Are You Haunted (part twelve)

Are You Haunted

(part twelve)

“Think about it, Dennis,” he urged. “Guy has nothing to lose, does he? He’s the only one who knows what goes on out here. Suppose it’s storming, and he’d just as soon stay home? He gets paid anyway. He knows the place is looked after. Same deal with the others…they can hire out their time on another job. Why wouldn’t they like it?”

“Maybe.”

Struck by a serious consideration, Tovey turned his face away, letting the empty sky read his thoughts. “I don’t know what the trust pays the lady who cleans. They got a handyman…”

“Winters.”

A stranger led the way around the side of the barn, trailed by Rohdl; Rohdl licking fingers and carrying a bottle of root beer. The stranger wore a grey suit and porkpie hat, perched high on an egg-shaped head. “Winters they used to, in the old days, keep the buggy and horse here by the road. After a big snow, there was no getting up or down the hill. As the story has it, all the Drybrooks had gone to church that Sunday. A storm blew in fierce by the sermon’s end…caught everyone by surprise.”

He came to a standstill, facing Powell.

“Powell, give me a boost.”

Isobel, leaning pants-seat to the fender. She patted the hood and got on tiptoes. To show him, not to try; he would have to lift her by the waist. He scanned all sides, and she knew why, laughing. It was Tovey who had disappeared this time.

“They got the horse and buggy inside the barn. On the hilltop, every lantern was lit to guide the way. The wind was driving the snow so strong…well, you see me standing, Mr. Kenzie, not four feet away from you?”

“You mean, the blizzard was blowing so hard they couldn’t see each other?”

“Exactly what I mean. Young Davis Drybrook took the lead, sheltering a carriage lamp in the flap of his coat, and Papa Drybrook followed behind the women. Told them all to hold hands, and they inched along. That little glowing patch from the house seemed like it was always ahead and above, and never any closer.”

At this, the hint of her ironic smile lifting her mouth, Isobel crossed her arms.

But Rohdl repeated the man’s words. “Never any closer.”

The stranger seemed to insist on making Powell his audience, obliging him to listen polite-faced…but he believed he’d heard a little of Tovey’s voice…

Tovey had had some scheme coming here to begin with.

“At long last, after a passage of time they had no way of measuring, they reached the house. And what do you think? The two servants they’d left to look after things…”

The tenor of his voice did not change, but his eyes crinkled with promise, and still he looked into Powell’s.

“…brought blankets and stoked the fire. Pretty soon, after the excitement died down, they made a terrible discovery.”

“I suppose,” Isobel said, “they made two terrible discoveries.”

The man raised a forefinger. “The younger Drybrook daughter, thought the beauty of the county, betrothed in secret, Mr. Kenzie, to be married that spring, had become separated from her family somewhere on the hillside. The blizzard raged far too dangerously now to send a party out to search for her. At a great effort lasting days, they dug down to the barn. They found the horse alive, but to their sorrow no sign of the girl. All winter the snow remained. Seven feet of it, leveling the valley, the river looking buried under a new plain. You can well imagine the stricken household. A thaw would come, and they knew what it would reveal to them.”

12

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part thirteen)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)