• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

A wet veil of Spanish moss brushed through my hair as I exited the grove of live oaks. Through swaying beach grass I rode on, disregarding my palpitant heart, the Pamlico Sound now in full gaping view behind that ancient house of stone.

A heady north wind blew in from the sound.

Whitecaps bloomed in the chop.

That old Dodge pickup truck, parked yesterday under one of the oaks, was gone.

I left the bicycle in the grass beside the wrought iron railing and ascended four steps to the stoop, wishing I had the cold reassuring weight of the Glock in the pocket of my leather jacket. But in all likelihood I wouldn’t need it. From what I’d observed yesterday, Rufus and Maxine Kite suffered lives of lassitude and seclusion.

As I knocked against the door I caught the scent of woodsmoke. Looking up, I saw a thin gray cloud rising out of the granite chimney.

I knocked again.

A minute passed.

No one answered.

Reaching down, I palmed the tarnished doorknob, surprised to feel it turn in my grasp.

The wide oak door swung inward.

34

I stepped inside the house of Rufus and Maxine Kite and closed the door behind me. Having had no prior intention of entering this house uninvited, the part of me grown intolerant of risk screamed to leave.

I called out, "Is anyone home?"

To my immediate right an archway opened into a long living room with a hearth at the far end, on the grate of which glowed a bed of bright embers.

A grandfather clock loomed in a nearby corner. Its second hand moved every four seconds.

I glanced left into the dining room, the table set for three. When I touched the saucer at one of the place settings my finger disturbed an alarming layer of dust. It had settled in the bottoms of the wineglasses, on the surfaces of each plate, even upon the yellowed tablecloth.

Strings of cobweb were everywhere.

I proceeded deeper into the house, past a staircase that climbed into darkness. The foyer narrowed into a corridor and under the stairs I noticed a little door in the wall.

The air grew damp and stagnant, fraught with the odor of must.

I entered the kitchen.

Through the windows behind the sink I could see the sound. On the breakfast table a row of grayish-blue fillets and a thin-bladed filleting knife had been left out on a cutting board beside a glass mixing bowl, half-filled with cornmeal.

Standing over the sink, I looked into the weedy backyard that sloped down to the water. There was a plot of tilled earth near the house that might’ve once been a shade garden, though nothing grew there now.

A dock stretched out into the sound. Thoroughly rotten, its collapse seemed inevitable when the next storm blew in.

Leave and come back. You should not be here like this.

I started back toward the front door.

A tiny old woman stood in the kitchen doorway.

She appeared to have just woken, her pearly mane in such extraordinary disarray it seemed to be more the result of an explosion than a nap. I could see the silhouette of her spindly frame behind the threadbare fabric of her nightgown.

Barefooted, she walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, took down a tin of ground coffee.

"Sleep all right?" she asked.

"Um, I uh—"

"You’re in my way. Go sit down."

I took a seat at the table as she filled the coffeepot with water from the faucet.

"Now this isn’t that fancy shit. So if you’ve turned into one of those dandies who has to have their coffee soaked and freshly ground and God knows what else, tell me now."

"Maxwell House is fine."

Mrs. Kite noticed the fillets on the cutting board.

"Goddamn him!"

She set the coffeepot down hard on the butcher block countertop and pointed at the raw fish.

"Rufus is going to ruin our lunch. You can’t leave fish out. You can’t! leave! fish! OUT!" She sighed. "Your coffee will have to wait, Luther."

Sitting down across from me at the breakfast table, she picked up one of the fillets.

"I don’t believe it," she said. "There’s no chili powder in this cornmeal. You know, I’m starting