Houses of Stone, KATHY [classic literature books TXT] 📗

acquaintances. "But he adores you," one of them had said in obvious bewilderment. "He takes such good care of you."

His Baby.

Karen left town at ten o'clock Friday evening, after meeting all her classes, keeping several student appointments, attending a faculty meeting, and turning down Joe Cropsey's invitation to have a drink with him. Shortly after midnight she checked into a motel outside Frederick. It would have been irresponsible to drive straight through. Unproductive, as well; she could hardly go prowling around the grounds of a strange house in the small hours of the morning.

As she locked the door of the motel room and tossed her overnight bag onto the bed, a heady sense of escape filled her. No one knew where she was. No one could find her. There would be no knock at the door, no ringing of the telephone. This was the ultimate freedom—with no Grand Inquisitor lying in wait to drag her back to her cell.

Her slippered feet sank deep into mud that squelched and clung. The wet, matted weeds in the center of the rutted track were slick as ice. Interlaced branches formed a canopy overhead, a dark, twisted fabric through which the rain forced passage, now in trickles, now in heavier streams. Her wet hair writhed like a living thing, coiling around her throat. She reached up to pull it away, and saw the house ahead, looming dark against a storm-gray sky.

Karen stopped and rubbed her eyes. Her lashes were heavy with wet, but an overactive imagination, not impaired vision, must have produced those fleeting impressions. Her hair wasn't long; it was cut short, and plastered to her head by the rain that had soaked through her scarf. Her shoes were sensible brogues, not thin slippers. The skies were cloudy, but not menacingly dark; it was just past noontime.

The house still looked forbidding. It was no typical Tidewater mansion, beautifully proportioned and painstakingly hand-crafted (by slave labor, Karen reminded herself), but a graceless square block with narrow windows that gave it the appearance of a fort rather than a home. Chimneys on either end, disproportionately tall and slender, pointed skyward. Even the signs of long neglect and the weedy, untended grounds did not wholly account for its unprepossessing appearance. Hayes had been right; of architectural distinction there was none.

There were signs of recent attempts at renovation. The lawn had been mowed, though its green owed more to clover and variegated weeds than to grass. Some of the shutters had been painted. Others hung, gray and dispirited, from rusty hinges. Two of the windowpanes on the lower level were boarded up. Another set of panes had been recently replaced; the small paper stickers still adorned them.

So that was why Cameron Hayes's hands looked as if they had been chewed by a bear. He must be doing some of the work himself. The place certainly needed attention, it must have been neglected for decades. If the inside was as bad as the outside, Hayes's hope of finding a buyer were slim.

The house was for sale; she had seen the sign. The driveway gates were chained and padlocked, so she had been forced to leave her car outside. The small side gate, hung with "No Trespassing" signs, was padlocked too. She had climbed over it.

Karen gave herself a little shake. She couldn't stand here dripping and dreaming all day. Workmen wouldn't show up on a Saturday, especially in such weather, but Cameron Hayes might. She didn't particularly want him to find her here, but if he did, she would stand her ground—no sense trying to sneak away unseen, the presence of her car would tell him someone was inside—and make her excuses. "I just happened to be in the neighborhood ..." She smiled wryly. Excuses be damned; she was hooked, and he probably knew it. Peggy had been right about that, at any rate; her eager questions had given her away.

Of course she ought to have called to tell him she was coming. She hadn't, though. It could be argued (she argued) that his willingness to answer her questions implied permission to visit the house, but that excuse was decidedly feeble. She hadn't called because she wanted to be alone on this first, secret visit.

Yet as she went on more slowly, slipping on the wet grass, uneasiness prickled along her spine. It wasn't a Gothic tingle, but rational, if belated, apprehension. Perhaps she ought to have approached Hayes directly, or at least told someone where she was going. She had not realized the place was so isolated. She had not seen another house or even another vehicle after she left the highway and turned onto the narrow back road, overhung with trees and studded with potholes. The only sounds that broke the silence were those made by wind and falling rain. She was over a mile from the highway, too far to hear traffic noises. Some such noise, some indication of life, would have been welcome just then. A bird chirping, a dog barking. . . Well, maybe not a dog. In her present mood a howling in the woods would conjure up images of wolves—or worse. More prosaically, this was the sort of place that would attract trespassers with less noble motives than hers—vagrants, poachers, hunters . . .

"Serial killers," she jeered at herself, and started at the sound of her own voice echoing in the silence. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Wisps of fog drifted across the grass.

The steps leading to the front door were not gracefully curved, just slabs of stone mortared into place. They were a little too high, a little too narrow. She climbed them, treading carefully on the water-slicked surface. The door was a flat expanse of wood, with no window and no fanlight above. If ever a door had been designed to keep people out, this was it. Tentatively she raised her hands and pressed them against the panel. For a moment she had the unnerving impression that they