A Season of Whispers by Jackson Kuhl

Author:Jackson Kuhl [Kuhl, Jackson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, gothic romance, mystery & crime, adult, novel
Publisher: AURELIA LEO
Published: 2020-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

THREE

After breakfast David Grosvenor, scarf wound tight about his throat, passed through the kitchen on his way to the door. He kissed his wife on the cheek as she bent over the stove, beginning her long day’s labor of canning the green beans from the garden. Retta and Nancy wiped and sorted the empty jars on the tabletop. From the cellar emerged little Tilly, running yesterday’s jars to the shelves below, where she arranged them like chessmen beneath the bags of carrots and onions hanging from nails in the floor joists.

“Mind you don’t bump your head,” he said to her.

The young woman laughed. “I’ve a few inches to spare,” she said, waving to the empty space above her.

Outside, Kit stacked firewood from the hand cart along the back wall of the house. “Morning, David!”

David breathed deep on the stoop. “A good morning to you, Kit. What a fine day.”

“I reckon it will be warmer this afternoon, with no rain.”

“I reckon you’re right.” Grosvenor hopped down the short flight and left him to his stacking.

As he passed the barn, he waved to Bart and Ned, busy at replacing a few boards rotted at the bottom. Brushes and a bucket of paint beside them spelled out the course of their day. Over by the chicken coop, he offered another wave to Flossie as she scattered dried corn among an audience of impatient hens. She smiled and would’ve returned the greeting had her hands not been full.

In the field along the road, Mal and Virgil and Lena mowed with their scythes, binding the cut grass into sheaves. “Hello, David,” they called as he walked.

“Hello, hello!”

Farther, Presley and a handful of men worked clearing a patch of never-used soil, digging at stumps or piling rocks into a second cart. Bessie chewed thoughtfully nearby, waiting to be hitched to a stump sufficiently exposed to daylight. Come spring, Bonaventure would have that much more land to till.

“Good morning!” Waves all around.

On the edge of the woods, Abe and Judah each had their hands on a crosscut saw, bucking a fallen timber into eighteen-inch lengths. Nearby lay a splitter and a mound of quartered logs.

“I just saw Kit,” said Grosvenor to them. “He should be along shortly to refill his cart.”

“Tell him not to hurry,” said Judah as he wiped a handkerchief across his face.

Grosvenor chuckled and nodded before plunging into the trees.

Within the half-hour, David Grosvenor clambered over a boulder field, the heat of the exercise canceling the coldness of the morning. Already his fingers, numb from the long walk through the woods, warmed with blood as he grabbed and gripped his way across. It was the most barren corner of his farm, that place, the rocks of every size pushed into one wide mound by ice and by time. As always, it was as lifeless and silent as a mausoleum.

His earlier mood of camaraderie deserted him. Unlike previous visits, dread shadowed this morning’s arrival to the field, echoing its utter bleakness. He recalled Emerson: Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

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