One Night Read Online Free Page A

was creepy. There was the odd
creak and plop as something fell from the branches or shifted under the waxy
foliage. I put Sticky down and edged behind him as he hopped around sniffing at
leaves and the soggy black soil. There was no point in trying to hurry him. Hopefully,
we might not have to do this again in the dark.
    Sticky understood his limitations
and made no attempt to wander. Our progress was slow and when I looked back at
the cottage, I could still see the light over the open back door. Somehow this
made me think of Stephen’s last words as he left, ‘You need to learn patience,
Casey. You want everything at once. I don’t think I can meet that expectation.’
    And that was that. I realized, at
last, that we had never shared the same pictures in our heads. I missed his
lanky length on my couch, his narrow green eyes squeezed up in amusement at
some daft thing I’d said. I missed his cooking which was innovative to say the
least and way better than mine, his jerky, peculiar way of dancing, his quirky
views on politics. The way he would stop in mid-sentence and say, ‘God, you
have a face like a pixie!’
    To which my stock reply was ,
‘Are you saying God has a face like a pixie?’
    But the worst thing – after all the
discussion and unsatisfactory compromises – was his assumption that I would
change, beg forgiveness and make amends. Somehow this had been the real sharp-edge
challenge. Testing myself against it became a matter of pig-headed
determination. My mother always said I was the most stubborn person she knew. ‘You
kick against everything, Casey. A real little fighter. Sometimes I wish there
was more purpose to it. You’re twenty-six. Time to grow up.’
    I looked back at the cottage light winking faintly between the trees. The
purple light had deepened to a silver glow. Sticky had gone far enough.
    ‘Let’s take it slowly back, boy.’
    My voice rang in the stillness. I
felt I had broken some quiet forest lore. Leaves rustled in the gathering
gloom. Perhaps it was that, I don’t know, but in an instant, I was nervous. The
urge to turn and run for the safety of the cottage was almost overwhelming –
which was daft. By daylight I knew these paths well. Mona and I had walked here
often. I knew if I continued on the path it would descend a muddy bank to a
stream. Some way upstream was an abandoned house composed of a rotting puzzle
of old bricks, rooms broken open to the elements, a fireplace deep in mud, one
room still intact.
    ‘Spooky house,’ Mona told me.
‘Brent and I sometimes come up here in the summer and have breakfast.’
    She had pointed out an old iron
bedstead under drifts of leaves, weeds winding up the rusting posts – and the
splintered remains of a wooden cupboard trapped in mud like a rotten tooth in
soggy gums.
    ‘Brent says he doesn’t think
anybody’s been here for a hundred years.’
    ‘Doesn’t it belong to anybody?’
    She shrugged. ‘Not that we know of.
Although, I suppose as soon as somebody wants to live in it or pull it down,
there’ll be some long lost relation claiming ownership.’
    I stepped gingerly through rooms
without ceilings. Places of old habitation gave me strange feelings of
connectivity – as though the people who had once lived here were aware of your
intrusion, and were coming forward to meet you; a rustling of spirits. It
always made me shiver.
    ‘And look here,’ Mona pointed. She
lifted something from the floor. A tide of mulched leaves fell away. I saw it
was a hatch-like long door. A ladder led into an oblong darkness. I peered
down. A huddle of covered shapes were barely visible.
    ‘What’s down there?’
    ‘Brent says it’s old farming
equipment.’
    I frowned. ‘Valuable?’
    ‘For a museum, I suppose.’
    ‘Shall we take a look?’
    ‘Are you crazy? I don’t creep around
in the dark, thank you very much. Never know who you’re going to meet.’
    I called Sticky in deliberately loud, overly cheerful tones, ‘C’mon,