A Stone's Throw by James W Ziskin

Author:James W Ziskin [Ziskin, James W]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633884205
Publisher: Prometheus Books

Daylight provided a reasonable sense of well-being. Of course, there may have been all manner of marauders haunting the property, but I felt safer knowing the sun was in the saddle. I parked my car in much the same spot as I had the night before, but this time I locked the doors before setting out on my mission. It was a warm day, with temperatures in the eighties. I tramped off toward the caretaker’s house, camera at the ready, hoping at the same time to find something and nothing.

Tempesta wasn’t quite so spooky by day. The rolling pastures and weathered outbuildings gave the impression of an Andrew Wyeth painting, and I found myself humming the Pastoral Symphony to steel my nerve. Still, I couldn’t shake the awareness that someone had pried open my glove compartment the last time I’d visited the farm. I wondered if that had been the act of an opportunistic thief, a murderer, or, as Fadge had maintained, the result of some inadvertent action on his part. It was too late to back out now. The caretaker’s house loomed ahead.

I reached the place and circled it, sizing it up, scanning all sides from roof to foundation, in search of anything I might have missed in the dark. It was a white clapboard house, as I’d noted the night before, crowned by a mansard roof of gray shingles. I figured it had been built seventy or eighty years earlier. It was unlikely that anyone had been inside since Lucky Chuck had died the previous Christmas, and I wanted to prove that to myself. For my own sense of well-being and security. I knew I’d have to break in, but I wasn’t sure which door to test. Something in the rear, of course, in case someone happened to be driving by on the highway and spied me smashing a window.

First, I tried the back door. It was locked, though I was sure the old wood would not hold up in the face of a couple of swift kicks—even from a smallish woman such as myself. But I didn’t want to leave a mess or reduce the door to splinters. I tried the eight windows in the back of the house, then the six on the eastern side, but none budged. I was about to check the windows facing the highway when I noticed a pair of storm-cellar doors on the western side of the house. An ancient padlock was threaded through the staple of a hasp, but its shackle had rusted through. It was open.

I grabbed the iron handle and pulled up on the heavy wooden door. It took all my strength to budge the thing, but in the end it yawned open, unleashing the cold, musty smell of decades of darkness and damp and fungus and even machine oil. I peered into the hole, asking myself if I really wanted to enter the house through the gates of hell. The answer was no, but I did it anyway.

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