Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror
Page 25
Lauren read about Stephen’s death in the papers a few days later. When she had learned he was returning to the house for the summer, she had tried to warn him, but he would not listen. Nonetheless, her failure to convince him of the danger he was in still left her so racked with guilt that it was several days before she realized his death meant she was now a very wealthy woman.
For the next several weeks she continued to deliberate, trying to decide whether she should tell anyone else about the house or not. But finally she resolved to keep silent. She knew no one would believe her.
In time, as the weeks turned into months, she and Garrett even stopped talking about the house between themselves.
But Garrett did not stop thinking about the house. Not a day passed that he did not try to figure out which had played a greater role in saving their lives—chance or his willingness to trust in the unknown. But try as he might he could not decide, and the best he could come up with was that there were no easy answers.
More and more he realized that every situation had to be decided on its own. And that one had to go into each situation with equal amounts of optimism, willingness to believe, and suspicion. It was a twisting path that one had to follow to learn what exists in the innermost heart of another, a road without short cuts, and one that required great care in the walking. It was sometimes a road that brought one to one’s destination quickly. And sometimes it was fraught with setbacks and wrong turns. But always it was a road that could not easily be anticipated. It was, in a word, a labyrinth.