“Let me see.”
Ella studied the glass Lila cradled in her palm.
“You know, I think you’re right. This looks more like...well, like tiny gravel, or large grains of sand, than it does broken glass. And I know it wasn’t on the porch when we walked by a few minutes ago.”
She didn’t feel through the open pane as Lila had done but she did look closely at the fabric on the other side.
“And there isn’t a bullet hole.”
“Maybe someone inside....”
“No,” Ella said. “I didn’t see any movement inside the whole time we were out here. And that wouldn’t explain the glass.” She bore down with the toe of one shoe—square-toed, rather old-fashioned, Lila thought—and both of them heard the grating sound. “No, that wouldn’t explain this.”
“Maybe....” Lila walked to the edge of the porch, shaded her eyes with one hand, and stared at the distant thicket of wild rose. “Maybe...there wasn’t a bullet.”
She turned, drew her cell phone from her pocket, and punched redial.
One ring.
Two.
Then static.
CHAPTER FIVE
“What’s going on here?” Lila’s voice was tight with frustration, fury, and more than a tinge of fear. Her first impulse was to throw the cell as far from her as she could, send it hurtling into a distant patch of dying wild sunflowers and thick nettles where it would rest silently until the waters of Shadow Lake crept high enough to short its circuits and kill it forever.
After a moment’s thought, however, she returned it to her pants pocket. Give it a rest. Then maybe....
Turning her attention from the cell to the other woman standing near her in the shade of the porch, she repeated, “What’s going on here? What in the name of all things holy is happening?”
Her vehemence seemed to startle Ella, who took a step backward but kept her eyes pinioned on Lila.
“Do you know anything about this?” Even to Lila, it sounded as much an accusation as a question.
“I...uh...no, of course not. Wait, though.... You said that the woman who lives...lived...here, Anna Stevenson, didn’t come to your meeting. Maybe she’s still around somewhere, maybe she was waiting for you to come this afternoon, and she....”
“And she what?” Lila broke in. She could feel her temper rising, overcoming both the frustration and the fear. “Anna Stevenson what? Magicked a broken window? Because there isn’t any sense pretending that this was done by a bullet. Nothing fits, neither a shooter out there”—Lila flung one hand toward the brightly lit front yard—“nor one inside. You were right. I didn’t see any movement in there, and I certainly don’t hear anything now.”
“But if she....”
“Ella, that’s the real problem.” Lila consciously forced herself to be calm...or at least calmer.
“What is?”
“No one knows if Anna Stevenson is still living here or not. No one has heard from her—not by telephone, not by letter, not by note, not by freaking carrier pigeon!—since the night of the meeting. Three months, and not a single bit of evidence that the woman is here, that she is still alive. Nothing. That’s really why I am out here.”
She took a deep breath—the air tasted warm, redolent with traces of dust and the acrid bitterness of sage from the surrounding hillsides—and physically squared her shoulders. Soldier preparing for battle. Let the fireworks begin.
“I have to go inside and verify that she has left.... Somehow.”
“Go...inside?” Ella sounded nervous, unaccountably more nervous than when the two of them believed they had been targeted by a sniper.
“Yes, and post this.” Lila went back to her briefcase and pulled out a single piece of paper. “Final notice. Official final notice. Then probably tomorrow or the next day or the next, out will come the bulldozers and down comes house, granary, sheds, ramshackle chicken coop, everything”
As she spoke, her free hand reached to open the door.
“Don’t,” Ella whispered as she grasped hold of Lila’s arm and jerked back. “Don’t go in there. It might...it might not be...safe.” She glanced around, as if she expected to see a dark shadow lurking at the end of the porch or an ethereal hand emerging through the empty pane barely feet from them.
Lila shook off Ella’s hand, but she made no further attempt to open the door.
“Ella, tell me the truth. Do you know something about this place, about Anna Stevenson, that you aren’t telling me?”
“No, not really. It’s just...it’s just that....” She was nearly in tears. Even in the filtered light, Lila could see that.
“Please, Ella?”
“I can’t tell you anything specific. Like I said, I grew up on another farm, a ways from here.” Again she gestured back toward the core of Shadow Valley. “I never came out here as a child. I don’t know of anyone who ever did. None of the kids, anyway.
“But when we were together, just us kids, without any adults around, we would whisper stories about the...the haunted house.” She giggled—the sound echoed across the porch and made Lila feel uncomfortable. Somehow it didn’t fit. Neither the right time nor the right place.
“Oh, I suppose that as we grew older, we knew deep down that we were just telling tales, that there wasn’t really anything haunted about the place. But back then, the stories seemed real. Bits and pieces we had gleaned from overhearing our parents talking about the Stevensons.
“People died out here, long ago. That much was real, although none of us knew the details and our parents wouldn’t talk about it, not even as we grew older and began asking more serious questions.”
Ella shuddered.
“And all that time, no one we knew ever saw the woman who lived here, an ‘old maid’, we would have called her, named Annie...not the Anna who lives here now, but an older relative. Then the old woman died and...I moved away.”
“But....”
“I know, none of this makes any sense, maybe in the world of fantasy and childish make-believe all of the pieces would fit together, but not in the real world. So, truly, I can’t tell you anything more. Except that I don’t think it is a good idea for you to go inside this house.”
Ella took one more step back.
Lila hadn’t moved since Ella had begun talking. She simply stood there, listening, barely breathing.
Haunted house? Mysterious old woman?
No one she had talked to thus far had mentioned anything like this. As far as Lila knew from her spotty conversations with the farmers and their families, the Stevenson place was just another time-worn homestead, one that had long since outlived its usefulness and, like the rest of them, was about to be submerged beneath the silent waters of the reservoir.
She shook herself, as if she were waking from a bad dream.
“Ella, you know that those were only stories the other kids must have made up to explain a lonely, difficult old woman. Stories like that happen all of the time. In another age, in another place, they might have gotten old Annie Stevenson burned as a witch, but....”
“I know. But old stories are hard to forget. And seeing you with your hand reaching out...I...oh, forget