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    Belinda in the Pool
    Belinda in the Pool
    Belinda in the Pool
    Ebook58 pages37 minutes

    Belinda in the Pool

    By Douglas Clegg

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    From Bram Stoker Award-winning writer Douglas Clegg comes a new short story of a girl named Belinda -- and her father, who discovers something entirely disturbing about her.

    "Clegg's stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby."-- Dean Koontz, NY Times Bestselling Author.

    Books by Douglas Clegg

    Afterlife
    Goat Dance
    Purity
    Dark of the Eye
    The Words
    Wild Things
    The Children's Hour
    The Criminally Insane Series:
    Bad Karma
    Red Angel
    Night Cage
    The Harrow Series:
    Nightmare House
    Mischief
    The Infinite
    The Abandoned
    The Hour Before Dark
    You Come When I Call You
    Naomi
    The Nightmare Chronicles
    The Machinery of Night
    Isis
    The Necromancer
    The Halloween Man

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Clegg
    Release dateSep 23, 2012
    ISBN9781944668143
    Belinda in the Pool
    Author

    Douglas Clegg

    Douglas Clegg is a screenwriter, poet, and the author of dozens of novels, novellas, and short story collections. His fiction has won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award. He is married to Raul Silva and lives near the New England coast, where he is currently writing his next work of fiction.

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      Book preview

      Belinda in the Pool - Douglas Clegg

      Belinda in the Pool

      Belinda in the Pool

      A Short Story of Family Disturbance

      Douglas Clegg

      Alkemara Press

      Contents

      Praise for Douglas Clegg’s Fiction

      Get the Newsletter

      Belinda in the Pool

      Read You Come When I Call You

      Read Nightmare House

      Read Breeder

      Read Afterlife

      Also by Douglas Clegg

      Get the Newsletter

      About the Author

      Praise for Douglas Clegg’s Fiction

      Clegg’s stories can chill the spine so effectively that the reader should keep paramedics on standby.

      —Dean Koontz, New York Times bestselling author.

      Douglas Clegg has become the new star in horror fiction.

      —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Story and, with Stephen King, The Talisman

      Douglas Clegg is the best horror novelist of the post-Stephen King generation.

      — Bentley Little, USA Today bestselling author of The Haunted.

      Clegg gets high marks on the terror scale…

      —The Daily News (New York)

      Get the Newsletter

      Get book updates, exclusive offers, news of contests & special treats for readers—become a V.I.P. member of Douglas Clegg’s long-running free newsletter.

      Click here to subscribe now.

      Belinda in the Pool

      Sitting just in front of Michael and his daughter, the woman — white of hair and coat — lifted her card .

      Three hundred! the auctioneer said. Number 17!

      If she’d just quit bidding, Belinda said, under her breath.

      Michael — Number 5 — glared at the back of the annoying whiteness of Number 17. Belinda gave him a nudge. He held up his card.

      Twenty people in sweaters and coats sat on hard plastic chairs crammed into the cold, dusty little shop.

      Belinda squeezed his arm. You can get it, Dad.

      Nobody’s going much over 500 dollars for this, Michael thought. It wasn’t even worth three hundred to anyone in the market for antique watches with silver bands.

      In that second between his most recent bid and the auctioneer’s next mouthing, Michael tasted something bitter at the back of his throat.

      After years of searching, here we are, he thought.

      In a junk shop with Belinda, a twenty-minute drive door-to-door, the watch right there in front of them

      Your mother’s not going to be happy, he said. I wasn’t even supposed to go over two-fifty. Holy cow.

      But we’re almost there, Belinda said. And it’s just money. You’ll make more. You always say that.

      His daughter — verbally expressive beyond her fourteen years, curious, inquisitive, advanced in her thinking — constantly surprised him. Belinda of the dark hair, slightly bowed shoulders, fresh-faced, the last of summer’s freckles still faint on her cheek, green pond-water eyes, unremarkable nose, barest hint of mascara, vanishing dimple at her chin, most of the baby fat gone now, at the beginning of her swan years, a little silver crescent moon on a slim chain around her neck, fog-gray wool sweater pulled over orange T-shirt above blue jeans, fake tattoo — the Eye of Horus — at the back of her hand; she of the swim team, of the annual Charlotte Russe made with the flourish

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