Chapter 17
The sunny sky of the previous day was tucked somewhere behind a blanket of ashy clouds, rain spitting down in tiny, sparse droplets.
Nora shrugged her hood on and marched onto the dirt path towards the woods, one hand wrapped firmly around the hilt of the knife in her pocket, her breathing ragged.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
Don’t think about all the ways this could end, all the cases she’d sorted for the S.C.Y.T.H.E.
’s Murder Department that started off with one stupid person doing one stupid thing, usually alone, often in the woods.
Don’t think about shotguns or blunt force trauma or that one case with the poison ivy and the bear trap.
Don’t think about anything at all if she could swing it, which of course she couldn’t.
Nora Bird was built to think and think too much.
But then she thought about Charlie, and how all those ways a person could die would very likely be used against him.
And that thought, and that thought alone, propelled her forward.
The trees looked more ominous than she’d remembered them, their bark darkened by the rain.
They towered high above her, their branches taunting her with the threat of falling swiftly towards her head.
She pulled the hood down lower, as if that were enough to protect her from a heavy tree limb.
Even the sounds of the forest, the rustling of furry feet on dead leaves, the rushing wind, the morning birdsong, seemed to have stilled into an eerie calm.
Rain spattered her half-exposed nose. She was walking into the eye of the storm, and she hadn’t even brought an umbrella.
The question now was how to get back to that strange house.
She and Charlie had merely stumbled across it by chance, and stumbled away from it in such a hurry that she’d barely noticed how they got back, pure adrenaline fueling her.
Now, alone in a knot of unapologetically indistinguishable nature, Nora was dizzy with the directional chaos before her.
The path split in a fork just down from the entrance.
She hadn’t noticed this the previous morning.
Her talk with Charlie had stolen too much of her focus.
Which was impressive for any talk with Charlie.
One path seemed to keep towards the thinner line of trees by the entrance of the woods.
Nora reckoned she would still be able to see little glimpses of the beach just beyond from that route, a trunk-curtained window to whatever passed for civilization in Virgo Bay, a tether to the world beyond the forest. The other path led deep into the heart of the woods, foliage thickening and grasping along either side so that the dirt trail was rendered nearly invisible as little as ten feet away.
Nora knew exactly which path she wanted to take.
And, just as certainly, which path she needed to take.
This trail turned to slick mud beneath her shoes the farther she traveled into the forest. She shuffled her feet like a penguin with a full bladder, desperate not to slip and break her neck.
It was a delicate balance, keeping half her focus on the muck below her to avoid tripping over obstacles and half on her surroundings and any threats they held.
After waddling around for substantially longer than the human form was meant to waddle, Nora looked up from an especially untrustworthy-looking patch of mud to find the hint of a roughly carved stone wall peeking through the soggy trees.
She stifled a gasp and poked her head around the nearest trunk, examining the structure.
It was a squat thing, as colorless and rugged as the day, with only a few small windows and a heavy-looking wooden door visible from this vantage point.
It reminded her of a quaint Victorian cottage, only less expertly constructed and almost definitely cursed.
She’d go so far as to call it haunted, but ghosts were rare and frightened her far less than the thought of whatever, or whoever, might actually be lurking in there.
Before Nora could take in anything else, the door creaked open.
Nora pulled herself back against the tree, heart thundering in her ears.
She carefully rested her head against the bark so that it angled towards the house, enough to catch a glimpse of the blur of human hurrying out the front door.
He was moving quickly, hands in his pockets and head bowed, but Nora knew exactly who it was.
For a man who hadn’t been in the woods since childhood, he sure seemed to be making up for lost time now.
Nora scrambled around to the other side of the tree as Phil hurried past. As soon as his footfalls faded and the stillness returned, Nora sank down into a squat, releasing the breath she’d been holding since she first heard the door open.
So this was Phil’s place. And everyone had lied to her about it.
But why? What didn’t they want her to know?
What was he hiding? And why would it motivate him to want Charlie dead?
Nora waited until a light bout of hyperventilation had passed, and then forced herself back upright.
She cut through the trees and closed the distance between herself and the stone house.
Up close, it was better constructed than she’d given it credit for.
Good bones, she would say if she were an architect, but she wasn’t, so she only thought it.
She ran a hand over one of the cream-gray stones that made up the structure.
It appeared to have been hand carved. The artisan craftsmanship of the house was something Nora had always complained was lost to time.
These days buildings were tossed together with more regard for speed and cost than art and safety.
Even the quaint wood and clapboard houses of Virgo Bay, sturdy and charming though they were, would likely have failed the Big Bad Wolf test. But this was a house built to last, crafted by someone with long-dead sensibilities.
Richard’s father, her great-grandfather, must have been an impressive man, she thought, remembering the house’s origin as the first in town.
She abandoned the wall and looked down at the doorknob with a frown.
Its metal was weatherworn but delicately shaped.
Nora contemplated it. No one in this town seemed to lock their doors, and even with Phil’s suspicious activities, she doubted he would bother to lock his either, especially all the way out here.
That meant all she had to do was turn the handle and she’d be inside, looking at whatever awful thing it was that the town didn’t want her to see.
All that separated her from those secrets now was the wooden door in front of her.
She shuddered. It would be so easy to turn around.
To go back the way she’d come and leave whatever horrors the stone house contained to remain unknown.
She turned the handle.
A cough of dust tumbled out the door as it opened.
Apparently, Phil wasn’t into housekeeping.
Nora braced herself and chanced a look through the open door.
What she saw shocked her, if only because it was so remarkably un-shocking.
The floors were polished wood, coated with a thin layer of dust. An old-fashioned stove sat near the door to her right, heavyset and cast iron.
A few cupboards hung above it, one open just enough to reveal a stack of mismatched dishware.
There was a counter in a light wood by the oven, and a matching table under a narrow window.
The kitchen area opened into a space with a fireplace in its belly, the smoke in the hearth indicating it had just recently been extinguished.
Nora’s mind raced back to the kitchen in the little red house, oozing with black smoke.
Oh sure, Phil puts out fires when they concern him, but he seems to have no trouble starting them when they don’t. Nora shook the thought away.
The house had the heavy stillness of a recent departure.
By the fire sat an armchair upholstered in muted florals, and a rocking chair made of the same wood as the furniture in the kitchen.
It didn’t feel like the house of a youngish man, though Nora supposed growing up away from any peers might have that effect.
She crossed through the kitchen and spotted a narrow staircase tucked behind a jutting pillar of stone between the two rooms. So far there had been nothing out of the ordinary about the house aside from a questionable swan-shaped lamp on the end table beside the armchair.
Nora looked up the stairs. There were only ten or so steps, but from where she stood safely at the bottom, in the soft embrace of the remaining warmth from the dead fire, it may as well have been the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building.
Nora looked back over her shoulder to the front door. It was still open, an easy escape route. She gave herself a nod of encouragement and hauled her wobbling legs up the steps.