by Ann Self
“Headache?” he inquired.
“Yep, a humdinger I’m afraid.”
“It’s called a Flint Migraine,” Dylan yelled, squishing his way back to the stall, still shaking his head free of water.
Reggie shot her a look. “Is that damn fool at it again? He better just leave you alone if he knows what’s good for him! If I were your father I’d take the horsewhip to him!”
“Don’t worry Reggie,” Dylan laughed, skimming back his wet hair, “he has been horsewhupped. Next time you see Owen, you’ll notice the distinct imprint of Jane’s riding whip.”
Reggie just smiled, and Jane made a bad-girl grin.
Sam rejoined them still carrying his cell phone. “I called the veterinary clinic. They said Bill has three emergency calls out this way. They’ve paged him, and he ought to call us back soon.”
Jane nodded, then rubbed the back of her neck and winced.
“There’s aspirin in the office,” Reggie offered.
“Thanks, but I had aspirin for lunch. I’m waiting for the damn things to kick in.”
“Headache?” Sam inquired. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“A really, really bad one,” she confirmed. “I see two of you.”
“That is bad. One of me’s enough. How’d you get such a headache?”
Dylan sidled up to Sam with his arms crossed. “Have you by any chance gotten a load of Owen’s face?” he asked casually.
“Yeah! Looks like someone pressed his cheek on a hot grill. I asked him what happened but he wouldn’t answer, just stomped off snarling and spitting like a viper, so I dropped it. What did happen?”
“Stupid pervert cornered Jane in a stall when she was unsaddling General—tried to force himself on her, so she gave him an attitude adjustment.”
“Wow—step back! You’re kidding!” Sam exclaimed.
“Nope. She whacked him a good one.”
Sam roared with laughter. Jane pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers and grimaced.
“Oh—sorry,” he apologized. “Got him with the crop, did you? I hope he didn’t try to retaliate?”
“Not while I was there,” Dylan boasted. “You shoulda seen her...” Dylan planted a foot and carved a vicious swipe in the air, showering them with droplets of water. “Whap! Two-handed backhand...and Owen did a face-plant right into the only spot with soiled shavings.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Reggie added dryly.
Sam laughed again, and then said, “God, what I wouldn’t have given to see that! Jeez, the guy is hopeless...I wish I could fire him.”
“Why can’t you make us all so happy?” Dylan asked.
“I’m not sure how the hierarchy works around here. Maybe he can fire me.”
The phone in his hand trumpeted the Buglers’ “Call to Post” and he answered: “Hi Bill, yes we’d just like you to check Smoke. No, no sign of a foal yet. Sure thing, tomorrow morning is fine, take your time. You know what stall she’s in if I’m not around when you get here.” Sam listened for a moment, and then said: “No, she doesn’t appear at all distressed, no panting or sweating. Very calm as a matter of fact. Talk to you later.” Sam rang off.
“He’ll have to check her sometime tomorrow morning, he’s got three tough cases. One colic, one cross-country jumper who slashed his hindquarter on a stick, and a showhorse with a mysterious limp—there’s something new—and they’re all at the same barn, so he’s not sure how long he’ll be tied up there.”
“She’ll probably foal tonight, just to fool us,” Jane said, looking back over the stall door.
“I know,” Sam agreed. “Nothing ever happens in this barn when the vet is actually here on site.” He twisted and stretched from side to side, popping bones somewhere in his back. “Dylan, why don’t you go up in the loft and start getting the hay down. Get it over with ahead of time. Maybe we can actually do the haying, feeding, watering and stall-pickin’ in under three hours for a change. Go home early. It’s just too damn hot to stay here and keep working.”
“Cool. I’m on it.” Before Dylan could race off, there was a crack and snap of wooden beams overhead and they all looked up.
Sam rowed his eyebrows up and down comically. “And try to stay clear of the ghosts while you’re up there!”
Dylan snorted, yelling over his back as he headed down the aisle. “Hey! These days that ain’t so funny!” They watched him run up a set of narrow stairs to the hayloft, near the last stall.
Reggie surveyed the high ceiling of old boards and massive support timbers that was the floor of the hayloft. “Just the old building settling,” he offered. “The way my bones settle when I get up in the morning.”
The mares began nickering as hay dropped from above into their mangers. Jane glanced at the ceiling and her eyes cruised over the black holes above the stalls; triangular openings showing the darkness of the cavernous loft above them. Again she felt the strange crawling sensation on her arms and the back of her neck, and decided she was becoming a jumpy Nervous-Nelly. In the past she’d never been afraid of the dark or staying alone on the second floor.
She followed Reggie and Sam back toward the office.
“I’ll go get the tractor and cart,” Sam said, grabbing another ring of keys from a peg inside his office door. “See if I can be in front of my TV having a cold one before five.”
“Ha!” Dylan yelled from above. “I just want to stretch out in my room in front of my air conditioner.” He tossed down hay from the loft into the central hall, making everyone sidestep the dancing bales.
Sam ran off to jump in the tractor near the door, and Reggie left for the feed room to help get the grain ready. Jane hauled herself and her headache up to her apartment; every step up the winding iron staircase an incredible effort. She wished she had a real home to go home to, like Sam and Dylan. Maybe one with an air conditioner. She and Reggie were the only “homeless” people on the premises.
Jane brushed that thought out of her mind as she continued climbing. A little nap, she decided, would probably take care of the headache, and then everything wouldn’t bother her so much.
Knit the raveled sleeve of care…
She thanked her lucky stars there were no lessons until the next day—no one wanted to brave the heat—so she was free to rest. Exhaustion was probably responsible for the blinding headache anyway. That and tussling with the creep Owen.
Her head rose in slow increments above the second floor as she climbed the last iron steps. She glanced at the small door that led to the hayloft stairs and noted that it was shut and latched as required. Jane continued on to her room, rubbing her forehead. Her hand was on the door knob when she noticed that air currents swirling down the corridor and up through the observation tower had blown the door shut to the other apartment they had been cleaning out. She was about to go prop it open again, until she imagined how her head would throb even harder if she had to bend to reposition the wooden door-stop, and decided not to. She didn’t really want to go near that empty room anyway.
Jane shut her door to her own room, firmly running the bolt home; then did her new routine of checking the closets, under the bed, and into every corner. She plopped on the bed fully dressed in boots and breeches.
I’ll just rest a second, she decided, before I fight with these boots.
Her last thought before plunging into a deep sleep was an awareness of the crawling sensation on her arms, like fluttering moths, and put it down to the migraine. Jane was not conscious of the late afternoon chores being done and was splayed out on her bedspread fully dressed in peaceful oblivion when Sam, Dylan and the other stableboys left for the day. She slept through the setting sun and on into the night—stress and acute exhaustion extending the nap far longer than she had planned.
Jane awoke with a jolt, startled out of her sleep, but not knowing why. The lamp in her room blazed brightly. She looked at her clock: Eleven PM. Pitch black outside. Still hot as Hades even at this late hour, and her hair was pa
sted to her neck in the smothering humidity.
She stood up stiffly, her feet partially asleep in the confining boots, and walked peg-legged to the window, checking the corners of her room nervously. She expected to see roosters popping out of every shadow. Jane pressed her face to the wire screen, smelling the musty metal of it, and looked out. A spotlight fixed to the barn shone onto the stableyard far below and reflected off the dull, night-dew gleam of a capped pick-up truck. It was parked in a hurried angle at the west-wing door next to Reggie’s room, instead of the parking row along the south wing.
The Vet’s pickup.
Sam’s pickup truck and Dylan’s old junk car were gone. She felt a little spooky, but the vet and Reggie were on the premises, so two men nearby should’ve been reassuring. The air was hot, damp and heavy, without even a leaf moving, and the only sounds to be heard were crickets and tree frogs. The night beyond the circle of spotlight was blacker than black, a small moon fragment feebly trying to fight the darkness. Jane squinted down at the capped truck while rubbing the back of her neck. Her headache had been reduced from icepick-sharp to mushy throb. She made hurried repairs to her clothes and hair. She was anxious about Winter Smoke and wanted to hear what Bill Welch had to say—it would’ve been just her luck to sleep through the night and have the mare foal.
When she stumbled out her door, something about the barn’s atmosphere seemed strange. It was almost deathly quiet, a sort of listening quiet. Quiet enough to hear air move when there wasn’t even a breeze. She darted a look at the other apartment door. It now stood open.
Must have been Dylan, she guessed.
She walked down the shadowy second-floor corridor that was meagerly lit by low-watt bulbs hanging on cords from the board ceiling. They struggled like dull little moons to fight back the darkness, throwing gossamer shadows that fanned out from her feet, walking along with her. Elliot had all the 100 watt bulbs replaced with 40 watts; a move that saved electricity but did not provide nearly enough light to make the barn safe at night.
She stopped at the wide wooden staircase to her right that climbed against walls at a sharp angle, rising overhead to the utter darkness of the observation tower and clock tower. It seemed suddenly spooky and eerie at that late hour. Jane squinted uneasily at the little door to the hayloft, in the gloom of the intersection. The door was partially cracked open. She wondered if Dylan forgot to close it.
She switched her attention to the old abandoned office in the corner near the circular staircase Old wooden file cabinets were still filled with dusty paper and folders as dried and thin as parchment—the drawers hanging partly opened. An ancient oak desk with brass handled drawers stood forlorn. A crumbling desk blotter was fitted with a calendar from another millennium, curled and yellowing and covered in a fuzzy blanket of dust and cobwebs. An old brass lamp, its glass shade frosted with grime, supported a lacy cobweb that anchored itself to anything handy.
She had never paid particular attention to the office contents until now, when she was feeling particularly spooked and nervous. Desolate, actually, described how she was feeling—and she didn’t know why. Maybe because no voices filtered up to the second floor. She strained to listen and heard nothing, which was very strange. Two men who were up and awake, she should hear something! She couldn’t be alone, but she felt totally alone.
She started down the winding staircase plunging through a hole in the thick floor planks, to the lower corridor, keeping an eye on the slightly open hayloft door until her face descended below second-floor level. She felt jumpy as her eyes lost sight of the upper floor, as if an arm would reach down from above and grab her through the metal rails. Her skin was starting to shrill with the creepy-crawl again, although it was almost to the point where she was used to it.
The echo of her boot heels was unexpectedly loud—making a metallic pang with every step, as she descended into shadows. Only one bulb lit the intersecting hallway, which she thought odd; there were four lights connected to the switch in that section and they were usually left on all night. It was hard to discern the last metal step and the cement floor—she had to look carefully to be sure she was actually on the floor, and not trip on a last invisible step. Jane ignored Sam’s locked office and went straight for Reggie’s door, pounding on it loudly. No answer. And the door handle wouldn’t turn.
This is strange. Very strange…
She opened the small door to the stableyard beside Reggie’s room, checking Bill’s truck as it sat dark and quiet a few feet from the door, still gathering dew in the spotlight. The truck’s windows were coated with moisture, and the vehicle ticked faintly as the metal changed temperature. She called his name.
“Bill..?”
“Reggie?”
An invisible mosquito whined near her ear and crickets creaked like rusty hinges in the damp heat. The large opening to the “cave” to her left, under the south wing, was as black as midnight, and the darkness of such a large space further unnerved her. She backed in the door quickly and shut it. Maybe they had an emergency, she thought. They could’ve taken Winter Smoke away. But no, the trailer was still parked out there, and Bill wouldn’t leave his truck.
She trotted past Reggie’s room and Sam’s dark office and turned the corner to the south wing. It loomed like a long black tunnel. She looked up at the overhead opening to the massive hayloft; another black square sitting over the entrance to the south wing. She could feel air currents from the huge loft and smell the tons of hay stored there. Jane hit the rocker switch next to the south wing entrance. It made a hollow click, but once again there was no resultant flooding of light. The south wing stayed as dark as a black-hole in space, as dark as the monstrous hayloft above it. Only a little ghostly moonlight trickled in through high stall windows.
“Damnit! I don’t believe this! Not again!” She moaned at the useless light switch, as she slapped at it a few more times.
“Bill! Bill, are you there? Reggie?” she called.
Silence. Heavy, ominous silence. Where were the men?
She hit the switch again several times, but the bank of fluorescent lights remained dark.
Okaycheck the fuses...
She walked into the east wing and snapped on the lights—which at least in that area still worked—and checked the fuse box. Every labeled circuit breaker was in the ON position. No fuses blown. She returned to the old south wing to hit the switch again, not expecting light and not getting any. Then she turned the light switch to the bulbs in the center hall off and on, but still only one bulb lit up, throwing a scant amount of light that was not helpful. It did not spread more than a few feet into the south wing. She was going to have to go in there in almost complete darkness if she wanted to check Summer Smoke.
“Someone’s got to get an electrician out to look at the stupid wiring in this place,” she muttered, as she moved cautiously into the dark south wing. Five feet into the wing she plunged into gloom so black that she decided to feel her way down the stall fronts to get to the light switch, so she wouldn’t trip or fall over anything. She eased by the narrow loft staircase, seeing silhouettes of horse’s heads against a faint moonglow in the back windows of the stalls, but not much else. The square chunks of feeble moonlight were less than helpful, not penetrating the blackness, but keeping her eyes from fully adjusting to her dark surroundings.
Why are they so still? The horses’ dark heads were quiet, like wax museum dummies, as if waiting...expecting. They didn’t even nicker to her, but she could sense sixteen pairs of eyes watching every step, and could almost feel fingers of their moist breath floating towards her through the darkness. Somewhere, a plank of wood expanded in the humidity and made an ominous creak. Jane held her hands out protectively as she scuffle-footed to the right bank of stalls, waving hands back and forth until they contacted the wood and metal grille of the first stall front. She heard the swish and rustle of the mare in that stall, spooked by her odd behavior.
“Easy folks, it’s just me,” she whispered to
calm the mares as she slowly felt her way along the wood and bars of the stall fronts, moving cautiously down the aisle towards the switch for the second set of lights. She hesitated and called Bill’s name again, but there was still no answer. Where is everyone? One of the horses—she was sure it was Smoke—let out a low, rumbling nicker that held an edge of tenseness, like a warning. She moved forward a step at a time, still feeling along the stalls and bars, very carefully swiping the air in front of her with her left hand so as not to hit her face on anything unexpected. Another step. Checking each partition between stalls as she went for the metal box with the switch.
“Where is the damn thing..?”
The next stall...
then the next...
the next...
Suddenly she breathed in a familiar odor that set her blood racing and her heart pounding, and stopped her dead in her tracks.
Updraft!
A dank, musty odor assaulted her nostrils. Jane stood frozen on the spot, her eyes widening in terror, as if she could see into the dark if she opened them far enough. “Oh my God...” she whispered. Her right hand gripped the steel bar until her knuckles ached. She quickly grabbed another bar with her left hand and pulled herself flat against the stall front. Her nerves crackled like high-tension wires and her heart pounded in animal fear. A little problem with the floor that she had forgotten about! The mare in that stall nickered nervously.
Jane tried to assess just how close her feet were to the trapdoor, but terror disoriented her, and she imagined that the treacherous hole with the fifteen-foot drop into the cellar could be on either side of her or behind her, waiting to swallow her. In the almost complete darkness the aisle floor was solid black, so it was impossible for her eyes to find the lurking danger. The party hullabaloo had put all thought about the trapdoor out of her mind and she forgot even to mention it to Sam. It had never stood out cleanly again to mark itself on the floor, so no one must have touched it until tonight.
But who??
She was close to the end of a stall. Her feet unmoving, still gripping a bar tightly with her right hand, she slowly slid her left hand to the stall partition and then ran it up to feel for the light switch—and it was there! The cold metal box sent a shock of fright down her arm the minute her fingers connected. It meant the treacherous hole was indeed skulking right behind her feet in the dark. She snapped the switch up and down with a trembling hand, but even those lights were dead. It was terrifying to realize she was going to have to negotiate around the dangerous hole in the floor without light. Fifteen feet was a long way to fall in the dark. Jane held the bars in a deathgrip with both hands and stretched a boot out behind her to test the floor. A foot and a half back, her toe slipped from the edge of the wooden planks and treaded nothing but black air. A dank breeze with a strange, cloying stench tickled her face.
