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As he left, I glanced at my phone. It was four o’clock. “I didn’t mean to take up your entire day,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Not a problem,” May said. “But I’ll get myself home now, and make dinner for Bran. I’ll be back by five-thirty. Will that be enough time for you to make your appointment?”
“Plenty. I don’t have to be at Darla’s until seven. Thanks again, for everything.”
As I saw her out, I glanced at the sky. The evening promised to be clear, but I could smell clouds on the horizon—they smelled like thunder and lightning, and set a restless edge in my aura. I thought about planting the herbs, but a voice inside told me maybe I should spend some time in meditation before heading over to Darla’s.
CHAPTEREIGHT
Darla lived on Roxberry Street,and as I pulled up to the house at precisely sevenp.m., I saw Bree was already there. She had texted me when I was on the way over saying she planned to be there as well, in case there was any awkwardness. I read between the lines though. Bree was here because she was worried Kevin might have changed his mind on the bowling. Bree had been in an abusive relationship in her early twenties and now she did her best to run interference in what could be tricky situations.
I parked next to her car and stepped out, leaning on the open door as I examined the house from a distance. It was two stories, Craftsman style by the look of it, and it hadn’t weathered the years well. The paint on the wooden siding was peeling off, and in one section, it looked like someone had started scraping it clean. There were seven steps leading up to a porch that spanned the front of the house. Beyond the knee wall, there was a large bay window to the right, and to the left, a smaller window.
Above the first story, a single window looked out from the center of the house. The curtain covering it was sheer, but as I watched, something pulled it back and two gleaming eyes stared down at me. Startled, I stared back. They burned brilliant crimson, then faded away. Whatever that was, it wasn’t human. Shivering, I walked up the sidewalk, toward the porch.
Bree peeked out the screen door, motioning for me to come in. “We’re in luck. Kevin’s out for now.” She wrapped her arm through mine. “This place is creepy as hell.”
“It feels it. Even when I was in my car, I could sense something here, and I thought I saw someone—orthing—watching me from the upstairs window a moment ago.”
As we approached the door, a feeling of dread swept over me. I drew closer to Bree. “Can you sense it?” I stopped, sniffing the air. “I smell something here—it’s like…rotten eggs or decaying meat. I don’t like this.” I was rapidly changing my mind about helping, but then I saw Darla, her face hopeful, and I knew that I wasn’t going to walk away. At least, not yet.
I glanced around the room. We were in a small foyer, and to the left of me was a staircase, heading up to the second floor, flush with the outside wall. It made a sharp turn back on itself a third of the way up. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see where it led. Beneath the upper part of the stairwell was a small storage space, with a few boxes sitting in it.
Ahead, the foyer led to a dining room, and to the right was an archway leading into the living room. Farther along the right wall—once we were in the dining room—was a set of French doors, also leading into the living room.
“Well, I can tell you right now, if I hadn’t promised to check things out, I would turn around and get the hell out of this place,” I said. The house felt like one big black hole, ready to swallow us and not let go.
“It’s making me want to shift into my puma self,” Bree said. “Everything feels prickly, like when you get entangled in a briar patch.” As we entered the dining room, she said, “Elphyra is here.”
Darla was sitting at the table, along with Georgie. “Thank you for coming. I sent Mary and John off to their friends for the evening. For one thing, I don’t want them telling Kevin about this, and second, I don’t want them here in case your presence stirs anything up.”
“Good thinking,” I said, looking around. There were two doors against the back wall of the dining room—one closed, and the other an archway leading to the kitchen. The dining room had one other door, on the back right of the room. “Why don’t you show me around first? I’d rather do that before we get into specifics, so I can form an unbiased opinion.”
I didn’t tell her that my opinion was already biased, but I also didn’t want what she had to say to cloud over what information I might get on my own.
“Why don’t we start here, then. This is obviously the dining room,” she said. “Tell me when you want to move on to another room.”
I wandered around, occasionally touching a picture here or there. There was an oriel window—three sided—with a window seat beneath it, overlooking the side yard. The green drapes on the two outer windows were held back by gold swag ropes, and the center window had a sheer valance over the top, and a set of vertical blinds that were open. The floor was tiled, and the walls were pale gold. A dark wood table sat in front of the closed door to the back, and a matching china hutch sat against the wall that divided the room from the foyer. The hutch was oddly empty and I wondered if they had neglected to unpack or if there was another reason.
As I walked around the room, approaching the closed door behind the table, I shivered. As I reached out to touch the knob, the metal sparked against my fingers with a nasty shock and I jerked my hand back.
“Crap, that stung.” I turned around. “What’s behind this door?”
“The basement,” Darla said.
“It’s creepy as fuck,” Georgie added. “Mary and Johnny won’t go down there, and I don’t blame them. The basement’s not finished. Two sides of it are cement blocks part way, then rammed dirt the rest of the way up. It’s filled with a bunch of old junk that was here when we moved in.”
I glanced at Darla. “What kind of junk?”
“Chests, boxes full of what looks like radio crap, magazines—I don’t know. And below the staircase there are shelves and some jars that look like they were used for canning. A few are still full and I expect they’re so old the food would kill you if you ate the contents.”
“Well, something went on down there and whatever it was, it was bad. I’ll check it out after we go through the main house.” I glanced at Bree and gave a small shake of my head and she nodded back.
Darla led us into the kitchen. A galley kitchen, the sink and dishwasher were on the left, and the refrigerator and counterspace were on the other side. A closed door nestled between the fridge and the counter.
“That’s the bathroom,” Darla said. “And through here,” she led us to the back of the kitchen, “we have the back porch…mudroom…whatever you want to call it.”
I peeked into the mudroom. Long and narrow, it contained a chest freezer and a washer and dryer, along with a rack for hanging clothes. A bench sat opposite the freezer, where you could sit to take off your shoes. A door flush against the back of the house led to the backyard.
