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    Better Than Home
    Better Than Home
    Better Than Home
    Ebook46 pages37 minutes

    Better Than Home

    By Joe Hill

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    About this ebook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Horns comes this e-short story—from Joe Hill’s award-winning collection 20th Century Ghosts.

    Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945. . . .

    Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town. . . .

    Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

    John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 3, 2009
    ISBN9780061843334
    Author

    Joe Hill

    Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Fireman, NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box; Strange Weather, a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections Full Throttle and 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, Locke & Key. Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).

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      Book preview

      Better Than Home - Joe Hill

      Better Than Home

      A Story from the Collection

      20th Century Ghosts

      Joe Hill

      To Leanora:

      WE ARE MY FAVORITE STORY

      CONTENTS

      Begin Reading Better Than Home

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Other Books by Joe Hill

      Credits

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      BETTER THAN HOME

      My father is on the television about to be thrown out of a game again. I can tell. Some of the fans watching at Tiger Stadium know too and they’re making rude, happy noises about it. They want him to be thrown out. They’re looking forward to it.

      I know he’s going to be thrown out because the home plate umpire is trying to walk away from him but my father is following him everywhere he goes. My father has all the fingers of his right hand stuck down the front of his pants, while the left gestures angrily in the air. The announcers are chattering happily away to tell everyone watching at home about what my father is trying to tell the umpire that the umpire is working so hard not to hear.

      You just had an idea from the way things were going that emotions were sure to boil over sooner rather than later, says one of the announcers.

      My aunt Mandy laughs nervously. Jessica, you might want to see this. Ernie is getting himself all worked up.

      My mother steps into the kitchen doorway and sees what is happening on the television and leans against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

      I can’t watch, Mandy says. "This is so upsetting."

      Aunt Mandy is at one end of the couch. I’m at the other, with my feet under me and my heels pressed into my buttocks. I’m rocking back and forth. I can’t stay still. Something in me just needs to rock. My mouth is open and doing the thing it does when I’m nervous. I don’t even know I’m doing it until I feel the warm dribbling wetness at the corner of my mouth. When I’m tense, and my mouth is stretched open like that, water runs out at the corner and eventually leaks down my chin. When I’m wired up tight with nerves like I am now, I spend a lot of time making these little sucking sounds, sucking the spit back into my head.

      The third-base umpire, Comins, inserts himself between my father and Welkie, the home-plate umpire, allowing Welkie the chance to slip off. My father could just step around Comins, but he does not. This is an unexpected positive development, a sign the worst may yet be averted. His mouth is opening and closing, the left hand waving, and Comins is listening and smiling and shaking his head in a way that is good-natured and understanding yet firm. My father is unhappy. Our Team is losing four to one. Detroit has a rookie throwing

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