First things first, he told himself. Secure the house. Merritt started on the top floor, making his way up the narrow wooden stairs. There were two rooms. He opened the door to the first one. It was a sleeping room, neat and tidy, sparsely furnished, its ceiling slanting down over the window. Edith had thrown his suit and helmet up here. Merritt got himself his gun and checked the charge. Still full. He looked into the second room. This was where she slept. The bed was untidy, the covers thrown back. Clothes were piled on a round-armed chair under the window, and there was a closet full of more clothes, its door ajar. The room smelled of her, warm and clean.
He went down the stairs, hearing the water running as she washed up in the bathroom. He imagined himself in there with her, grinned and shook his head. Need to keep my mind on what I’m doing, he thought. The downstairs held two rooms in front and the kitchen in the back of the house. He figured out the controls for the lights and he flipped the switch. Light came on to show another tidy room, not used very much. A word came to him, dredged up from distant memory. This was a “parlour”, for guests.
He heard the water shut off. There was one more door, at the end of the hall. He opened it and stumbled back. It opened on to a black hole, a void, and for an instant he thought that he had come upon another wormhole. He realized that he had stopped breathing, and forced himself to take a breath. He fumbled at the wall, but there was no light switch. So he turned on his torch and pointed it downwards. Now he could see stairs going down.
“What are you looking at?” she said from behind him. He turned, absurdly relieved that she was there. She still smelled faintly of gasoline, but she was in a clean sleeveless shirt and drawstring trousers, and towelled at her hair. His heart stuttered again but not from fear. He tried not to stare at the way she filled out her plain white shirt.
“What’s down there?”
“The old cellar. The foundation of this house dates to the 1800s, and they gutted it and modernized it, oh, about sixty years ago. That’s the root cellar.” She wrinkled her nose self-deprecatingly. “It creeps me out. I don’t go down there much.”
Funny how he knew exactly what she meant without knowing the words. He nodded and closed the door and they both breathed a sigh of relief.
“All right. It looks all clear. Sleep sound. I’ll take the downstairs.”
“Thanks.” She hesitated, and a bit of colour touched her cheeks. “I mean. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“It’s all right. I’m glad to help.”
He watched her go, and shook his head. Merritt, don’t even think it, he told himself. But it was too late. He was already thinking it.
Sam Grenady holed up in a swale off the road. He was covered with dried foam and blood, and smelled of the gas he had used to douse her truck. Crazy bitch, he thought. He shivered in the night air, and tried to cover himself with leaves. She had found herself another guy in record time, and he had some kind of taser thing. It had glared in Sam’s eyes, and he couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Well, if she thought she could get away with dumping him and taking up with someone else, bitch had another think coming. It was time to finish the job he started.
He’d have to do it quick though. He heard the police cars screaming up the road after he drove off into the underbrush nearher place. Come daylight, they would be able to find his tyre tracks easy.
“Don’t underestimate Sam Grenady,” he muttered. This was his town, his mountain. He’d been hunting on Crane land ever since he was a boy, and he knew its secrets. Sam kicked his feet at the end of the hollow. They banged against wood, and he kicked again and again until he smashed it in.
There were tunnels and caves all over this mountain, some natural, some man-made from the days when the locals ran moonshine. Sam slid inside one of these as cold wet air rushed at him from under the earth and wormed his way through the low tunnel into the pitch-black underground. He’d teach Edith Crane a thing or two about her family history.
Birdsong and sunlight woke her. Edith got up and dressed quickly in jeans and a tank top, then threw on a plaid work shirt to ward off the morning chill. It was already eight o’clock. She never slept in this late. She paused before going downstairs, looking out of the window. She loved this view. Beyond the barn and her forge, the green mountain rose up over the homestead, culminating in the bare granite mountaintop. From here she could see her meadow, blanketed in low morning mist, and dotting her land were the sculptures that she had made of iron and steel. Some she meant to sell, and she was starting to get clients from the big cities, even a few museums interested in her work. Others were just for this place, and had meaning only for her.
Her gaze fell on the skeleton key and she picked it up. Someone had hammered it out of pig iron. Not a method she would have used – she would have gone with an alloy and moulded the molten metal into the right shape. It was made out of old iron, heavy and anachronistic. A mystery, she thought, part of a bigger one downstairs.
She padded down the steps as quietly as she could. Her spaceman dozed in the chair by the window, the gun lying in his lap. He didn’t wake, and she just took him in for a minute. Tall and lean, with dark hair, stubble on his face. Not classically handsome – someone had broken his nose at one point and it had set a little crooked, and she bet he had been teased about his ears when he was a kid – but oh, nice just the same. She took another step down the stairs, hittingthe plank that always creaked. He jerked awake, handgun up, then relaxed as he remembered his surroundings. He looked at her.
“Damn it,” he said. “The stim wore off. I didn’t mean to sleep.”
“It’s OK. We both needed it.” She bit her lip. “Look, if you want to wash up, the bathroom’s through there. I’ll make breakfast, but I have to tend to the animals first.”
He went off to the bathroom and she waited, wondering if he was going to need help with her old-fashioned bathroom. Hmmm, that might be kind of fun, she thought, then scolded herself. Bad girl, Edith, but she was grinning as she went out to feed her horses. Katahdin had his nose out the door of his stall, neighing furiously at her, kicking the walls of his box for good measure, irked at his late breakfast.
“Get over it,” she told him, as she shook out flakes of hay and freshened their water. She left their stall doors open. When the horses were finished eating they knew enough to take themselves out into the meadow.
She stood at the split-rail fence, breathing in the clean mountain summer air. It stayed cool up here even in summer, and the birds sang their hearts out in the crisp sunshine. It was so peaceful, she could pretend that nothing had happened last night. Only the faint smell of gas told her otherwise.
Instead of tears, anger welled up. She was through crying. The police had better find Sam first, because if she did, she was going to make him pay.
Her kitchen door opened and Merritt came out. He looked freshly washed, his hair wet. Her mood rose.
“Figured it out?” she said.
He nodded. “I haven’t washed with water for a long time. Felt good.”
She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Merritt, are you bullshitting me?”
He laughed too, but a little uncertainly. “I don’t—”
It didn’t matter. She was suddenly happy. Sam had done his best but he hadn’t broken her spirit. She put a hand on Merritt’s arm, and nodded at the barn. “Watch.”
