Chapter 8
Two nights later, I put on my shoes, slipped out of the house, and waited.
And a pretty fool I’ll look if Halder doesn’t come out tonight, I thought, leaning against a tree trunk.
The moon was waning and the blue light it cast over the grounds was barely enough to see by.
I needed some time for my eyes to adjust, since I didn’t dare carry a lantern.
I looked up at the stars, trying to pick out constellations. Astronomy is the natural science that I know the least about. I could find Orion and the Big and Little Dippers, but that was as far as I went. My time in the woods was more usually spent turning over rocks than gazing up at the sky.
Probably for the best, given how hard it is to paint a good night sky in watercolor.
There’s something about the glow of stars that simply doesn’t want to translate into paint.
You can take the most spectacular night sky ever seen and on paper, it just turns into a sheet of muddy blue-black flecked with little white dots.
I heard a distant door slam and ducked hastily behind the tree I’d picked out. Light splashed around me, casting brief, fantastic shadows before moving on, then footsteps went past. I waited long enough for the sound to fade, then scurried after.
Definitely Halder. I could make out the familiar slumped form silhouetted against the lantern.
He was moving quickly but kept throwing glances over his shoulder.
He didn’t slow down or swing the lantern around though, which made it seem more like a nervous tic than an actual attempt to spot pursuit.
Still, I moved from tree to shrub to tree, trying to stay in cover in case he decided to actually stop and look.
Fortunately, sound couldn’t betray me, because the frogs were making a deafening racket, intermixed with the shrilling of katydids and the short, sharp chirps of some insect that I didn’t know but that Halder probably did.
We reached the clearing that contained the Kents’ small, neat house, and Halder hastily dimmed the light down to a firefly glow.
He moved cautiously around the side to the chicken coop, holding the lantern so that it didn’t shine into the darkened windows.
I halted behind a loblolly pine and waited.
A whippoorwill called monotonously in the woods. Halder fumbled with the latch on the coop.
Something moved on the porch. I froze. So did Halder.
Claws scraped the boards as the old hound stood up, stretched, and came ambling down the steps.
Don’t look in my direction, I prayed. I’m not here. I’m not.
He took a few steps toward my tree. I saw a flash of moonlight on white teeth as he yawned. Surely he must be able to smell me. If he came up to me, I had no idea what to do. Hold very, very still and hope that Halder didn’t come to see what had attracted his attention? Try to run?
Oh please, please, go away, I can’t pet you right now …
Then Halder got the door open and the old hound turned, attracted by either the sound or the movement of the light. His tail wagged amiably as he went toward the chicken coop.
Light gleamed through chinks in the boards, and a moment later, my employer emerged, holding a groggy chicken tucked firmly under his arm. The dog came up and sniffed at the dangling feet with great interest.
Halder reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and tossed it to the hound. Suddenly all business, the dog caught it neatly in midair and trotted back to the porch. I heard the creak as he flopped down and began chewing.
Very clever. Cleverer than I had been, certainly. I’d known the dog was there, but I hadn’t even considered that he might give me away.
The light bobbed through the trees as Halder went back the way he had come. I gave chase, hearing the occasional puzzled err-err-errrk? from the hen. I felt a pang of sympathy for the poor chicken. I didn’t know what Halder’s plans were, but I suspected the bird’s future was extremely limited.
The gunpowder shed loomed ahead. I slipped back behind the shrubs and waited. Halder set down the lantern, took out his key, and unlocked it, then picked up the lantern again and stepped inside.
He didn’t shut the door behind him. He shouldered through some kind of drape and let it fall, cutting off both the light and a last, worried cluck from the chicken.
I swallowed hard. Did I dare get closer?
No! Stay here where it’s—well, not safe, obviously, this is all a terrible idea, but if you go any closer you are absolutely going to get caught, you know you’re going to get caught—
The problem with anxiety is that you get so good at tamping down that inner voice that sometimes you ignore it even when it’s right. Halder had only spent about five minutes in the shed last time. I should definitely stay where I was.
Stop, stop, what are you doing, stop! I told myself as I slunk across the open ground.
The moonlight was just barely strong enough to make out folds of material in the doorway.
I touched it cautiously. Heavy oilcloth.
Very heavy. Weighted at the bottom too, it felt like, and stiffened along the edges, forming a barrier just inside the arc of the door.
Okay, now you know what the drape is made of, for all the good it does, now you’re going to turn around and go back to your hiding place …
It occurred to me that there was no light coming from around the edges of the drape.
I leaned closer. It was certainly heavy, but it couldn’t possibly seal so tightly that light couldn’t get out, could it?
I didn’t hear anything from inside. The shed was so small, surely I should hear Halder moving, shouldn’t I?
He wouldn’t just be standing there in the dark, in total silence, holding a chicken. That made no sense.
None of this makes any sense!
Crouching down, I plucked the edge of the drape and lifted it a tiny fraction. Light failed to spill out from underneath.
My courage would likely have failed me at that point, except that I heard Halder’s voice, much farther away than expected, saying, “Worked a treat though, didn’t it?”
It didn’t sound like he was in the tiny shed. It sounded like he was across a room and at the bottom of a flight of stairs. And who was he talking to?
Fear warred with curiosity and lost. I lifted the corner even higher and peered inside.
At last, I could see light. It was at the bottom of a flight of stairs that opened up in front of me. I saw the glow illuminating the edges of plain board steps, and what looked like an earth floor beyond.
Halder’s voice drifted up the steps. “No. I don’t.”
I strained my ears, but couldn’t hear any reply, not even a murmur.
A large insect climbed over my hand where it held back the drape and I jerked away, biting down a yelp. It was too dark to make out what species it might be. I shook my hand violently and it flew away into the dark. Moth, probably, or a large beetle. I lifted the drape again.
Below the shed, Halder laughed abruptly. It wasn’t a nice laugh. As it died away, so did the calls of the frogs and the insects, leaving a dreadful, vulnerable silence.
I should probably have fled then, but my brain was churning with questions. What was Halder doing? Who was he talking to? What was going on underneath that shed?
Could there be a person down there?
I waited too long. The light swung suddenly, and I actually saw the top of his head come into view at the foot of the stairs before I jerked back, letting the drape fall. I scrabbled backward, heart hammering, tried to rise—and felt my feet go out from under me.
Stairs creaked as Halder climbed. Panic painted the inside of my skull a numb white.
I crab-walked backward, hit something that I recognized as a fallen log, and flung myself over it, dropping flat.
There was a gap underneath where the log lay across another one.
If Halder happened to glance down, six feet to his right, he would almost certainly see me, but I had no more time to run.
The drape opened and he stepped out. I could only see him from the knees down. I wouldn’t even know if he’d seen me until he shouted. Assuming he bothered to shout.
A katydid called, then another one, and suddenly the full night chorus was rising again. Oh good, I managed to think. Now I won’t even hear him coming.
His feet turned back toward the shed, and he set the lantern down. I heard him fumbling with the drape, then the door swung shut, but the woods were too loud to hear the key click in the lock.
Don’t look over here, I begged silently.
Don’t look. My dress was dark, true, but the forest floor was the color of old pine needles and the fabric would stand out like an ink stain against it, with my hands and face horribly bright by comparison.
My only hope was that he wouldn’t bother looking this way at all.
The songs of the frogs swelled louder as Halder bent down and picked up the lantern. I squeezed my eyes shut to stop any betraying reflection. Please be blind from looking at the light. Please have no night vision. Please go away.
A new sound threaded through the cacophony, thin but oddly tuneful. It took me a moment to realize that Halder was whistling.
Darkness touched the backs of my eyelids.
I opened one a crack and saw the door of the gunpowder shed, closed and locked, bathed only in starlight.
When I finally dared to lift my head, long after the whistling had faded away, I saw Halder’s lantern far off through the trees, heading back to the house.
Well, I thought as the light bobbed away from me. Now what do I do?