Page 17 of The Devouring Time

“Call me Sterling.”

One corner of his mouth quirks into a wry smile. “It’s funny. You’re a thief and involved in some very unpleasant dealings, possibly including murder. I spent months tracking you. Yet now I want to trust you.”

“You must have gotten a head injury in the crash.”

He laughs, then puts a hand to his chest. “Ouch. My ribs got bruised, that’s for sure. And throwing Mrs. Foster didn’t help any.”

“I didn’t realize you knew jiu-jitsu.”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.” He winks.

I look away, feeling the heat rise to my face. “And what the hell was all of that, back at the farmhouse? The blood—and they tried to kill us!”

“We’ll call the police as soon as we can reach a telephone. Hopefully the one in Hart’s Leap still has service. As for the rest…” He shakes his head. “There have been reports over the last eight or nine months about tainted bootleg sending people to the asylums, unable to do anything beyond the basics of caring for themselves. But to see it…it’s different than I imagined, somehow. The blankness on Barney’s face, even as he was swinging the ax…”

I shudder at the memory. “Still, we were lucky. I doubt he would have shied away from an umbrella as though it were a knife if he had all his faculties.”

“True.”

My exhaustion lends me a sort of emotional numbness, at least for the moment. I’ve lost my memory, unknown people are out to kill me, and we tried to take refuge with a family of cannibals. At least the farmer with the truck hadn’t driven us all off the nearest cliff.

We follow the train tracks to the depot, then step out onto the lonely road through the marsh I walked down yesterday. A year and four months ago.

It’s deeply unsettling to see how changed things are, when my brain is certain I was just here. The season is different, of course, the spring green matured through summer and into the dry yellow of fall. For the second time since I last saw it, apparently.

At least the track isn’t overgrown; someone must still come this way regularly enough to keep down the weeds.

Which doesn’t seem right. “I thought you said the house was abandoned?”

Evans—Adrian—looks grim. “It’s supposed to be.”

Along the way, we pass by heaps of broken driftwood. It takes me a while to realize they’re all that remains of the strange statues. “The lunatic wandering the marsh—I think I met him.”

“You did?”

“On the way here, the first time. He seemed odd. Asked if I was a sorcerer.” The strange weather phenomenon of the night before presses forward in my mind, but I push it away. “I think he built the sculptures—I’m sure you noticed them yourself?”

“Hard not to.” He shivers, and I don’t think it’s from the damp clothes we’re both wearing. “I wonder who knocked them all down?”

“The police, when they came to take him to Danvers?” I shake my head. “Why do asylums keep coming up? Do you think he drank the tainted bootleg?”

“Possibly.” Adrian quickens his pace. “Let’s get out of this marsh. So much nature gives me the creeps.”

Thankfully, nothing disturbs our trek to Hart’s Leap. The mansion crouches on its little hill overlooking the marsh, even more disheveled than it was before. The corral is empty of horses, the Model T truck gone, though the wagon remains.

The place certainly looks abandoned. When we reach the front door, however, Adrian rings the bell.

“Just in case,” he says at my look. “I don’t want to get shot for trespassing if it turns out someone’s home after all.”

Unsurprisingly, no one answers. “How are we to get inside?” I ask.

Adrian flashes me a grin. “I wouldn’t be much of an investigator if I couldn’t jimmy a window.”

“Is breaking and entering an ordinary part of insurance investigation?”

“To be fair, most of what I do is perfectly above board.” He steps back and eyes the windows before walking over to one. “However, it sometimes helps to get proof of fraud or theft—not anything that could stand up in court, necessarily, but enough to apply pressure.”

He slips a thin piece of metal between the sides of the window, and a moment later swings it open. “There. Easy.”