A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best story books to read .txt) 📗

“Don’t be a coward. There’s a full moon. Besides, I know where to go. I’ve been here before, remember?”

“And you’re not afraid of getting arrested for trespassing?”

“No.”

“Or murdered in a burning barn?”

“A little,” I said. “But that’s why I brought you along for protection. Come on. Let’s go.”

We climbed out of my Dodge, and, armed with a flashlight in one hand and my purse and Leica slung over my shoulder, I led the way onto the property. A cool breeze blew through my hair and ruffled the panels of my skirt. I buttoned my jacket. Fadge was wearing a dark wool sweater that made him look like a bear walking upright. We reached the site of the burned-down barn, which was still cordoned off by several sawhorses and a handwritten sign that read, “Crime Scene. Keep Out.”

“Are we going in there?” asked Fadge.

“No, I’ve already been through the barn. Let’s have a look over there,” I said, indicating a structure on the front stretch of the oval training track about a hundred yards off.

As we approached, we could make out a shadowy, wooden building, leaning slightly to one side, capped by a turret of sorts and a pitched roof. There was a large open porch, fenced in by a railing. Some of its posts were rotting in place, while others had simply dropped out of line and lay dead on the deck like fallen teeth. The wind whistled through the large windows, whose glass panes, mullions, and transoms had long since been smashed by vandals. The silhouette gave the impression of a skeleton, the mortal remains of a great beast that had expired eons before but still sat stubbornly in place to remind all that once it had lived.

“Kind of spooky,” I said, my teeth chattering in the cool air.

“This is the judge’s stand,” said Fadge as we came to a stop before it. “They used to hold a race day for the mill workers and farmers. Back around the turn of the century. Matinée Races, free to all. Everyone came out with the family to see the horses. There was cotton candy, popcorn, and peanuts. And five or six races. This judge’s stand is where Sanford Shaw himself watched over the proceedings and awarded the winning jockeys.”

“It looks as if it’s about to fall down.”

“It’s condemned,” he said, pointing to a weathered sign plastered on the door.

“Let’s move on. There’s that long oval building over there. What’s that?”

“The indoor track. For winter training. And that must be the dormitory next to it.”

Two hundred yards west of the judge’s stand and the finish line of the main course, the indoor training track stretched 150 yards or so on the straightaways. The walls of the low-slung building were buckling under the weight of the roof. And like the other outbuildings on the property, its faded gray boards, punished by weather and years of neglect, were a pale reflection of their former glory.

We slipped into the dormitory through a door that had fallen off its rusted hinges. The smell told us right off that animals had appropriated the living quarters once reserved for stableboys, farmhands, and blacksmiths. A mustiness mixed with odors of wet hay, excrement, and putrefaction of flesh. Some unfortunate beast had died inside the building, and not too long ago, either. A surfeit of skunks had set up housekeeping somewhere in what had used to be the kitchen. We couldn’t see them but knew they’d been there.

“You don’t suppose that’s a dead human decaying in here, do you?” I asked, holding my nose.

“No. I think that’s what’s stinking up the place,” he said, pointing to a large festering mass about thirty feet across the room. I aimed my flashlight at it, but even so we couldn’t tell for sure if it was a deer, a bear, or a buffalo. Two things were certain, though. One, whatever it was, it was dead. And two, we weren’t going any closer to investigate.

“Oh, God,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before I’m sick.”

I hightailed it for the door, stepping out into the fresh air. After a moment, I wondered what had become of Fadge. I peered back through the door in time to see him puking up his pizza almost as quickly as he’d ingested it an hour earlier.

“Are you okay?” I asked once he’d staggered from the vomitorium.

“I’m fine. Just a little upchuck.”

“More like Niagara Falls. Here. Have a stick of gum,” I said, producing a package of Beech-Nut Peppermint from my purse.

We continued farther west, past the 350-foot-long Yearling Barn—there was a blistered painted sign over the door identifying it—and a couple of triangular grain storage huts, before finally arriving at the caretaker’s house. It looked like any other large farmhouse. White clapboard, two stories and an attic, three chimneys, and a wraparound porch. The residence was in better condition than the rest of the farm buildings, probably because it was the last to be retired from service. Lucky Chuck Lenoir had been in residence as recently as the previous year. Still, the house had seen better days, and they were pretty far in the rearview mirror.

We stepped up onto the porch and approached the door. “It’s padlocked,” said Fadge, rattling the knob with his meaty right hand.

“All the windows seem to be intact. And shuttered. Although the wood does appear to be rotted in places.”

“Are you suggesting we bust in?”

I drew a deep breath as I gazed up at the house. Everything was dark. It felt lonesome and lonely, abandoned. In a few years, this place would be as battered as the other buildings on the property. Wood needs paint or stain. Without protection, rain, ice, and sun will lay waste to it in a trice. Too bad, I thought. Such a magnificent farm had gone to seed in little more than twenty years.

“Let’s go,” I said. “There’s nothing to see here in the dark anyway.”

We tramped off back toward my car some quarter