The Vines by Christopher Rice

Author:Christopher Rice [Rice, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2014-10-21T04:00:00+00:00

22

“He’s not here, Nova.” It’s the fifth time Blake has said it, but Nova keeps searching the little house as if her father might be cowering in the few inches between the wall and the back of the sofa or curled up inside the tiny kitchen pantry.

“Maybe he’s been and gone?” Blake offers.

But Nova just shakes her head and keeps up her futile search, and Blake is sure she isn’t as frightened for her father’s well-being as she is furious he broke his promise. Which might be the reason he’s not answering his phone, he thinks. After their conversation a few hours before and the events of the past twenty-four hours, everything seems possible, none of it good. Willie ignoring his daughter’s wrath is the best of the scenarios Blake can conjure.

On their way in, they bypassed the plantation house and its grounds, taking instead the gravel road right to Willie’s miniature house. Which means it’s not the only place left to look.

“Nova. His truck isn’t here. He’s not here.”

“Maybe he parked up at the main house?”

“Which he never does.”

“No . . . but if Caitlin asked him to, he would. Come on!”

A few moments later he’s running after her up the same path they took earlier that afternoon, only now the cane field belonging to the neighboring farm is a curtain of shifting shadows beside them, the sounds of its rustling stalks easily mistaken for the careful footfalls of a predator sizing up its prey.

Blake sees the gazebo first and reaches out a hand to stop Nova. The grounds are shadow-filled and so is the soaring plantation house. But the single lightbulb inside the gazebo is on, making it look like the tip of a boat dock on a dark, expansive lake. From this distance away, he can see some of the floorboards are missing, and what appear to be several magazines strewn across the dirt.

When he starts for the gazebo, Nova lets out a small sound of protest and reaches out a hand to stop him, but he takes it in his and starts leading them across the garden. She follows, silenced by his determination that they stick together. He can feel her trembling slightly through her hand.

“What the hell?” Nova whispers as they peer down through the gazebo’s missing floor. And Blake is surprised that despite her willingness to believe, Nova is more thunderstruck by the sight of the slick and impossibly large growths coiled below than he is. Maybe it’s some kind of denial mechanism, but Blake is fixated on the traces of recent human behavior all around them: the deliberately removed floorboards, the discarded red toolbox, the swirl of some sort of gold fabric wrapped up in the vine coil.

When Blake gets down onto his knees next to the hole, Nova hisses fiercely, grabbing for his shoulder, but he brushes her hand aside and braces himself against the edge of the opening with one hand while reaching down into the miniature pit with the other. As soon as his fingertips touch the strange band of gold, he can tell it’s made of fabric.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.