The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller(45)
“No,” Becky said, this time getting some force behind the word, like an admonition to the turning bulbs.
The bulb closest to the stairs dropped free of its fixture, winking out like a falling star before exploding in slivers of glass behind her. Becky yelped and stopped moving backward, a painful spine of glass poking into her palm. She watched in horror as the next bulb in line finished unscrewing and plummeted to the cement floor.
Darkness moved in closer, like something alive and ready to pounce the second the light vanished. Far away, she heard Shaun call out for her upstairs. Her arms shook, trying to hold her upper body up. Tears slid down her cheeks, but it was like watching someone else cry. The last light twisted with agonizing slowness, drawn out by an unseen hand, but it wasn’t this that held her attention.
Becky stared ahead, her eyes bulging as the grandfather clock’s middle door swung open, and the last light bulb fell, shattering on the floor.
15
Evan slowed the van to a crawl and read the fire number poking from the bushes beside the country road.
Checking his notes, he saw the number matched, and turned the vehicle onto the driveway. No tar or gravel covered the drive, unlike most of the other homes he’d passed on the way out of Mill River. After dropping Selena off in front of a low office building a short distance from the park, he’d taken Main Street north, leaving the quaintness of town behind for the truly rural feeling that only wilderness can bring. The road wound around massive stands of pines, their reaching branches forever green against the marbled sky, and beside Long Lake at times, before the water ran out and the vegetation of spring took over completely.
It hadn’t taken long to find Crux Drive, and Evan kept checking the clock, not wanting to be gone from Shaun more than a few hours. He’d actually driven past Cecil Fenz’s driveway at first, because there was no mailbox at the head of the trail. Now, as he bumped through the dense woods, the gray light from above dimming further amongst the budding trees, he wondered if the directions on his phone were correct. The narrow drive twisted twice, hard, like a bend in a river, before straightening out again. The van traveled up a short hill, and then the cover broke, a yard and house coming into view before him.
The house surprised him, not only because it was such a contrast to the one he’d just left but because it didn’t look like the home of a recluse. It was two stories and wide, a covered front porch adorning its front. The roof drew his eyes upward, with its slatted tile shingles and curved peaks. The eaves were delicately carved, ornamental wood, and it became apparent when he parked the van close to the house that the designs were constellations. A small garage stood next to the house, humble in its low shape, and a tilled patch of earth, nearly fifty yards square, sat beyond the garage, neatly placed stakes marking rows in the dirt.
Evan shut the van off and waited for a moment in the quiet. He looked for some movement behind the opaque windows or a sign that he’d been spotted, but none came. The painting in the Kluge mansion floated in his mind’s eye, and he breathed deep a few times, calming the nervous tension that hummed inside him. He grabbed his cell phone and climbed out of the van.
The cool afternoon air bit into his neck as he walked up the steps and across the porch, his feet thunking on the boards. He wished it would rain and get it over with; for some reason, the feeling of waiting for it to happen was almost too much. He raised a hand to knock on the front door, but a voice filtered out from behind it, startling him, his knuckles still inches from the wood.
“What do you want?”
It was the same voice from the phone but with an edge to it. Evan wondered if there was a gun pointed at him right now.
“My name is Evan Tormer, I called you a few days ago. I just have some questions.”
“Go away, you’re trespassing.”
Even though the words sounded menacing, he could still hear a strange lilt to the woman’s voice, something cultured, foreign.
“Please, I won’t take much of your time.”
“You’ll take none of it. You’ll get in your car and go while you still can.”
The metallic click of a cocking gun met his ears. The fear of being shot by this strange woman in the middle of nowhere became overridden by the questions that plagued him, and before he could stop himself, he spoke.
“This is about your mother, Bella.”
Evan waited, the threat of rain no longer a concern, but the anticipation of a bullet punching through the door became almost too much to take. The seconds ticked by, agonizing in their unending length, and then a new sound came from inside, one that surprised him. Several locks snapped, and the door cracked open enough for him to see a gray eye surrounded by parchment-like skin peer out.
“Who are you?”
This time he heard a touch of curiosity in her voice.
“I’m looking for information, information about a grandfather clock. It was built by Abel Kluge. I know your mother knew him.”
The eye studied him, ran up and down his frame before the door slammed shut. The hope growing in his chest flickered and died. But before he could decide whether to call out to her again or give up, another snap came from the door and it opened fully, revealing the woman standing there.
The top of Cecil Fenz’s head barely came to his shoulder, though it wasn’t because of stooping or a bent spine on her part. She stood straight, dignified, with her shoulders thrown back, not rounded as he’d expected. She had silver hair, the color of the clouds over the house, which draped down her back in a ponytail. Her face had small features with articulate eyebrows that reminded him of the precise carvings in her eaves. She wore a painter’s smock and gray slacks. In her right hand, she gripped a large revolver, not pointed at him, but not at the ground either.