The Drayton Diaries by Robert W. Stephens

Author:Robert W. Stephens [Stephens, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781502893321
Published: 2014-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The Agreement

Miller stood at the edge of the gardens and waited for Henry King to emerge. He knew King visited the gardens most mornings at sunrise. He usually did his best to avoid King. The man frightened him, even after all these years.

Miller shifted his weight and heard the rocks grind under his feet. He bent down and picked up one of the small stones from the pathway. It was cool to the touch. He rolled the stone around in his palm. He thought of his sister and the forest. King would have to save her. There could be no other outcome. Miller would have to find a way to convince him.

Miller closed his eyes and remembered the first time he met Henry King. Miller’s sister was close to death. Her child was stillborn. But something else had happened to his sister. The bleeding from the childbirth wouldn’t stop.

Her husband had died months before in an accident. His horse had thrown him after a snake had frightened it. Miller’s brother-in-law had fallen and landed on his head. His weight cracked his spine and death was instantaneous. Miller had seen it all, and it was his responsibility to tell his sister the horrible news. She was devastated. How could she not be? In the days that followed, she changed. He expected her to be sad. It was only normal. But she ceased to feel anything, at least that’s the way it appeared to him. She even began to not care about the child inside her. Miller promised to take care of her and her unborn child. But now the child’s death was upon her, and his sister was hours from dying too. He had failed them both.

Miller remembered sitting at his sister’s side while she lay in bed. He felt another presence in the room. It felt overpowering, like it was threatening to smother him and Julia. Henry King stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Miller was furious when he saw the intrusion and demanded to know who had let him into their home.

But King ignored him. He simply walked across the room and looked down at Julia in the bed. Miller started to demand again that King leave the house, but Miller said nothing to the stranger. The man had an energy about him, an unstated power, and it frightened Miller. He didn’t want to admit it then or even now. But King scared him.

“She doesn’t have much time,” King said. He didn’t seem worried that Julia was dying. He simply stated it like a cold fact.

“Who are you?” Miller finally asked, hating that he sounded so weak.

“I have a job for you.”

“A job? I have no interest in a job.”

“The payment for the job is her life,” King said.

Miller just stared at him. The man was a lunatic, and Miller was getting more and more furious by the second.

“There’s a man in the next town. I want you to kill him for me,” King continued.

Miller still said nothing.

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