Читать книгу Ghost Fever - Joe Hayes - Страница 9

Chapter 3

A Renter

IT BEGAN to look like Cole Cash was never going to find a renter for that old house, but then a man named Frank Padilla moved to town. Frank was the uncle of my friend Chino Gutiérrez. Chino’s real name was Refugio, but when your name’s that long, you’re bound to end up with a nickname.

Refugio’s head was covered with black curls and even his own family called him Chino, because chino was what everyone called curly hair—pelo chino.

Chino told me his Uncle Frank had had a lot of bad luck in his life. He had a wife and two daughters and a good job in the mines up north, but then one day he came home from work and his wife was gone—not just gone from the house, but really gone, gone from town, gone from his life. She left him to raise his two daughters all by himself. And then he came down with some strange sickness and couldn’t work for a long time. He lost his job in the mine in the town up north, so he moved to our little town because he wanted to start life all over again.

When Frank and his two daughters first moved to town they lived with my friend Chino and his family. But Frank got busy right away, looking for a job and for a house he could afford to rent. Chino’s dad told him sort of half jokingly about the offer Cole Cash was making, and Frank was interested. “Six months for free!” he said. “Now, that’s rent I can afford to pay.”

Chino’s Uncle Frank went and talked to Cole Cash at the store and he came back saying he was going to move into the old house. Everyone tried to talk him out of it.

Chino’s mom, who was Frank’s sister, told him, “Don’t take your daughters to live in that house. Everyone knows that something terrible must have happened there—a murder, or even worse. Nobody’s been able to stay there in that house for as long as anyone can remember. People have tried, and after one night, two at the most, they get out of there! They say one lady even went crazy after she spent a night there. And the neighbors talk about screams in the night and strange lights glowing in the house. You can’t make the girls live in a house like that.”

Chino’s grandma lived there with his family and she was on her daughter’s side. “Hay casas así en México. He conocido muchas,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve known a lot of houses like that in Mexico. They’re dangerous. No lleves a mis nietas a vivir en esa casa.”

Frank just smiled at his sister and his mother. “That’s all superstition,” he told them. “Next you’ll be saying that la mano peluda will reach in through the window and get the girls, or that the Devil’s going to want to dance with them at the Candilejas Club on Saturday night. I love my daughters and I wouldn’t put them in a dangerous situation. You’ll see. All the talk about the house is nonsense. I’m going to rent it.”