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 it,” she finished, flashing her wide smile. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. You know what you have to do, and here I am wasting your time with old wives’ tales. Well, old children’s tales, perhaps, but you know what I mean.”
Even so, Ella did not come any closer to the door.
Lila had made up her mind, however. There had been no shooter, no bullet speeding past them to bury itself...somewhere. There was no danger. The window was obviously old, ancient almost. Even where she stood she could see that the remaining panes in the old frames were rippled, wavy with age and time, and that they might easily shatter at the slightest touch. Probably a bit of wind striking the glass at the wrong angle. A momentary settling of the house’s unstable foundations. Something like that. And, voilà, broken window.
She straightened again and stepped toward the door, holding out her hand to turn the knob. She was pleased to see that her hand was not shaking.
She had not quite touched the metal—she could still see a thin sliver of light between her fingers and the dully gleaming brass knob—when....
Craaaack!
With a shattering sound as ear-splitting as the first had been, one of the panes in the window on the other side of the door burst, then tumbled in a cascade of fragments barely larger than dust to the porch.
Ella let out a little shriek as she jumped back several paces.
Lila froze, then spun on her heels and stalked toward the car.
“That’s it! I’ve had it!”
Hugging her briefcase tight against her chest, as if it were some mystical,
