Clifford D. Simak by The Marathon Photograph & Other Stories

Author:The Marathon Photograph & Other Stories [Photograph, The Marathon & Stories, Other]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A flight of flagstone steps ran up from the driveway to a terrace and the narow strip of level ground that lay in front of the house. The lawn was intended to be gay, with garden umbrellas, but the gaiety fell a little short, the canvas torn by the wind and faded by the sun.

No one was about. More than that, the place - the house, the lawn, all of it - had an empty feel to it.

It felt like a place that never had been lived in, as if it had been built those forty years ago and then been allowed to stand, to age and weather, with no one ever standing underneath its roof. It was a strange sensation and I wondered what was the matter with me that I should be thinking it. I knew that I was wrong. Stefan had done a lot of living here, and occasionally there had been others.

‘Well,’ the sheriff said, T suppose we should go up and see if anyone is home.’ I sensed the sheriff felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable myself, as if, somehow, I were an unwelcome guest, as if I’d come to a party, the kind of party that you simply do not crash, without an invitation. All these years the people of this house (whoever they might be) had made it a point of honor that they wished to be left alone, and here we were, invading their fiercely protected privacy, using a tragedy as a pretext.

The sheriff went heavy-footed up the flagstone stairs, with Neville and me following close behind. We came out on a stone patio that led up to the front door. The sheriff rapped on the door. When there was no answer, he pounded on it. I think that all he was doing was going through the motions; he had sensed as well as I had that there was no one there.

He put his hand on the latch and pressed it with his thumb. The door came open and he stuck his head inside. ‘Anyone home?’ he asked, and then, scarcely waiting for an answer, went on in.

The door opened on a large room; I suppose you would call it the living room, although it was larger than any living room I had ever seen. A lounge would have described it better. The windows facing the road were heavily draped and the place was dark. There were chairs scattered all about, and a monstrous stone fireplace was opposite the windows. But I only glimpsed these things, for standing in the middle of the room, in almost the exact center of it, stood an object that caught my gaze and held it.

The sheriff shuffled slowly forward. ‘What the hell is that?’ he rumbled.

It was some sort of transparent box standing on a platform elevated a foot or so above the floor. A framework of what appeared to be metal held the box in place. Inside the box were unsupported green strips, like the yardage stripes that mark off a football field.

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