Page 55 of Backwoods
Ossie returned with a glass pitcher full of water, and a tall glass.
“The soup is wonderful,” she said. “I really mean that. Thank you for bringing it to me. I was famished.”
“Okay.” He poured her a glass of water. He stood at attention beside the table as if he were her personal server. “The lady gets the best.”
“Other than working in the kitchen, what else do you do here?” Amiya asked. She sipped her soup.
“Whatever needs to be done,” Ossie said. “There’s always something to do.” He cast a sidelong glance toward the kitchen, a hint of anxiety glimmering in his eyes. “Miss Lula keeps us real busy.”
He doesn’t want to be here either, Amiya thought. She placed his age in the mid-twenties. He should have been finishing up college and embarking on a career doing something worthwhile, not bringing her soup and working in a house that needed to be flattened by a wrecking ball.
But after the debacle in the bathtub with Miss Lula, Amiya had resolved to be more careful. She didn’t know whom she could trust.
Still, this young man might prove to be an ally.
36
“I’m bringing you here only because we still have daylight,” Raven said. She peeled aside a veil of branches with the barrel of the rifle. She motioned Nick forward. “But there it is. Go look if you want.”
She had taken him to the edge of the plantation. In the distance, he could see the master’s mansion and other buildings, but the residence to which she had brought him interested Nick most of all.
He shouldered past her and peered through the trees.
It was a small log cabin. It looked the way it must have the morning after it had been set on fire. The wood was dark with soot and ash, and the door sagged in the frame. The shingles had peeled away like singed strips of skin.
“The Overseer lived here?” Nick asked.
“That’s what people say.” Raven shuddered, looked around warily. “At night, it looks different.”
“Brand new?” Nick said.
She nodded. “I hear, he comes out of there.”
“If he comes out of there at nightfall, that means he’s in thereright now.” Nick felt his heart rate pick up. He lifted his shotgun. “We can go in there and put an end to all of this.”
“I’m not going in there.” Raven was shaking her head. “You can go. This is as close as I get to him. This place is evil.”
Her reaction didn’t make any sense to him. This man that everyone here seemed to fear arriving at night happened to live by day in a ramshackle hut, and no one did anything about it? It wasn’t as though the cabin was protected by a barbed wire fence and an armed sentry.
“I’m going in,” Nick said.
Raven settled next to a tree, didn’t make any move to follow him. Shrugging, he advanced.
As he neared the house, he questioned the idea that anyone lived here at all. He didn’t hear a thing—no sounds of life issued from within. The breeze whispered through the ruined slats of wood. When he set foot on the porch, the wood groaned under his weight as if it might collapse.
His heart knocked, but he attributed that to Raven’s bizarre reaction seeping into his subconscious thoughts. Her anxiety was contagious. From a logical perspective, there was nothing to fear.
There’s nothing here, only a fire-damaged home.
The doorknob was black with old soot. He pulled it. The door, sagging and warped by the old fire, resisted his attempt to tug it open.
How can the Overseer come out of this damned place if I can’t get in it?
He set the shotgun aside on the ground. Using both of his hands, he got a firm grip on the knob, planted his right foot on the frame, and pulled with all of his strength, his arms quaking from the strain.
Wood creaked and crackled. Encouraged, he doubled his effort. The door loosened and came open with a shriek of protesting wood.
Something flew toward him with a leathery flutter of wings. Nick ducked, shielded his head with his arms.
