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Childress Dav
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malkuth
(GRZESIUK STANIS_243AW NA MARGINE)
Carlisle Donna Na śÂasce śźywiośÂów
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debris cleared away, even on the beach. Through the fog, his fresh
paint job gleamed, defying the corrosive action of the salty winds.
She walked around the cottage, admiring the trim lines, the huddled,
wind-defeating design. This, she had always thought, was her father's
best design, not those towers he used to build in cities around the
world. In this hideaway he created for his family, he had perfected his
art.
Vince's ravages were gone. Slocum had done an excellent job. She
strolled down the flagged path on the first afternoon after the rain
stopped, heading toward the gate separating the garden from the
beach.
Her mother's hardy perennials were thrusting their buds against
constraining sheaths. The warped old shrubbery that Selena had just
barely saved from Vince's marauding axe leaned landward. Even in
the fog, she could feel the gales that had shaped them over the years.
They were old friends. Much of her time, as a child, was spent
secreted among those thick trunks, hidden by branches and leaves.
The house was miles from anything. No other stood within
walking distance. No stroller ever intruded upon the beach. No
chance automobile ever came down the lane ending at the gate before
the house. Privacy from the world was what he had sought.
His daughter appreciated that even more than her father had. She
clicked open the gate, hearing the familiar sound with delight, and
stepped onto the foggy beach. Wisps of mist swirled gently as she
approached the water, which now moved in oily swells onto the beach
as the tide came in.
She huddled her shoulders and thrust her hands deep into the
pockets of her Mackintosh. It was chilly. The damp seemed to
penetrate her bones more than it had in the past.
I must be getting old, she thought. Then she laughed. At twenty-
eight? Not likely! It was cold today, spring or not, and the damp
Ardath Mayhar The Crystal Skull 38
could penetrate younger bones than hers. She had just come from the
city, and her body hadn't had time to adjust. Tomorrow the sun would
shine! She would stride down the beach toward the standing rocks,
where in summer the seals sometimes came to rest.
She turned without going farther. Now she needed a fire and
something hot to drink. There was something depressing about the
fog-ridden sands and the grumbling tide. She almost felt as if
someone might walk out of the mist and speak to her. She laughed
and closed the gate behind her.
Once the driftwood was sparking on the hearth and a pot of tea
steeping in her mother's Chinese teapot, she felt better. It was
disappointing to have her first days weathered in, but she'd never been
one to let things get her down.
She sat on the hearthrug and poked blazing chunks, where blue and
lilac and orange flames curled. Here in her own kingdom she was as
safe as anyone could be in this uncertain world. She could almost feel
her parents' presence, Mother in the kitchen or the study, Father out
checking the roof...
She sipped the tea, basking in the feeling of home. After a bit, she
put her cup on the hearth and leaned her head against the sofa. Her
eyes closed.
When she woke, darkness was making mirrors of the windows.
The fire burned low. She sat up, somehow troubled, though she could
not quite recall her dream.
Still, she was sure Vince had been in it. Strange. She had kept him
out of her thoughts for months, now. It must be returning to the scene
of their painful parting that brought him back into her mind.
She forced herself to rise and go into the kitchen. Food should help
her mood, she thought. After supper, she found that she was unable to
read, though she had brought a case of books. So she sat for a while,
staring into the flames. Then she sighed.
"Selena Bartley, if you can't read, and it's too cold to walk in the
fog, then you ought to go to bed. The doctor was right. You're tired
to the bone," she said aloud.
Ardath Mayhar The Crystal Skull 39
Morning found the sky a bit lighter, though fog still wrapped the
world, limiting visibility to a few yards. She felt much refreshed and
finished her skimpy breakfast in good spirits. She washed her dishes,
remembering her mother's admonitions, straightened the small
disarray in the house, and looked about with satisfaction.
"I have earned a walk," she said to the cuckoo clock. It chuckled
the quarter hour in reply.
The garden, though damp, shone with sunlight. She stooped to
examine buds, touched the trailing branch of one of the shrubs. Then
she opened the gate and stepped onto the beach.
She could see her own wind-blurred tracks, stopping short of the
tide line. That was from the evening before. Yet there were other
prints there, big, deep, fresh ones. They came up the beach, out of the
fog, ending at the gate. No returning prints marked the beach.
"God!" she whispered. "A prowler."
She turned and sped for the house. Conditioned to city living, she
had locked everything tightly last night, but she knew she wouldn't be
satisfied until she checked every inch of the house and grounds. She
opened the cabinet in the kitchen to take out her father's revolver, still
loaded as he had left it. She hoped the green-moldy cartridges would
fire, if she needed to.
The lock on the door had been untouched, she was sure. Every
room, every closet was empty. The windows were all firmly latched,
and the front door was barred on the inside. The dead-bolt that
Slocum had installed was fastened, too.
She stood in the living room and looked around her. "Nobody got
in, that's certain," she said, her voice sounding a bit thin, even to her.
At that moment, she looked at the hearth. On the rug where she
had sat the night before, there were two dampish smudges.
She went closer, bending to look. Two rapidly drying prints, side
by side, decorated the middle of the hooked rug's pattern of roses and
ivy.
Her breath caught. She set her foot into one of the prints. The
outline was twice the length of her own foot.
Ardath Mayhar The Crystal Skull 40
She and Vince had laughed often about his immense feet. He made
jokes about 'the bigger the foot, the bigger the brain.'
She shivered. "Vince?" she called, her voice tentative. "Vince, are
you here?"
She didn't expect an answer, and there wasn't one. The house had
been tightly locked with new locks, installed that spring. Even if
Vince had kept his keys, they couldn't admit him now.
She gritted her teeth, a habit that had annoyed her father, and
moved back into the yard, where a careful examination of the ground
produced no evidence of any alien foot. "I am imagining things," she
said loudly to the fog.
"I am over-tired. My nerves are on edge. The fog and the cold and
nervous strain have made me notional. I refuse to think nonsense!"
She closed the kitchen door and locked it from the outside, securing
the key on the ring in the pocket of her Mackintosh. She moved onto
the beach and walked into the fog, moving in the direction from which
the footsteps had come. The tracks were losing definition, as the sand [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
