Murder By Moonlight is finished, except for tweaks, edits, and a general buffing. Here’s a snippet. I hope you like it.
Why had I listened to Daisy Stanton? “You don’t have to take this assignment, Ned,” she had said when we met for coffee at Grandy’s last week.” Here she paused and sighed. “I really need the pictures and you are such a great photographer. But, I may be able to find time to run out to the Saunders place and take the pictures myself, in a few days.”
She knew how to push my guilt button. She was short on time, but I wasn’t. My only job was working now and then for Daisy and her real estate company to supplement the life insurance policy left to me by my husband Sloan. I could certainly have turned her down, but she looked so needy that I couldn’t refuse.
So, here I was on a windy, autumn afternoon standing at the gate of a dilapidated house known as The Old Saunders Place, and, although I chided myself for leftover childhood fears, I didn’t feel comfortable being here. It didn’t look any less forebidding now than it did then. At first glance, it seemed to be just an ordinary, two-storied frame building, front porch sagging a bit, a few shingles loose on the roof, but, all in all, it shouldn’t look any different from any other empty house. Yet, it did. Maybe it was because I was viewing it for the first time in several decades, or maybe it was because the day was quickly growing dark.
When I left home, forty-five minutes earlier, the day had been warm, for November, with brightly-colored leaves glistening in the sun. Now, scudding clouds came between me and the sunlight. Limbs on the tall trees surrounding the house twisted in a wild dance and a loose shutter somewhere banged dismally. I shivered. It would be hard to find a spookier-looking house.
Aiming my camera at the front porch, I took the first picture. If Daisy was planning on using these photos to sell the house, good luck to her. I’d try to find some areas that weren’t as dilapidated as this porch. And, surely the spookiness wouldn’t show up in a photograph.
Thunder growled, ever closer. The empty rooms of the house must surely be too dark for a proper photographing session, which was a relief, because I didn’t relish the idea of being inside them.
The Saunders Place hadn’t been lived in, since, who knew when. With no heirs, and no living person to lay claim to it, Daisy had waited until it had gone through the required legalities before it came up at auction and she bid on it. That seemed a little sad to me, like an elderly, cast off relative that nobody wanted to take in.
I didn’t know a lot about the Saunders house, except that it harbored a dark past. Mr. Saunders had died there—not a natural death, but a murder. The word among the younger generation was that the house was haunted, which was ridiculous, but try telling that to imaginative kids. When we were children, my pals, Pat and Jackie and I never ventured anywhere near it. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but it paid to be cautious. Pat, however, made no bones about her superstitions. It didn’t make the day seem any brighter when my over-active imagination conjured up thoughts of violence and a man lying dead within those walls.
This was the closest I’d ever been to the Saunders farm house. The porch was dark and shadowy, and it smelled musty. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering, and tried not to think about the house’s reputation. I wasn’t a child any longer, and I shouldn’t let tales that were told late at night during slumber parties, influence me now.
The rain was turning out to be more than a brief fall shower. It slanted in under my shelter, pelting me with icy drops. I was cold and the distance between the porch and my car looked too great to make it without getting utterly drenched. I had two choices: go inside the house or dash for the car and get soaked. The sensible thing to do was go inside. I’d leave the door open and venture in only far enough not to get wet.
The strong odor that always clung to vacant houses clogged my nose and I sneezed. Maybe the house leaked somewhere and I was smelling mold, or maybe it was just the scent of disuse and neglect. This room was almost as dark as night, but I could make out shapes of windows and against one wall, a large fireplace. True, it wasn’t a pleasant place, but at least it was protection from the storm which sounded like it was gathering force. Rain pounded against the roof and wind rattled the windows.
In the dim light, the room looked cavernous, much bigger than I would have imagined. At the far end, a steep stairway led upstairs. I glanced toward it just as lightning flickered through the window. My heart flip-flopped. A shadow, deeper than the rest of the murkiness, moved slowly down the stairs toward me.
Speak Your Mind