Page 2 of Call Off the Dark

She listened. Hearing nothing, not even the coyotes anymore, she opened the door and stepped from the safety of the kitchen into the inky stillness outside. With the adrenaline coursing through her, she didn’t feel the coldness of the air.

She lifted the gun and shouted.

Chapter Two

“This is private property! You’re trespassing!” Helen yelled, her voice like a forgotten vinyl record, scratchy in places where it used to be bold and clear.

Gripping the gun with both hands, she stepped cautiously away from the open door and onto the front porch. The old farmhouse sat in the middle of a large clearing, a one-story relic dwarfed by the trees that surrounded it like patient invaders. The moon cast an eerie glow against the peeling paint on the house’s siding, the yard’s overgrown weeds, the rusty wheelbarrow.

Helen’s next shout was louder, braver, and it echoed through the trees. “I have a gun!”

She paused and listened. Silence layered upon silence. Yet somehow, even after the echo of her shout faded away, it felt like the last word remained there in the air. Gun.

She squinted against the darkness as she descended the two wooden steps into the front yard. Opposite the house, her vegetable garden made strange shapes against the night. Next to it, Wade’s storage shed sat with its door open. It was too dark to clearly see inside, but she now felt certain the noise she’d heard was the sound of that door thudding open.

Someone must be in the shed.

For the briefest moment, Helen had the urge to empty all of the bullets into the open shed. But no, of course she couldn’t do that. Not every intruder came with the intention to kill, even if her experience with home invasions told her they did.

Instead, she yelled, “You’re trespassing, and you need to leave!”

She slowly crossed the yard to the shed, pausing every so often to listen, her stocking feet sinking occasionally into a spot of soft earth. The ground was still somewhat firm from the dry summer, but the increasing rains were starting to form spongy patches throughout the yard. If she had to run, she could easily slip in one of those spots.

She looked back at the open farmhouse door, suddenly seized with the idea that while her focus had been on the shed, someone could have snuck behind her into the house.

Wade was asleep inside, weaponless.

In the side yard out of her view, Wade’s old ax would be wedged into a stump, and chopped wood would be neatly stacked against the house. Normally she never gave that old ax a second thought, but now she realized that it could be taken and used against them.

The idea flooded her blood with electric fear. She took off in a run, and when she rounded the side of the house, she half expected to find the stump bereft of its ax, but it was there, sharp blade stuck into the wood.

Holding the gun in her right hand, she worked at the ax with her left, but it wouldn’t pull free. She looked around uneasily and was met with only the quiet night, so she set the gun in the grass and grabbed the ax handle with both hands. She yanked hard, stumbling back a half step when it came free.

She quickly transferred the ax to her left hand and picked up the gun with her right.

Ready.

After Tyler was killed, Helen had taken shooting lessons at the gun range. She’d gone again and again until she was confident and accurate. She always shot best when she held a gun with two hands, though.

This particular gun, Wade’s revolver, had a heavy trigger on it. To keep her aim steady, she needed to use both her right and left index fingers when she fired it.

“Never cock the gun,” Wade had told her.

Helen cocked the gun. Now it was a hair trigger, and she could easily shoot it one-handed.

Gripping the ax with her left hand, she pointed the gun with her right and walked cautiously back toward the shed. She kept her index finger resting along the gun’s frame.

“I’m approaching with a gun! Step out slowly. Show your hands!”

A howl sounded in the distance. The coyotes were starting up again.

As she got closer, she heard a rustle inside the shed and tightened her grip on the ax. There was no way she could effectively swing an ax one-handed though, especially with her left. Helen wasn’t a wisp of a woman, but she’d never impressed anyone with her strength either. She was average height, slim but fit from working the property. She could chop wood herself but preferred to let Wade do it because axes felt unwieldy.

Helen stopped several feet from the shed, not wanting to give her would-be assassin the opportunity to spring from the shadows and grab the ax before she could fire the gun.

“Hello?” she called out tentatively, her nerve fading.

She should have woken Wade.