Page 18 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
“Molly, are you all right?” Sid held her hand up as if to touch Molly’s cheek, but she didn’t. It hovered just beside Molly’s face. “You’re pale as a ghost.”
Ghost.
Who had warned her to stay out?
“I-I’m fine,” Molly muttered, pushing off the wood post as she attempted to find her balance on her own feet. Thethrumming had stopped as quickly as it started, leaving her woozy.
“Are you sure?” Sid’s brows pulled together.
Molly looked around them. Someone had to have been here. Just behind her maybe. Or inside?
“Y-yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I just didn’t eat much for breakfast and got a little dizzy,” Molly lied. She could feel Sid searching her face, trying to decipher what was going on in Molly’s mind.
Sid shot a glance back at the coop. “Do you want to go in or head back and get something to eat?”
“I’ll be fine. Let’s go in and see what’s there.” Molly pushed past Sid and stalked bravely toward the chicken coop. Worst case, it housed the ghosts of dead chickens. How bad could they be? Little apparitions with feathers, clucking and pecking at the ground? The absurdity of a ghost chicken almost made her laugh, and the absence of the tingling sensation she’d felt just moments before made relief almost palpable.
Sid followed Molly’s lead, accepting her explanation and chattering on about making something more substantial than cereal when they returned to the house. Molly let her talk. It calmed her nerves to have some normalcy, and, if she was being honest, cerealwasa paltry excuse for a breakfast anyway.
7
It was stifling inside the chicken coop. Having been closed up, the windows boarded, the doors barred, it was as though the air inside had been captured the day the place had served its last hen. There was a thick layer of dank, musty straw with patches of the old wood floor underneath. Nails protruded from some boards and up through the straw. Molly and Sid stepped carefully, both lost in their own worlds as they examined the interior of the coop.
“Those are the nesting boxes.” Sid pointed to a row of empty compartments, once filled with hay, where the chickens had nested. Eggs would have been laid here, then collected, with a few chucked back onto the ground for the chickens to eat. “Chickens are cannibals,” Sid mentioned. It was so offhanded that Molly was surprised how in line the comment was with her own thoughts. She’d seen chickens eat their own eggs before. It was gruesome, in a way. It also kept Molly from having any nurturing emotion toward the birds.
But not Sid. Sid loved her chickens, and apparently she thought it was her duty to convince Molly to feel the same way.
“All we need to do is rake this out.” Sid toed a pile of straw, dust particles pluming upward. “It’s moldy and worthless. We can bring in new bedding. We’ll need some water stations. The windows should be opened. Do you think Trent could install chicken wire across them? In fact, if he could make shutters, you’d be able to lock them up at night to keepout the critters and weather, and they could be left open during the day. This place definitely needs airflow.”
Sid approached a boarded-up window and tugged at the wood nailed across it. A corner busted off. “It’s rotted. I wonder when this got closed. I bet it wasn’t always a chicken coop because there’s an attic. Chickens don’t need attics. But then, back in the day, a building like this might as well be functional if you ever needed it for something other than chickens.”
Molly nodded. Sid would know. She eyed the narrow ladder at the far end of the coop. It had eight rungs and then disappeared into the attic.
“Remember when we were kids,” Molly began, “we always wanted to play in the barn at my cousin’s? In the loft?”
Sid stilled. Molly could feel her eyes on her and not the ladder.
“I remember,” Sid answered. “We were going to turn it into a clubhouse. With hay bales for walls. That’s when I first wanted to marry someone and live in the country. I fell in love with farm life.”
Molly met her friend’s eyes as Sid approached. “I fell in love with Trent.”
It was an honest confession, and it was one she’d been resistant to voice lately. The irony was also thatshehad married the farmer. Sid had married a computer nerd, who worked out of the upstairs office of their own remodeled farmhouse. They were hobby farmers.
“Molls...” Sid’s hand rested gently on Molly’s arm. “Listen. I’m worried about—”
“I wonder what’s in the attic,” Molly interrupted. She should’ve kept her mouth shut. Shouldn’t even open the door a bit. Molly tested out the first rung on the ladder. She could feel Sid’s concern burning into her as she climbed and was determined to prove to Sid it was nothing. Truly. Nothing.
“It’s dusty,” she called down to Sid, forcing cheer into her voice.
Sid stood at the bottom of the ladder. “Is there anything up there?”
Molly glanced back at her and waved her up. “C’mon. It looks empty, but who knows?” Molly hoisted herself onto the attic floor. The roof slanted so that standing to her full five-foot-seven height wasn’t possible. Molly tapped the floor ahead of her with her foot to check the stability of the floorboards. Like any good farm building, they were thick, solid, and fabulously built.
She swept the room with her gaze as she waited for Sid to climb up. When her friend reached her side, they gave each other a meaningful look.
“This place would’ve been outstanding as kids,” Sid breathed.
“The perfect clubhouse,” Molly agreed. “If we were kids, we could put a few beanbag chairs under that lone window that looks over the yard. And we could put up posters of our heartthrobs Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Luke Perry, ormyfavorite, Will Smith.”
