New Story, Part 2!

Here's more of the new one. Also, the first collaboration, Expensive Taste, should be out very soon!

And there were the pictures of Nora. The woman of rumor, who looked beautiful even in the sepia photos left behind. Her hair was dark, styled short and close to her head, as was the style of the day. She had big eyes and a thin mouth, and the look in every photo he found was suggestive of some secret knowledge only she possessed. Even in the playful pictures, there was something dark in the face of Nora Klein, and something weirdly sexual. While not thrilled by the notion of being attracted to his long-dead relative, it was easy to see why she served as the topic of so much speculation in her prime. 

The next two weeks sped by, Sara and Rory exploring not only the house, but the town beyond. The local store, Ray’s IGA, didn’t speak of much selection, something Sara was quick to point out in her hunt for portabella mushrooms of the proper thickness. The tellers looked to be from the local high school, gum-chewing girls and pimple-faced boys far more concerned with their own dramas than customers. No self-scanners, only the checkout lanes, which were surprisingly computerized given the state of the store. Stepping through the doors was like going through a time tunnel, depositing Rory and Sara somewhere in the mid-60s instead of a modern era. 

Antique shops, of which there were two, became Sara’s favorite haunt on the weekends, when Rory wasn’t working and Sara wasn’t studying or working on papers. Yesterday’s Treasures bent more toward a flea market environment, where stalls were helmed by locals thumbing through the Bear Falls Urgent, the local paper published every other day, with a big issue dropped on Sunday for coupon hunters. Nothing fancy in these stalls, only old vinyl records and furniture junked by others. Tin signs were nailed to the walls of the place, advertising Coca-Cola for a dime. 

Often, Rory would give up his own perusals of the debatable treasures, enjoying the sight of Sara, delighted by a cracked doll on a shelf, or chatting amiably with some of the locals. Rory had never possessed the gregarious nature Sara had, an aspect of her nature he believed to be complimentary to his own, more taciturn ways. 

The other antique shop was on the main square, just across from Carla’s Beauty Parlor. The latter building was the home of much of the gossip in Bear Falls, where blue-haired women would gather to get their hair frozen into place and colored. Seeing women move in and out of there was like watching a revolving door of clucking hens. 

Henderson’s Fine Antiques was open when Rory was a boy. He remembered Elmer Henderson well, a red-faced cherub of a man who laughed quick and loud. His son, David, was one of Rory’s few friends made during the summer spent in Bear Falls, and easily his best. The two of them found great pleasure in exploring the riverbanks and gullies of the wilds, pretending to be pirates, or adventurers swinging from vines in the shallow valleys on the east side of town.

It should have been no surprise that David Henderson had taken the shop from his father, but the thought that his old friend would have remained never occurred to him. Seeing the grinning young man in the makeshift office of the place, his red hair parted on the left as it was when he was a child, Rory felt something happy wake in him, and he beelined for the office door. Sara hurried after him, curious at his sudden enthusiasm for their antiquing.

Rory rapped on the door’s glass pane with the back of his knuckle, hard enough to rattle it and worry him that the pebbled glass would shatter under even this light touch. The name was different than when Elmer had his moniker on the door, but the rest was the same as it ever was, including the fact that the door only his the stairs to a riser where Elmer, and now David, could look over the whole store. At the knock, his head popped suddenly and hilariously over the door frame.

“Help you?” He was grinning, just like his old man had, with a  mess of curly red hair crowning his head. Despite the sunny expression, there was a narrowing of his eyes that said David trusted outsides to Bear falls no more than the biddies under Carla’s hair dryers.

“I don’t suppose you remember, but we knew each other. Used to play around the river some, and-”

“Holy shit,” David marveled. “Hol-ee shit! Rory Wiseman?”

“Yeah. How did you remember?”

“You don’t look all that much different. And who is this?”

Sara took a step forward, Rory’s hand on her back to prompt her. 

“Sara Rhodes. I’m here with Rory. I guess you two know each other?”

The door opened up and David stepped onto the floor, the first look Rory had at David’s bigger belly. Not yet thirty, David had the same plump look his father had at the age of forty. 

“Hell yes we know each other!” Rory’s eyes widened as the ruddy goliath’s arms wrapped around him, lifting him off the ground in a breathless hug. “We used to tromp around in the mud like somebody was paying us for how filthy we could get. My mother hated when I came in after one of our adventures, tracking that red clay all over her lean linoleum… How the hell are you? What’s been happening?”

“You probably heard about Aunt Cindy.”

A sudden storm blew in over his features, shadows falling on the once-sunny face. “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry as I can be, Rory. She was a good lady.”

“She was,” Rory agreed, and let a silence hang between them.

It was Sara who broke it. “We’re taking the house. And kind of everything else, I guess.”

“Damn shame how you came by it, but I won’t say I’m not happy to see you back. Might not be up for many romps down by the Yank,” he said, patting his belly. The Yank was what the locals called the Yakonkwe. “And you said your name was Rhodes. Not married?”

Sara winced at the question, rescued by Rory’s usual response: “We’re just living in sin.”

“Best way, if you ask me. My Janey is itching to tie the knot, too. You know what they say, men don’t propose, they surrender.”

He could see in Sara’s thin smile she didn’t care much for the expression, but she didn’t correct David, and for that Rory was thankful. She surprised him further with her next words.

“We haven’t had any guests yet up at the house. Why don’t you and your girlfriend come for dinner tomorrow night. Maybe six?”

“We stay open until six here,” David said with a shake of his head, “but if you make it seven, we’ll be there with some wine in hand.”

“I can’t wait,” Rory said, and shook his old friend’s hand again. 

Sometimes, he mused, you can go home again.

Janey turned out to be a remarkable beauty. Rory knew this from the way Sara would size her up when Janey’s attention was turned to Rory or David. She doted on her fiancee, and David clearly adored her in kind. Despite the fact that David was a giant of a man, and might have looked more at home in a log cabin far removed from the ways of man, Janey’s eyes lingered on him as he spoke, fascinated by more stories of the childhood antics of Rory and David. 

With long, straight blonde hair and a wide smile filled with very white teeth, Rory thought she could have been one of those models who turned letter son television game shows, or maybe opened briefcases with money in them. Add to her fine features and fair skin a shapely body that she knew how to accentuate with just the right style of dress, and she might have been at home anywhere civilized. And would always be a woman who demanded attention, as Sara’s passing scowls suggested.

Dinner was a success, a three-course meal of soup, steaks fresh from Ray’s (which were surprisingly good) accompanied by asparagus and red potatoes, all grilled on the back patio of the mansion. 

Feeling elegant, the quartet retired to the lounge, where Rory played bartender. David, a man of simple tastes, had his whiskey neat, but David’s collegiate work experience paid off in making cosmopolitans for the ladies.

They had just settled into their seats when Janey spoke up.

“Be honest with me, you two. Is it haunted?”

“What?” Rory asked, and Sara looked to him, puzzled.

“Is it haunted?” Janey had a slight Southern drawl to her voice that made the question feel like the beginning of a story, which, as it happened, it was. “You mean tot ell me you didn’t know about this house?”

“I know some of the kids used to say it was way back when.”

“I never said anything,” David said, hands raised in defense, one of which held onto his glass.

“Rory?”

He turned to Sara and shrugged. “Not that I ever heard. I think Aunt Cindy might have told a story or two, but nothing specific. More like, ‘And on a certain night, when the moon is full, you could hear Nora laughing…’”

“Are you serious?” Sara looked more upset than Rory would have thought.

“It’s just a story, babe. And in the months I was hear, I never saw or heard a thing that made me think this place was haunted. Have you seen any spooks in the halls?”

“No,” Sara admitted.

“The way I heard it,” Janey continued, ignoring a dark look from Rory, “Nora Klein wasn’t just a recluse. She was a witch. Not like the kind with cauldrons and eyes of newt - or maybe it’s eye of newts… anyway - not like that. The kind that worshiped the Devil.”

Sara huddled onto the couch, easing against Rory, who draped an arm around her. If it was time for a parlor ghost story, so be it.