Wait and See: Part One
A Short Story in Several PartsIt was just starting to rain when I pulled up in front of the cabin. The tires crunched over the gravel driveway as I peered through the windshield, searching for an address on the little house ahead of me. I didn’t stop the engine until I’d spotted the numbers, painted in faded colours and barely visible behind low-hanging branches. Wouldn’t have been the first time I pulled in at the wrong address.
That was the problem with cabins, I reflected, opening the glove compartment and pulling out the envelope inside. Hard to reach, and hard to find even with a map. You could drive back and forth up the same stretch of road a dozen times and not see the turn off, the thin gravel track disappearing into the trees. The building itself might as well have been invisible, tucked away behind swathes of green and brown.
But then again, that was kind of the whole point, I thought to myself, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut behind me, listening to the sound echo in the empty woods. It was hard to get privacy these days without a bit of isolation. I suppose that after a while it starts to seem like a fair trade-off.
I sprinted toward the cabin door, holding the envelope over my head as a crude umbrella; the rain was starting to pick up. I sprang up the front steps, stopped beneath the small over-hang that sheltered the door. The envelope was already open, and I reached inside, dug out the key chain and heard it jingle. There were two keys on it, one for the front door and the other for some unspecified lock inside. The guy had been a little vague about that one.
I was a little nervous as I pushed open the door, felt my stomach tighten with buyer’s anxiety. The old owner had said the place was in good condition, that everything worked and nothing needed maintenance. But his asking price had been ridiculously low, much too low for someone who just wanted ‘’a change of pace’’, as he’d put it. I’d been suspicious, naturally, and a bit of pressure eventually got him to admit that there was some sort of ‘’infestation’’ in the place that needed clearing up. He’d been evasive about the topic, and that didn’t bode well for the condition of the place. But it had been cheap, in a nice enough bit of real estate, lovely landscape by all accounts. And most importantly, it was far, far away from Myra. We’d had a bit of a falling out, and decided that we each needed some space, some time to cool off and settle down. Or rather, Myra had decided this by kicking me out. Not that I minded much. Frankly, I’d rather take my chances with the termite infestation from hell than be around Myra when she was in one of her moods. At least the bugs weren’t out for blood.
It was dark inside, the cloudy sky not letting enough light down for the windows to do any good. My hands slapped against the wall uselessly for a minute before it hit the light switch, and the old overhead lights glowed to life.
The place didn’t look half-bad, didn’t even have that dreaded abandoned- dust smell. There was the small entrance hall I was standing in, linking the four rooms on the ground floor. To my right was a modest kitchen, with no wall between it and the dinning room, which consisted of a large table, four chairs, and a window that took up most of the rear wall. Across the hall on my left was a room with a sofa and a T.V., and then a washer and drier crammed in the space under the stairs to the second floor. There didn’t seem to be a basement or a cellar, not that I’d expected one.
The second floor wasn’t a lot more interesting than the first. There was a bed room, a bathroom, a cupboard full of sheets. The old owner had said he’d be leaving a lot of stuff behind at no extra cost, which had sent up another warning flag in my mind. I’d been expecting to find things left in pretty bad condition, left because they weren’t worth taking. But everything seemed pretty pristine, if a little disorganized. It looked like the last guy had packed in a bit of a hurry, and I wondered just how bad this ‘’infestation’’ must be. There was still no sign of it, and when I found the steep, narrow stairs leading up to the attic, I braced myself for the worst.
Given the jumble on the floor below, I’d assumed the attic would be little short of a maze. But things up there were much more organized, stacked with the careful consideration that comes when storing something you never really expect to use again. There were old lamps, chairs, packs of batteries, the usual attic stuff. But what immediately caught my eyes was the shelf.
Up against the wall, half-hidden behind an old folding screen, was a short book case of sorts. Every shelf was crammed full of dolls, cloth rag dolls, dolls with white ceramic faces and real human hair for their curls, big dolls, small dolls, some old and worn and others seeming to shine with newness, looking like they’d never so much as been touched.
The man who sold me the place hadn’t seemed old or crazy enough to be a collector, so I assumed the shelf must have belonged to his wife or daughter. Though why she’d bother to amass so many, just to leave them behind in the attic
was beyond me. I wondered if maybe I should call the guy and make sure he hadn’t forgotten them by accident. I was starting to feel uneasy; it was a little uncanny,
standing there with all those glass and button eyes staring back at me. Feeling a little stupid, I adjusted the folding screen, hiding the dolls and their eager faces behind it. I didn’t like the idea of them watching at me as I checked out the rest of the attic.
As it turned out, there wasn’t much else to check. A few old boxes of extra sheets, a stunning number of spare light bulbs. I found a few old photo albums though, and wondered why something so personal had been left behind. It was after shifting a heavy stack of these that I first caught sight of the chest.
It was in the corner farthest from the stairs, shoved up against the wall. I had to move a few other boxes and haphazardly place odds and ends to reach it, all of them piled precariously on and around the chest, seemingly at random. The neat order that ruled the rest of the attic seemed to have missed a spot, and all the parts of that chaotic pile had in common was that they were almost criminally heavy. But my curiosity was peaked, and I searched the rest of the cabin and seen no sign of insects or vermin of any kind. I was determined to find that infestation before it found me, and this was the last place I could check before I’d have to start opening up the walls.
Eventually I shifted the last brick off the chest, and stopped to take a look at what I’d uncovered. It was old and stained, standing about waist high with its domed lid. The case looked like it had some kind of leather covering, now a cracked and faded layer of brown. The corners and edges had metal bindings for re-enforcements, all of them a nameless silver metal, tarnished and dull with age. Where the lid met the body of the trunk was a heavy, built-in lock.
I crouched down in front of the chest, considering it. I reached out and gave the lid a tug, only to find it was locked.
Well, unless there was an anthill inside, this wasn’t the source off the problem. But I was curious, and I dug the key chain out of my pocket, wondering if this was what the second key opened. Wax had been used to fill in the key hole on the lock, and after taking a minute to pick it out I slid the silvery key and unlocked the trunk.
The lid was heavy, or maybe my arms were just tired. Either way the thing opened slowly, its hinges moving with a pained creak.
At first, I thought the trunk was empty. Lying at the bottom was a pool of blackness, and it took me a moment to work out what I was seeing.
To be continued...