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“Anybody?” Ling called from the sidewalk.
“They’re locked. Hold on.” Alma came around the side. She cupped her hands over her eyes and stood on tiptoe so she could peek through the bottom of a long, barred window.
“Well?” Ling asked.
Alma stepped back and jogged across the street to rejoin her friends. “I couldn’t see anything in there. Too dark. Looks like some sort of wicked storm came through here.”
“Could be a flood, I reckon, what with all this bad rain and the levees breaking,” Doc said.
“No watermarks on the buildings,” Jericho said. In fact, the land was drought-dry and cracked. Jericho couldn’t imagine anything taking root in that ruined soil ever again.
“Dust storm?” Ling offered.
“If so, it was mighty powerful,” Doc said.
Alma snapped her fingers. “We could check the storm cellars!”
They walked farther on Main Street, past a yard where crepe myrtles, leeched of their bright pink, had dried to a powdery gray. Ling touched one and it crumbled between her fingers like old chalk. The house was a white colonial with black shutters open to the gloomy day. “Hello?” Jericho called as they crept up the long brick walkway that led to the grand front porch, which held a ceiling fan whose blades were stilled. A ball of yarn and one knitting needle lay splayed beside a rocking chair. The screen door was askew, one of the hinges popped.
“Anybody home?” Jericho called and knocked. There was no answer.
“Storm cellar?” Alma reminded him.
They left the porch and came around the side of the house to a tidy back garden gone to seed, every living thing the same powdery gray as up front. A storm cellar was off to one side. Jericho knocked. No response. “Should I…?”
Ling nodded. Jericho and Doc opened the storm cellar doors and peered into the deep, musty dark. “Hello?” Jericho called. “Is anyone in there?”
An eerie quiet wafted out with the dust.
“Are those… claw marks in the door?” Alma asked, holding fast to Ling’s arm.
Jericho looked on the outside of the door. “Where?”
“No,” Alma said. “On the inside.”
In a spot near the handle, the wood had been scratched to splinters.
“I’m going in,” Jericho said.
“Careful,” Ling said.
Jericho let himself down into the inky dark. A kero
sene lantern hung from a hook on the wall beside a box of matches. He turned the knob, letting out the fuel, struck a match, and brought up the flame inside the glass. He lifted the lantern out in front of him, letting its glow illuminate the dark space by degrees. The dust was everywhere. Several broken mason jars glittered up from the dirt, their contents strewn and rotted, giving off faint traces of tomato and summer peach. There was a woman’s shoe turned on its side, and a dusty teddy bear missing an eye and an arm. Some kind of stain marked the floor. Jericho crouched down and put his hand to it. It was hard and gritty, like a burn. He stood back and held the lantern up high to get a better view. He thought he could almost make out the silhouette of a hand, fingers splayed.
“Hey, kid. Maybe you shouldn’t hang around in this place. Whaddaya think?”
Jericho cried out and nearly dropped the lantern.
“What is it?” Ling yelled down.
With a shaking hand, Jericho lifted the lantern, peering into the darkness where, seconds before, he’d heard Sergeant Leonard’s voice issuing a warning. There was nothing there.
“Jericho?” Ling’s called down. “Are you all right? Answer me!”
“Who’s Jericho?” Doc asked Alma.
“You’re dead,” Jericho whispered to the empty dark. “You’ve been dead for years.”
