vaults, and the shadows that lay across those concave surfaces were
complex and intriguing. “Neat,” Toby said, staring up at the
ceiling.
“Like hanging under a parachute.” In the wall to the left of the hall
door was a four-footdeep, six-foot-long, arched niche into which a
custom-built bed had been fitted. Behind the headboard on the left and
in the back wall of the niche were recessed bookshelves and deep
cabinets for the storage of model spaceships, action figures, games,
and the other possessions that a young boy cherished. Curtains were
drawn back from both sides of the niche and, when closed, could seal it
off like a berth on an old-fashioned railroad sleeping car.
“Can this be my room, can it, please?” Toby asked. “Looks to me like
it was made for you,” Jack said. “Great!” Opening one of the two
other doors in the room, Paul said, “This walk-in closet is so deep you
could almost say it’s a room itself.”
The last door revealed the head of an uncarpeted staircase as tightly
curved as that in a lighthouse. The wooden treads squeaked as the four
of them descended.
Heather instantly disliked the stairs. Perhaps she was somewhat
claustrophobic in that cramped and windowless space, following Paul
Youngblood and Toby, with Jack close behind. Perhaps the inadequate
lighting–two widely spaced, bare bulbs in the ceiling–made her
uneasy. A mustiness and a vague underlying odor of decay didn’t add
any charm. Neither did spiderwebs hung with dead moths and beetles.
Whatever the reason, her heart began to pound as if they were climbing
rather than descending. She was overcome by the bizarre fear– similar
to the nameless dread in a nightmare–that something hostile and
infinitely strange was waiting for them below.
The last step brought them into a windowless vestibule, where Paul had
to use a key to unlock the first of two lower doors. “Kitchen,” he
said. Nothing fearful waited beyond, merely the room he had
indicated.
“We’ll go this way,” he said, turning to the second door, which didn’t
require a key from the inside. When the thumb-turn on the dead-bolt
lock proved stiff from lack of use, the few seconds of delay were
almost more than Heather could tolerate. Now she was convinced that
something was coming down the steps behind them, the murderous phantom
of a bad dream. She wanted out of that narrow place immediately,
desperately.
The door creaked open. They followed Paul through the second exit onto
the back porch. They were twelve feet to the left of the house’s main
rear entrance, which led into the kitchen. Heather took several deep
breaths, purging her lungs of the contaminated air from the
stairwell.
Her fear swiftly abated and her racing heart regained a normal pace.
She looked back into the vestibule where the steps curved upward out of
sight. Of course no denizen of a nightmare appeared, and her moment of
panic seemed more foolish and inexplicable by the second.
Jack, unaware of Heather’s inner turmoil, put one hand on Toby’s head
and said, “Well, if that’s going to be your room, I don’t want to catch
you sneaking girls up the back steps.”
“Girls?” Toby was astonished. “Yuck. Why would l want to have
anything to do with girls?”
“I suspect you figure that one out all on your own, given a little
time,” the attorney said, amused. “And too fast,” Jack said.
“Five years from now, we’ll have to fill those stairs with concrete,
seal them off forever.”
Heather found the will to turn her back on the door as the attorney
closed it.
She was baffled by the episode, and relieved that no one had been aware
of her odd reaction. Los Angeles jitters. She hadn’t shed the city.
She was in rural Montana, where there probably hadn’t been a murder in
a decade, where most people left doors unlocked day and night– but
psychologically, she remained in the shadow of the Big Orange, living
conscious anticipation of sudden, senseless violence. Just a
delayed case of Los Angeles jitters. “Better show you the rest of the
property,” Paul said.”
“We don’t have much more than half an hour of day- light left.”