Author: RichardSchiver

Let’s try this again. Starting from the top with a new story for the letter K

K is for Knucklebones

The rain followed Destiny from the highway to the county road, and finally to a narrow muddy lane where the trees crowded so close they brushed both sides of the car. Low gray clouds rode along the treetops, deepening the claustrophobic feel that threatened to overwhelm her when she entered that narrow lane. A small part of her wanted to turn back. Take the hotel room she reserved and settle these matters on a day when the sun shined bright enough to dispel the shadows filling the forest.

As she came around the final bend the farmhouse emerged from deep shadows, carrying some of the gloom with it. Crouched at the end of the drive, dark windows like eyes watching the relentless passage of time, filled with secrets she’d rather not explore. As she stared at the house she realized the sound of the rain had changed. No longer soft, it tapped on the roof like impatient fingers warning her away.  

The house had not changed as much as she hoped. A part of her wished it would burn to the ground and take all its secrets with it. Instead, it remained standing, though it seemed to have grown more tired since the last time she saw it. The shape was the same. The steep roof, the attic window like a third eye, and the kitchen addition her grandmother Elise called temporary, though it had been there since she was nine.

She and her brother Jonah moved in with their grandmother after their parents were killed in a car accident. She was the only surviving relative they had, and she welcomed their intrusion with a touch of suspicion. Before then they had only ever visited with their parents and never stayed overnight.

The thought awakened an old memory of Destiny in Elise’s parlor when she was seven, searching through the cabinet that had always been kept locked. Small jars lined the shelves, filled with what looked like herbs and spices, though nothing was labeled. On the second shelf from the top was a small black bag next to a stack of notebooks. She clearly remembered reaching for the bag, filled with a sudden need to know what it contained, the clear sound of movement coming from within as her fingers closed around it. The memory faded without resolution and Destiny struggled to remember ever seeing Elise with that bag out.

“It’s only a house,” Destiny said, her voice small inside the empty car.

Elsie had been dead for eleven days. The lawyer said there was nothing urgent, just papers, keys, and ordinary debris left by a life that refused to end neatly. Destiny waited until her delays became unreasonable. She made lists. She booked a hotel in town, then canceled it. She told herself it would be safe enough to sleep one night in a dead woman’s house. But as she gazed at the tired house that had once been as familiar as an old coat, she realized it would have been better to keep the room.

It would have given her the distance she needed to keep the old memories at bay.

Under the porch roof with her suitcase next to her and her phone in one hand, she stared at the narrow gap where the door had opened with a single touch. Who left the door unlocked?

The hinges squealed as the door moved in response to a soft breeze, or an old ghost escaping its prison. Stop it! She demanded of herself.

A damp smell rolled out. Wallpaper paste, cold ash, and wax. Beneath all of it was a sweet, animal scent that made her think of butcher paper folded around bones. A thought so out of place with what memories remained. Only a couple were happy. Her time spent with her grandmother who insisted she call her Elise, had not been bad. But neither were they any good. Her last glimpse of this house had been through the rearview mirror as she drove away into her own life.

Small muddy footprints crossed the porch from the steps to the threshold.

Where did they come from?

The prints were narrow, bare, the toes spread as if the child spent most of their life barefoot. She reached toward one and stopped. The length was familiar in a way that made no sense until a memory escaped the walls she had placed around it. Her own foot at eight years old, in the mud beside the bone mill while Jonah shrieked with laughter because she stepped on a frog.

The memory flashed briefly before slamming shut.

To be continued!

K is for Karst

Today we start on a new adventure. I’m trying to capture something different this time, the notion that the world is a living thing, and that what we see with our own eyes is not always the truth as we descend once more into those shadowy depths beneath the ground. Keep in mind this is raw with very minimal editing. So come along, I hope you enjoy the ride, and don’t mind that whisper you might hear. It’s just your imagination, I think.

The call had come as these things typically do, in the middle of the night, dragging Madison from a deep sleep. The male voice on the other end had been straight forward and abrupt. Once she identified herself, still suspicious yet willing to listen to what they had to say, the voice had softened as it delivered the blow.

Her father had passed.

She thanked him, trying to chase the sleep away that left her thoughts muddled. Theirs had not been a loving relationship so there was no immediate sense of loss. No sorrow, no crying, only a numbness trapping her as she sat in bed staring at the phone.

Her dad was the last link to a childhood that had once been full of joy and hope. But after her mother’s death during her last year at college, she and her father had grown apart. Her mother had been the glue that held their small family together, and with her passing the weekly phone calls to catch up had stopped. She had tried several times to reconnect with her dad, but he had always been too busy, too distracted, speaking briefly about his work before dismissing her. In time she quit calling and their relationship that had been tenuous at best, devolved into indifference.

She tried to go back to sleep, the burden she now carried heavy on her mind. As her father’s only heir, there was so much she would have to do in the morning. Plan, schedule a flight to Vermont, convince her assistant to make the presentation she had been scheduled to give to the board of the National Petroleum Institute. She had been looking forward to that presentation; it would have been a true feather in her cap and secured her place with her employer. Geostar, a national conglomerate that provided geophysical surveys for oil and gas companies.

She had been with them for three years and had become one of their rising stars. To which she owed her dad a debt of gratitude. He owned and operated a small granite quarry, and it was here she developed her passion for all the mysteries that existed beneath their feet. The thought of the quarry known locally as The Karst, and the happiness she had known there, brought a tear to her eye. She wiped at it absently as she struggled to find any degree of sorrow at her father’s passing.

The next two days were a blur as she took care of the things she would need to settle so she could disappear for a week. She felt she owed him that much, a week of her time to say a proper goodbye and start the process of selling his assets. She had no desire to run a quarry, and with no other siblings, she felt it best to simply liquidate. She would keep enough to secure her own retirement then donate the rest to those who had been closest to her dad.

From Burlington International airport she took Interstate 89 to state route 63 to state route 14 south towards Williamstown. She passed her dad’s quarry on the left as she got closer to the two-story house she had grown up in. A small part of her wanted to stop and check out the quarry, but she pushed on, fighting the memories that flooded her thoughts as she followed that familiar route. Passing through forested land where small niches had been carved out along the road to offer refuge against the vast wilderness waiting beyond manicured lawns and neat little homes.

These places offered lighted refuge against an impenetrable night when the sun went down. She recalled several times as a child venturing out after dark in search of old secrets held within the shadowed depths. She never saw anything. But her best friend Jessica claimed to have heard voices in the forest bordering her backyard late at night. The story had given her chills at the time, and they returned as her gaze was drawn to the gloomy depths of the forest bordering the road.

Reaching the turn off for her childhood home she pulled into the driveway and sat in the car staring at the empty house. The police had over-nighted her the keys, but she remained in the car as the day slowly drained into evening. She was trying to put her finger on what had gone wrong between them. On what event had transpired to separate them the way they had become.

She as also delaying the inevitable sadness she knew she’d feel once she stepped inside. She should have gotten a hotel at the airport. But as her father would say, what’s done is done. Thinking of him in the past tense brought a tear to her eye and she brushed it away.

To be continued!

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