A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

electricity had been disconnected when Lucky Chuck Lenoir died the previous Christmas. My lighter, growing ever hotter in my hand, would have to do until I located the stairs and the sunlight above.

The air was close and moist, cool, and malodorous. Cellars usually are. But as unpleasant as the dank smell was, the darkness somehow added fuel to it. A scurrying along the floor to my right told me I was not alone. I wanted out of there. I quickened my pace despite the risks of a fall, and finally a crack of light appeared overhead, sneaking through the wooden planks and around what had to be a doorframe. I’d found the stairs. Now, if only the door was unlocked, I’d be spared a return journey through the dark, past the rats—or whatever I’d heard—and the cobweb jungle.

I climbed twelve groaning steps, grateful that they withstood my weight despite their age and state of disrepair. At the top of the stairs, I fumbled for the knob, and the door swung open, unleashing a flood of daylight into the cellar. I stepped into the kitchen, stowed my lighter in my purse, and shut the door behind me.

It was one of those old farm kitchens. A behemoth of a range—cast iron—squatted next to a tub sink and a long wooden table, gouged and stained by generations of spills, burns, use, and misuse. A hand-cranked washing machine, complete with washboard, had outlived its utility and was marooned next to a water pump. The floor, as foretold by the gaps leaking light into the basement below, consisted of wide boards, hammered in place once upon a time and now warping atop their joists. One day, an unsuspecting intruder was sure to crash through the failing floor. Tiptoeing out of the kitchen, I chose the more stable planks as if playing hopscotch and emerged into a short hallway, then the dining room. There I stopped in front of the fireplace and caught a glimpse of myself in the cracked mirror atop the sideboard on the opposite wall of the room. A smudge of soot or oil streaked across my face like war paint, undoubtedly applied by my own filthy hand after my crawl on the floor of the cellar. My hair resembled a bird’s nest after a nasty windstorm. Nothing to be done about it for the moment.

I dragged a finger over the mantelpiece as I made my way to the parlor beyond. There was another fireplace and a single ladder-back chair in the middle of the room. An overturned crate, doing duty as an end table, was home to a stack of yellowed newspapers.

If I hadn’t already come so far, I surely would have given up the fruitless search. This place sure felt abandoned to me. The thought comforted me, and I drew a breath of relief. Whoever might have opened my glove compartment the night before couldn’t have been hiding in the caretaker’s house. But since my face, hair, and nylons were all a mess, I figured I might as well take a look upstairs.

The steps were covered with painter’s cloths, perhaps to protect the boards, though, in truth, that seemed a pointless exercise to me. On the second floor, I found five bedrooms and a couple of baths. There were some old books piled into a corner and covered in dust. And another newspaper strewn on the floor not far away. Nothing but what you’d expect in an abandoned farmhouse.

I bent over and retrieved the newspaper, more from a resigned sense of duty than curiosity. It was the New Holland Republic—my paper—probably one of the last poor Lucky Chuck had read, I thought. Then I glanced at the headline on the front page and felt a true shiver over my shoulders, and I knew it wasn’t a spider from the cellar. The banner read, “Twin Cosmonauts Return to Earth.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mining some hitherto unknown vein of courage—or perhaps recklessness—I managed to produce my Leica, plug in a flashbulb, and shoot a single frame of the newspaper with the chair and some of the room in the background. Then I heard a creak through a wall. I couldn’t say which one. Clutching my camera in one hand and my purse and the newspaper in the other, I made for the staircase and kicked something small and hard that scuttled across the floor. It came to rest against a wall, and I scooped it up. It was a small handgun that I hadn’t noticed before. It must have been hidden under the newspaper.

I flew down the stairs and straight for the exit. I yanked furiously at the front door, but it didn’t budge. Then I remembered it was padlocked from the outside. Glancing over my shoulder to the staircase, I held my breath and looked and listened for what seemed an eternity, though it was probably no more than five seconds. No one was following me. Not yet, at least. But I had no intention of waiting for an update. There, not five feet from the door on each side, a large window beckoned. I bolted for the one on the right. In a trice I unlocked it and threw open the sash. After one last panicked look behind me, I dived through the window and tumbled onto the porch outside where my belongings scattered across the boards. I pushed myself back to my feet, gathered my purse, the newspaper, and handgun, and then I was sprinting for all I was worth toward the highway. My car was parked at the entrance, but I sensed the highway would provide my best chance at safety. It was nearing five in the afternoon, and there would be plenty of traffic on the road. I didn’t dare head straight back to my car; that would have involved crossing several hundred yards of the farm out of sight of any passing motorists on Route 67. And I wanted to be seen