LAZY AFTERNOONS

She came every day after school to visit.  Straight from the bus stop and straight past home, not even bothering to sling her backpack through her front door.  She'd creep through the bushes and the overgrown lawn, and in through the plans she'd pried up over the door to the abandoned house.  Then after gingerly climbing the old steps into that dank and forgotten basement she would throw herself onto the musty old couch and read to it.  Whatever book she happened to bring home from school that day.  History on Mondays, Math on Tuesdays, science on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then a collection of short stories on Thursdays.  She thought it liked Thursdays the best from the way that it grinned at her, but the teeth on the thing were always bared in a vicious grin so she was never sure.  The thing would whip it's pointed tail in agitated circles as she read, and paced endlessly within the circle of salt that had been drawn there.  She had no idea how long it had been waiting there, alone in the basement.  She didn't much care, either.  Day after day she read to the angry red thing and day after day it would whisper things to her.  Threats and promises, lies and things she didn't want to know were true.  But she waited, and would read to it every afternoon before scooting back home to her family.  Letting it wait, letting it want.  Eventually it would tel her the things that she really wanted to know.