Page 3 of Forever Dead

Footsteps.

Not near the car. Closer.

The nearest section of the driveway disappeared behind the angle of the porch, hidden from the living-room window. Whoever was outside was approaching the house, slowly enough that each step ground against the gravel before a faint dragging scrape followed.

Crunch. Scrape. Crunch.

Eleanor gripped her cane. The front door was locked. She had turned the key herself, but she had not thrown the deadbolt.

The footsteps continued as she started toward the door. The hallway seemed longer than it had any right to be. Her knee resisted every step. The cane struck the floorboards in a hard, uneven rhythm.

The sound outside reached the porch. Wood creaked beneath weight.

Eleanor caught the console table with her free hand and pulled herself forward. Another board groaned. Someone was directly outside.

She reached the front door. The deadbolt sat above the lock. Her fingers slipped on it once before she managed to turn it. Metal slid into place. Then she touched the security chain.

Still secure.

Eleanor stayed there with one hand resting against the wood. Nothing happened. No knock or voice. The silence was worse than either would have been.

She could hear her own breathing.

Then she heard someone else’s on the other side of the door.

A slow inhalation. A longer exhale.

Eleanor moved her hand away from the wood. “Who is it?”

No answer.

She waited. “If you need help, tell me what’s happened.”

The breathing continued. Her mouth had gone dry.

“Who are you?”

Still nothing.

The person shifted. A porch board creaked. Then came one step, another, moving away.

Eleanor remained where she was until the sound reached the gravel. Two more crunches came through the door, then nothing.

The pressure in her chest eased only slightly. She needed the police, but the landline was useless.

Then she remembered the mobile phone Ruth had given her in June. Not given, exactly. Forced upon her. Cell phones were a technology she had refused to embrace.

“You live alone. You need one.”

“I have a phone.”

“One you can carry. What if you fall in the yard?”

“I’ll shout.”

“To whom, Eleanor? The cows?”

Ruth had won the argument by buying the thing and leaving it on the kitchen table. Eleanor had used it twice, once by accident. It should still be in the kitchen drawer beside the spare batteries.