I started to laugh but stopped when I saw the serious look in her eyes. I nodded instead and put the Jeep in gear.
Neila lived on the outskirts of town at the top of a hill. Her house sat alone on this particular rise and the road dead-ended at her driveway. I remembered from my teen years that the driveway rose steeply after the road and then flattened out about one hundred yards into a dense, treed lot. My Jeep bounced over the bumpy dirt driveway and then lurched around the last corner. This time of year the house was visible through the trees. Their naked branches stretched like bony fingers over the roof and the absence of leaves on most of the trees allowed a weak filtered light into the yard. The house itself was small, and completely covered in vines and other vegetation that I didn’t have the knowledge to identify. The few areas of visible wall showed that the house had once been yellow. The back of my neck prickled and I realized this was the house I had seen in the bonfire on Halloween.
It had a couple of evergreen sentinels on both sides and the oaks and maples also had vines wrapping up their trunks. Her yard consisted of more vines and ground-cover plants; no real grass would grow in what was essentially a forest. I parked and got out of the Jeep, letting the door close quietly. My approach must have alerted all the birds and squirrels because it was silent in the small yard. The house had a missing shutter on one window and a second shutter was hanging by one nail, lending a haphazard look to the front. I stepped onto the porch and felt a chill as I moved out of the last shaft of weak sunlight.
The silence and air of neglect had me wondering yet again at the wisdom of showing up here unannounced. I had only my aunt’s assurance that the old lady was even still alive.
I raised my hand to knock when a voice said, “Come on in, it’s open.” I jumped and nearly fell backward off the porch. I looked around for the source of the voice but couldn’t see where it had come from.
The knob turned easily, and I pushed the door inward on creaky hinges. The front hall was dark, and I squinted into the gloom.
“Ms. Whittle?” My own voice bounced back to me. I caught a glimpse of something white to my left and spun to meet it. It was just the sheer curtain lazily shifting in the breeze from the door.
“Clytemnestra?” The voice came from behind me and was so like my grandmother’s that tears stung my eyes before I’d turned to see who had spoken.
For a moment I thought Aunt Vi had set up an elaborate prank. A clump of fabric stood in front of me. It was draped in all shades of gray and brown shawls where its shoulders should be, a gray rough fabric as a skirt, and a dingy apron that had once been white. At five foot seven, I was used to being taller than many women, especially in my family. But I was a giant compared to this creature. She barely came up to my chest, and I thought Vi had hired a third grader to trick me into bolting out the door and down the hill like so many kids had done over the years. Then it moved and I saw the hunched little woman smile. Expecting the smile of a jack-o’-lantern, I was surprised to see a full complement of teeth, and when she stepped into the light, her cool gray eyes glimmered.
“Ms. Whittle, we haven’t met. I’m—”
“I know who you are, Clytemnestra Fortune. I’m surprised you don’t remember me. You used to play in the yard when you were no higher than my hip. You loved my sugar cookies.” She came a bit closer, tilting her head to look into my eyes. “Blue and brown. I told your grandmother you would be a great seer with eyes like that. You should have come sooner.”
I skipped over the fascination with my oddly colored eyes, and the creepy pronouncements, and focused on the part where I had been here before.
“I’ve . . . been here?”
“Well, you came with the rest of the teenagers when you were about fourteen, but didn’t linger. None of them do. But yes, you used to come here with Agnes. She was my friend. I still miss her every day.” A gust of wind blew the door all the way open and it slammed into the wall. I jumped, but Neila just went to the door and clicked it shut.