work, but for now she would enjoy being at home with our daughter. There would always be time to get another job once Erika started school. That is, of course, unless we decided to give Erika a little brother or sister.

      Either way, the blue lights didn’t wake Julie, but they kept me up. Knowing there was no way I’d be able to lie there and relax any longer, I decided to get up and start my day a few minutes early. It was only Tuesday, after all. I’d have three more days to sleep an extra few minutes. Besides, my bladder was full.

      I swung my legs over the side of the bed and picked up my phone to shut off the 5:00 a.m. alarm. There had been mornings in the past where I’d woken up early and forgotten to do this, and my phone had sounded off while I was on the toilet and scared the shit out of me, literally.

      I walked over to the window, pushed our faded yellow curtains apart, and pinched open the blinds. It was Summer, so the sun got to sleep in every morning, unlike me. With it being so dark outside and my eyes still trying to adjust from a rare good night’s sleep, the blue lights blurred together, and it was hard to make out just how many cops had arrived. Red lights flashed as well, and I guessed that there was at least one ambulance, too. So many emergency vehicles sat in the street that it made it hard to tell which one of our neighbors’ houses they were parked in front of.

      They probably got called to the Cobb house, I thought. Mr. and Mrs. Cobb were in their late 80s or early 90s. It would’ve been completely feasible for one of them to have kicked the bucket.

      I looked down at my phone to check the time. With so many cars in the street, it could be hard for me to leave, but I figured that I might be able to catch a glimpse of what was going on when I had to pass the scene, on my way out of the neighborhood. I decided my time rubbernecking was over for now, and went back to the bathroom to check off my list of formalities.

      Our dog, Spektor, named after one of Julie’s favorite musical artists, had apparently been intrigued by the glowing, bright lights outside, too.

      When I walked out into the living room, he had his front legs on the couch and his head stuffed between the curtains, gawking at the scene outside. Spektor turned when he finally noticed I’d entered the room and came running over to me, panting with excitement. He jumped up on me, like all Boxers do, and gave me his front legs while he continued to pant, louder and louder. My first thought was that he would wake Erika, and when I looked over to her bedroom, I saw the door was ajar. This was

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