Chapter 26
A lot of things I am, but a fool is not one.
Even in a small town with so few people living in it, it’s best to be safe.
At night, things are even more noticeable to the citizens of Sage Grove.
Due to the low population, one open business, and no real foot traffic through town at night, a person wandering downtown at night sticks out like a sore thumb.
Unless you’re at the Wash-A-Teria or the Gas & Go, there’s really no point in being in the main part of town at night.
Anyone out that late in the area is obviously unhoused, or up to trouble.
Either thing is a potential call to the county police.
So, I had parked my car at The Lunch Counter and went inside to wait until it was fully dark.
No one would think it too odd seeing my car at the diner at night.
They’d just assume I was doing paperwork or prepping for the next day.
It was my business, so I had every right to be there, even at night.
When night came and the town grew dark as a tomb, I switched off the lights in The Lunch Counter and left, locking the door tightly behind me. However, I didn’t climb back into my car and go home. I walked along the old shuttered buildings that used to house businesses, keeping to the shadows.
Every now and then, I’d duck under an awning and wait. I’d look around and make sure no one was out for a nightly walk or heading to the laundromat or gas station. Though I wasn’t doing anything crazy, the legality of my purpose was firmly on the side of not.
It took some doing, going slow and cautiously, but I finally found myself in the shadow of an awning across from The Eternity Inn.
I stood there for a while, as the night grew darker, and stared up at the old two-story Victorian.
No longer white, but weathered gray by age, the elements, and lack of care, it looked spooky.
The windows were all boarded tightly on the front, so I had to assume they were everywhere else on the building.
With the front door boards still tightly in place, I had to assume that every other entrance had gotten the same treatment when it had been shuttered.
At first glance, the job of closing it up had been a good job.
Not a board out of place. Since I had no other option, I ducked out of the shadows and dashed across the street after a quick glance around.
Within two seconds, I was across the street and hiding in the shadows alongside the inn.
I took a second to collect myself and take a few steadying breaths, then I crept along the side of the building, checking the windows, as I made my way to the back.
All of the windows on the left side of the Victorian were boarded up, same as the front.
I’d make my way around the entire building, checking every entrance before I gave up.
At the rear of the building, I found the back entrance boarded as tightly, if not more so than the front.
Seeing the boards screwed into the jamb made my heart sink.
It seemed pointless to go around and check the last side of the inn.
However, I knew that I’d never get a good night’s rest if I didn’t at least check.
Creeping back down the steps from the backdoor, I was determined to finish checking the windows when my eyes landed on a curious sight.
The bulkhead doors leading into the basement.
The Eternity Inn having bulkhead doors, and a cellar, wasn’t what gave me pause.
The fact that it was fall and not a single leaf, vine, or other detritus was on them did.
The Eternity Inn had been closed up for months.
No one had been to the inn—to my knowledge—since the county had shuttered it for the Milners.
In a few months, surely the doors would be littered with anything and everything blown around by the wind.
Furthermore, there wasn’t a chain or lock that I could see on the doors.
Hoping against hope, I went over to the bulkhead doors and grabbed the handle.
I stopped myself, realizing that even if I lucked out, another problem might present itself.
Even if the inn had a cellar and the bulkhead doors to walk into the cellar from the outside, I wasn’t certain it had access to the main building.
The cellar could simply be a shelter or used solely for storage.
Another problem was the condition of the doors.
If I opened them after months—or longer—of not being used, they might creak.
Maybe creak loudly enough to draw attention from people living nearby.
Knowing without looking that the windows on the other side of the building were surely boarded up, I swallowed my fear and pulled at the handle.
Though not as loud as I’d feared, the door did creak a bit, though it came up easily.
I gently tilted it until it was laying on the ground and then stood to stare down at the steps and the black hole into which they led.
I pulled my phone out and took off down the stairs, not wanting to turn the flashlight on my phone on until I was inside
Once my head was below the bulkhead doors, I stopped and turned on my flashlight.
Not powerful enough to illuminate an entire cellar, the flashlight still gave me enough illumination to see where I was going.
Treading lightly, I made my way down the old wooden steps, cringing and wincing at every creak and crack.
Safely at the bottom, I turned and looked at the stairs I’d come down, wondering how they hadn’t collapsed on me. Hopefully, on my way out, I wouldn’t have any issues. Pushing the thought away that I might have trapped myself in a cellar with no real exit, I began to turn to have a look around.
Before I could focus my attention elsewhere, something on the stairs caught my eye.
How I had noticed it in such low light, I wasn’t sure, but something was etched into the step of each stair.
Drawing closer, I leaned down to look at the steps.
Starting from the bottom step, I worked my way up a few, looking closely at each.
Inconsistent etches—or gouge marks—were in each step.
They were in pairs. One on the left and one on the right, each pair on each step approximately three feet apart.
Frowning, I shut off the flashlight and walked back up the stairs.
They creaked and groaned but held. I didn’t completely leave the basement, but I looked out far enough to examine the ground in front of the bulkhead doors.
Impressions in the soft ground. Something had sat—or dropped—there.
Fairly recently. They weren’t deep enough that a good rain wouldn’t have made them invisible.
Frowning, I turned back around and went back down the steps.
Back at the base of the stairs, I went back to my flashlight and my perusal of the rest of the cellar.
Surprisingly, it appeared to have been used for cold food storage at some point, though all of the shelves were now, obviously, bare. However, a staircase across the twelve-by-ten room led upwards. A smile came to my face as I hoped that those stairs were also in usable condition.
More creaking and groaning echoed in the basement, but I found that the staircase on the other side of the room still functioned.
When my flashlight shone on the door at the top of the stairs, I took a deep breath, hoping that the interior doors had not been locked or nailed shut.
A quick twist of the knob and a shove proved that I was in luck.
Stale, dusty air greeted my nostrils as I stepped into the kitchen of the inn.
As though frozen in time, it looked as though nothing had been damaged or touched since it had been shut off from the world.
Surely, the layer of dust on everything had not been there before, but everything else looked to be in tip-top shape.
The main floor was not of interest to me, but I knew I had to move cautiously through the inn.
Even though it wasn’t closed off due to its condition, there was no telling what type of water damage could have occurred in the months since.
I had no knowledge of how well it had been kept up before its closing, either. Caution was paramount.
Out of the kitchen and down a long hallway, I found reception. A dining room was across the way, with a stairway splitting the two. Which was exactly what I was looking for when I came to the inn. Access to the second floor of The Eternity Inn.
With the flashlight guiding me, I eased up the stairs, finding it solid and mostly quiet.
A slight creak and groan here and there, but nothing like the basement steps.
The upstairs hallway, with its long runner carpet running from one end to the other, was also in good condition.
Dark as midnight due to the lack of outside light, my flashlight barely allowed me to see ten feet in front of my face.
Not wanting to be in the building any longer than necessary, I walked down the long hallway lined with doors.
Each door provided access to one of the rooms that were once rented out by the night.
Methodically, I went from door to door as I made my way down the hall, popping each one open and shining my light inside each.
First door on the right. First door on the left.
On and on down the hall. By the time I got to the fourth door on the right, I’d about given up.
Few doors remained to check. However, when I popped the door open, and shone my light inside, the bed, dresser, and small wingback chair coming into view, I stopped.
It wasn’t the furniture that caught my attention so much as the teal color of the walls.
I glanced up and down the hall, then ducked inside the room.
Walking across the room, I took in the furniture in view, noticing two doors on the wall to my right that most likely went to a closet and an en suite.
Both had been nailed shut. However, as I took in the room, I realized that what I’d expected to find—or not find—was not apparent.
Finally, after several moments of staring at the room, I sighed and lowered the flashlight.
Shaking my head and chuckling at my stupidity at having such a wild idea, I gave up.
I turned around, intending to leave The Eternity Inn for good.
However, when I turned, raising the flashlight as I did, the long wall alongside the open door caught my eye.
The dark chestnut wainscoting and chair rail were dusty, but pristine.
As was the teal wallpaper above it that led all the way up to the white ceiling.
On the wall, further way from the door was a picture, some painting that I couldn’t make out unless I was willing to dust it off.
It was of no interest to me, though. What interested me wasn’t what was there—it was what wasn’t there.
The three foot wide, six-foot-tall shadow on the wall made me cock my head to the side. Something large had been sitting there. Something that most likely matched the room.
Something teal.
Before I had much time to really consider things, movement at the door caught my eye.
Spinning on my heels, I shone my flashlight at the door.
A face was staring at me from around the doorjamb.
Startled by the sudden appearance of the person, I jumped, nearly dropping the flashlight.
The man dashed away, but not before I caught the flutter of his cardigan in the open doorway.
“Wait!” I barked. “Crap!”
I dashed from the from the room and out into the hall. Footsteps on the stairs, rushing away, were already reaching my ears. I tore down the hallway with reckless abandon, the beam of the flashlight bobbling all around me, cutting frantic shadows on the walls of the hallway.
Leaping down the stairs, two at a time, I rushed down to the first floor of the inn.
Footsteps were hammering into the kitchen, and I followed them.
In the kitchen, I could hear footsteps on the stairs into the cellar.
By the time I got to the stairs and down them, I could see the rectangle of light at the top of the exit to the cellar from the bullhead door across the room.
The flutter of a cardigan was briefly visible, then gone.
I raced across the cellar and up the steps, ignoring the stairs protests, and practically fell into the backyard of the inn. Leaping up, I looked around frantically, but found nothing. Just the whistle of the wind. My hair fluttered in the wind, but all was silent.
Gary was gone.