She paused, perhaps for one second, then closed the door on her way out.
###
Curtis Morlin swore and switched off the beat up old TV.
It looked like the Aggies’ hopes of getting into March Madness were fading fast this year.
“Did they lose again, Curtis?” Abby’s voice floated in from the kitchen. She always took advantage of his games to go into the kitchen and read whatever latest slop novel she had picked up down at Wallace’s Grocer. Her stated opinion of televised sports was they were some kind of uniquely male foolishness that at least had the benefit of getting the man out of her hair on a regular basis.
He grunted and pushed himself up out of his rickety recliner and headed for the kitchen.
“Their only hope now is to beat Texas Tech, and for Texas to lose to Oklahoma,” he growled as he came into the brightly lit kitchen. He stopped to see Abby sitting at the table, not with a novel in her hands, but holding up a torn envelope and wearing an expression that promised trouble.
“When were you going to tell me about this?” she asked, her face tight.
“I wasn’t,” he growled, reaching for the refrigerator door. “I ain’t selling so I didn’t see no point in bringing it up.”
“Curtis! This is a good offer! We can buy a place in town and retire on this!”
“Who says I want to retire?”
“Curtis Morlin, you’re seventy-three years old. We can’t just stay out here in the boonies, so you can keep playing at farming.”
“I ain’t playing, Abby.”
“Oh honey, I know that. But this old place ain’t making us nothing anymore. Times change. Farming is a wealthy man’s business nowadays. It requires a lot more land than we got, to make any money at it.”
Curtis didn’t answer. He opened the door to the icebox and pulled out a quart of milk.
“Curtis, talk to me.”
The old farmer grabbed a glass from the cupboard and sat down with it and the milk across from her at the table. He made a show of pouring himself a glass, then set the carton aside for later.
“Curtis.”
“Abby,” he stared at the glass of milk. “This land has been in my family since before World War One. I took it over when Uncle Bernie disappeared in Hurricane Carla. Hell, hon, it’s been home for almost fifty years now.”
“I know, Curtis,” she said softly, “I know. But everybody we know out here is gone. The Tates sold their place last year, and now they live in Hallisboro. I saw Evelyn Tate yesterday, and she was wondering when we would get around to joining them. And now here is Ronald Weston offering to buy the place and make all that possible.” She held up the envelope again.
“I ain’t got no use for Ronald Weston.”
“But why? He ain’t never done us no harm.”
“I know,” he grunted and took a long drink of his milk before sitting it back down and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “but he’s one of those Weyrich farmers. Real clannish, and ain’t got the time of day for anybody outside of his own.”
“I know that, too.” She thinned her lips in disapproval. “But he’s already bought the Orlan property next to us, and his brother Arthur just bought the Collier place across the road two months ago. And with Amos Clayton picking up the Hatcher place, it’s all Weyrich people around here nowadays as it is. We’re the last ones left on this side of the river who don’t go to their church or socials.”
“Yeah,” Curtis sighed, “it sure seems they’re expanding lately. I guess they got young’uns coming up and who’ll be needing land of their own soon. It’s a pity what they do with good farming land, though…just using it for grazing like that. And they don’t even keep the trees cleared out.”
“I guess they make more money at livestock.”
“Hmmph! I doubt it. Not at the prices they…”
Outside, the mare screamed in the night.
Curtis and Abby froze in mid-conversation. For a moment, nothing but the wind sounded around the eaves of the little farmhouse. Then the mare screamed again.
“Curtis? What in the world!? Is that Tilly? I’ve never heard a horse make a sound like that before!”
“I don’t know,” the old farmer slowly stood, looking at the back door. “I think so.” He started pulling on the vest he had hung over the kitchen chair earlier.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna go check on her, Abby.” He clumped over to the back door, and pulled an old 12-gauge shotgun from out of the umbrella stand next to it. “I’m thinking something might have gotten into the pen with her, or into the barn.”
“You want me to come, too?”
“No.” He put on his hat. “You stay here. It’s probably just a coyote, or maybe a wildcat, but I don’t need to be worrying about where you are while I’m looking for it.”
“Curtis, be careful. Take your cell phone with you.”
“I reckon I will.” He yanked open the door then grinned fondly at her before stepping out. “If I don’t find nothing, I’ll go ahead and throw down some straw in the stall and move Tilly into the barn. I’ll give you a call and you can pester me about Evelyn Tate’s sweet life in town while I’m doing it.”
“Oh, get on with you!” Abby laughed, but her eyes still showed concern. “It’s probably a polecat and you’re gonna piss it off and come back in smelling like the end of the world. Then I’ll go and stay with Evelyn and Justin Tate can come out here and keep you company.”
“I bet you would,” Curtis chuckled. “It probably wouldn’t take Justin an hour of listening to you two old hens clucking before he was heading this way, either.”
“Out!” Abby guffawed.
Curtis shouldered his shotgun with an exaggerated sigh, and trudged out into the night.
The full moon shone bright between gaps in the clouds above, washing the yard and fields in an ivory blue. The gravel driveway that came around from in front of the house and widened into a large circle in the rear, gleamed white under the lunar illumination. The shadows under the pair of nearby oaks were two great puddles of blackness…the same type of blackness that filled the open sliding doors to the barn.
Curtis frowned at the door, trying to remember if he had left it open or closed.
He cautiously pulled the shotgun down from his shoulder, and held it in a more ready position as he started moving across the wide gravel expanse. He didn’t head straight for the door, but moved at an angle to bring the side of the barn with the horse’s pen into view. The gravel crunched loudly under his feet, but that suited him just fine.
If a coyote or wildcat were prowling around, he would rather give it a chance to know he was coming and move away, instead of suddenly coming upon it and surprising the thing. And there was always the possibility of the aforementioned polecat. All jokes aside, getting crosswise with a skunk was the last thing he wanted to do out here.
A loud bang and clatter reached his ears from that side of the barn, and he stopped to listen. There was a breeze blowing, not much, but enough for the rustling of the trees to mask the softer sounds of the night. Another loud crash sounded, followed by the grunt of a horse. Then came the thud of receding hoofbeats.
“Aw crap! Tilly!”
Curtis hurried around to the side of the barn.
The horse pen stood empty. Several boards in the back fence were broken, as if the horse had either kicked them, or rammed through them with her body. Forgetting the possibility of a wild intruder, he hurried forward, climbed up on the fence for a better view and looked for the mare. It only took a second in the bright moonlight to spot her, and he could just make out the palomino’s pale head and mane disappearing over the hill behind the barn.
Damn!
Worried the mare may have cut herself breaking out, he turned back to go get the tractor. Curtis knew he couldn’t take his truck down into the soft field behind the house, so he would have to take the John Deere to go get her. He would also need a lead rope to tie to the tractor’s trai
ler hitch before bringing her home. The lead rope was in the tack room of the barn, so he headed back for that.
Coming back around the corner from the side of the barn, he came to a surprised stop as an intruder finally became visible.
It was a woman.
She stood in the center of the large gravel circle, facing him in the moonlight.
Curtis squinted at this newcomer, trying to decide if he should feel threatened by her or not. She didn’t appear to pose a danger, but something about her gave him a first class case of the willies.
The woman was average sized, and seemed to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore sneakers, jeans, a flowered blouse, and had a handkerchief tied like a scarf over her head. With a pair of cotton gloves on her hands, she appeared to be nothing so much as a suburban housewife about to go work in her garden. Other than the fact she stood behind his house in the middle of the night, she didn’t look threatening at all.
Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling of something being very wrong here.
“Ma’am?” he called softly. “What are you doing back here?”
She tilted her head, and looked back at him as if trying to make out what he meant.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
“Okay?” She echoed the word back at him, as if trying it out for the first time.
Curtis scowled at the woman, trying to make sense of her odd demeanor. Was she hurt? On drugs? He still couldn’t see any visible threat from her, but he held his shotgun ready to swing up in an instant.
“What’s your name? Can you tell me who you are?”
“Name?” She seemed to taste the word, as if it were unfamiliar.
“Yes, ma’am, your name. Please tell me your name.” Curtis wondered if maybe she had been involved in a car accident nearby and had come for help. If that were the case, he was acting like a first class jackass while this poor woman needed help. But he couldn’t fight off the bad case of the creeps this whole situation was giving him.
“Name...” She frowned for a moment, then brightened. “Oh yes, a name. I have a name.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed gently, moving forward with caution. “Can you tell me what it is?”
“Is?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My name,” she spoke slowly, as if in deep concentration, “is Karen Sellars.”
“Karen?” He moved carefully toward her.
“Yes,” she replied, then frowned down at her feet. “No, that’s not right. Not is…was. Not me…her.”
Curtis looked down at her as he reached where she stood. He couldn’t see any injury, but even the bright moonlight wouldn’t necessarily show that. He reached for her, to guide her toward the back door, but somehow failed to make contact.
It was as if she weren’t really there.
Curtis stared at his hand, then back at her, when suddenly the cause of that sense of wrongness he had been feeling came crashing into his awareness.
She didn’t cast a shadow.
His shadow lay long and black in the bright light of the full moon, but she didn’t cast one at all. She appeared as real and solid as anybody else, but somehow her body didn’t stop light.
“Oh.”Her voice sounded detached, and she still stared at her feet. “I didn’t think of that.”
He backed slowly away from the woman, then stopped and stared in confusion at the shadow that now extended from her form as well. Had he been hallucinating?
No, she didn’t have a shadow a second ago. And she didn’t realize it until I noticed it, and now she’s made one appear. She isn’t what she looks like. She’s something else entirely.
The woman raised her head, and gave him a strange look. There was something wrong with her eyes, but in this light he couldn’t make out what it was. The moon moved behind a small cloud, dropping them into darkness.
“You’re exactly right,” her dim form spoke. “I’m something else entirely.”
She raised one arm and pointed back toward his house. He followed the direction of her gesture, still trying to make sense of this eerie encounter. His house stood silhouetted against the night sky…but it was all wrong. Curtis scowled at its new outline, then back at the woman in confusion.
“It’s me,” she stated.
He looked back at the house and a second later the moon peeked out again, revealing what had altered the outline of his house so.
There was a monster on his roof.
It was on his entire roof, and it was already starting to come down.
Trying to choke out a scream, he whipped up the shotgun and fired once…twice…
…and then it reached him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
QUEENS, PAWNS, AND WILD CARDS
“Checkmate.”
Adam grimaced at the chessboard in dismay. Olivia sat across the board regarding him with her typical formal composure.
“Wow, how many moves did that take?”
“Twenty-one, Mr. Sellars.”
“Well,” he chuckled, “at least this time I managed to make it into the twenties. Of course you spotted me a queen and a rook, so I think that means my humiliation is still pretty complete. Have you considered playing professionally?”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“That would draw unneeded attention to myself. I doubt Antonio would approve.”
“Oh, right.” He started arranging the pieces again, noting with some relief that she didn’t object.
When Olivia had shown up at his door yesterday afternoon with the little magnetic chessboard, he had been so surprised as to almost be at a loss for words. They had played three games, with her wiping him out inside fifteen moves all three times. She played with a quiet focus that wasn’t at all disturbed by the occasional beeps from her tablet computer or cell phone. She would quickly deal with whatever the devices demanded of her while hardly taking her eyes off of the board. Then after those three games she had politely invoked other duties and left.
When she had shown up again today, it was all he could do to hide his astonishment.
“So, I guess being part of a secret organization can cramp your style.”
“My style?”
She gave him the curious look that had a way of making his insides feel all funny, and he nearly lost himself in those emerald pools again.
Oh Christ, Adam, you really ARE falling for her. You’re a washed up cripple whose only reason for living is finding his nephew, and she’s a multi-talented hyper-beauty with an IQ off the charts, a Lexus, and an alpha male “boss” who can probably fulfill any whim she might have with a snap of his fingers.
“Ah.” Her voice startled him back from his reverie. “You mean competing. No, Mr. Sellars, my style is not ‘cramped.’ I do not view chess as a competition.”
“You don’t?” He blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“I view chess as a problem presented to me by the person I’m playing. I’m not attempting to beat the other person, merely solve the challenge he poses.”
“Oh.” Adam tried to wrap his head around that. “That’s a rather non-confrontational approach to one of the world’s oldest war games.”
“War isn’t about confrontation, Mr. Sellars.”
“No? I would think confrontation would be central to it.”
“Not at all,” Olivia placed each of her pieces on the board with elegant precision, and he suddenly had the strangest feeling this must have been what playing a game with Cleopatra was like. “Battle is usually about confrontation, but war is a much more complex endeavor. A well conducted war decides battles before they are ever fought. An excellently conducted war can sometimes decide those battles so decisively they never get fought in the first place”
“I can see how that would save wear and tear on the soldiers.”
“It is a consideration.” She opened with a king’s pawn to king’s pawn three, and she was now playing without a bishop, as well as her rook and queen. “Speaking of wear and tear, how is yo
ur arm and shoulder feeling today?”
“Kind of tight, but not really painful. I guess it’s ready for whatever Antonio has in mind tomorrow.” He started to respond with a queen’s gambit, then wondered if that was exactly what she expected since she didn’t have a queen. He eyed her narrowly. After another moments consideration he chose to match her opening gambit with the same move.
“As long as ‘whatever’ doesn’t involve putting too much strain on it,” she warned. “It’s knitting well, but it’s a far cry from healed.”
“It’ll have to do.” He rotated his shoulder carefully. “No telling what I’ll need it for.”
She eyed him coolly and brought out her knight.
“The idea is for you to talk to them, Mr. Sellars. It would be preferable to end this particular matter without any further bloodshed.”
“Oh, I agree,” he breathed. “You have no idea how much I agree. What do you think the chances are of that happening?” Still feeling unsure after the last three massacres, he again matched her move with his own knight.
Olivia studied the board in silence, and for a moment he thought she might not have heard the question. Then, instead of making a move, she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.
“I don’t know,” she stated quietly.
Adam openly gaped at her. Though he had only known her a short time, those were the last three words he ever expected to come out of her mouth.
“You don’t know?”
“We have not successfully met with them in well over two centuries, and have seldom tried.”
“Are you ser…?” Adam stopped himself, realizing he had never seen Olivia be anything but serious.
She met his stare with her usual imperturbability and continued.
“It is not our way…nor, as far as I can tell, theirs either. And there are centuries of spilled blood between us. Couple this with the fact there are any number of factors I don’t have at my disposal to do a proper assessment and…I simply don’t know.”
“But apparently Antonio and I are going through with this all the same.” Adam tried to keep his voice steady. I wonder if I’ll even get to say “hello” before the crazy woman with the cannon blows my head off!
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