3. The House

    The pair stand under the brow of fire colored leaves. The trail unfurls before them. It is a plain and simple thing. It’s more driveway than trail really, but one could hardly tell beneath the thick carpet of leaves that adorned it. No car to crush the leaves into the stones, and no person to clear them away. None had been down here for a long time, that much was clear.

    “It’s almost dark,” Jamie comments after a cursory glance at her watch.

    “And it says this is the quickest route back,” Rashad replies, his face slightly illuminated by the glow of his phone cradled in his palm. The pair look at each other and shrug, and Jamie chuckles,

    “Two street racers can’t be afraid of the dark,” she says and nudges Larkspur forward. The large cat does so, but his ears train forward to listen. Sangoma, too,was on higher alert, her dark eyes focusing on the space ahead.

    “We wouldn’t make for good racers if we were,” Rashad replies, and Jamie is thankful for the break in the silence. She’s typically comfortable in them, but this one hangs around them, stares at them, and causes goosebumps to prickle along her arms.

    The two riders swap shallow conversation, a marked change from the previous hours of enthusiastic telling of stories from their eventful careers. Jamie was both thankful and worried to see that the current anxiety seemed to be shared. On one hand, she wasn’t alone in the emotion, but on the other, she couldn’t chalk it up to just her being silly. In another conversation lull, she looked around at the scenery. The fading light casts gold halos around the remaining leaves that dutifully cling to winterizing branches. A few squirrels chitter and wave flagging tails as they finish up their daily hoarding. It’s rather...peaceful, if she’s optimistic about it. Nothing about it to be particularly worried about.

    Larkspur comes to a sudden halt. The mane that lines his neck and shoulders bristles, and a faint growl rumbles in his throat. Rashad glances at Sangoma, whose head was bent low, teeth bared, and then at Jamie, both exchanging puzzled looks.  Jamie looks from the trees to the road, and her she can feel something tighten in her stomach. There before them, it stood, and it stood with an encompassing presence that was all its own.  Long shadows, normally purple and blue with twilight, were a morose black as they clung to its faded paint.  Not a breath of air stirred through the open rafters visible through a rotting roof. Neither squirrels nor birds filled the clearing with any kind of sound. It simply stood. And glared.

    “We should go,” Rashad says what they were both thinking, but some fascination holds them still. Her heart was a war hammer between her ribs, and sick dread crawls through her bones. The same kind you feel when your brain has noticed something amiss but your eyes haven’t quite caught up yet.

    The first to move were Rashad and Sangoma, but they stepped closer to the house, not away as the man had previously suggested.

    “Rashad, don’t,” she says sternly, but he’s dismounting and walking to the porch. She gets it, she really does, every cell screams at her to flee, but something grips her and Larkspur by the feet and roots them to the spot.

    “I heard something,” he mumbles as he passes, his gaze is focused on the house. He climbs the creaking steps and pauses among the inky shadows.  Jamie can barely see him, and she can’t hear anything apart from Larkspur’s growling.  Rashad peers around the porch for a few seconds before something catches his attention. His face turns toward the house so all Jamie can see is the back of his head. Sangoma too, pricks her ears in the same direction.  Whatever it is, it’s brief, and suddenly he’s backing off the porch and hurrying back towards them. He strides quickly towards Jamie and Lark,

    “We’re going,” he says again, this time firmly and without question. He swings up into Sangoma’s saddle.

    “What was it?” Jamie asks, “did you look in the house?” Jamie glances back and regrets it as the dread digs claws in deeper into her prickly skin.  They’re a few steps away, when Rashad looks back too,

    “All I heard was knocking and knocking and knocking. As soon as I walked on the porch. Just pounding on the door, but there wasn’t a door. Not a single one on that house.”