From The Mists Of Wolf Creek. Rebecca Brandewyne

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СКАЧАТЬ one hand on the steering wheel, she reached for the map she had printed out for herself a couple of weeks ago, her route carefully marked so she would know the way. Hallie had thought that once she neared the farm, her memories would kick into gear and serve to guide her home.

      But she was also realistic enough to realize that it had been many years since she had seen Meadowsweet, and that memories sometimes played tricks on one, too. So, with the practicality instilled in her by Great-Aunts Agatha and Edith, she had taken the precaution of arming herself with the map.

      She ought to be getting very close now, she thought. But in the end, despite everything, she still almost missed the turnoff. It was now so overgrown that she did not recognize it, and in fact, it was only the glare of her headlights shining on the badly askew signpost at the junction that caught her attention as she flew past.

      “Dammit!” Hallie swore heatedly under her breath to herself.

      Hitting the brake pedal, she screeched to a halt, glancing over her shoulder to be certain no one was coming. Then she backed up and turned onto the narrow, sandy lane, cursing some more as the Mini bounced along the bumps and ruts that riddled the ill-kept rural route.

      Beneath the trees lining the road and forming a half canopy above, it was much darker than it had been on the highway, and in response, she turned on her high beams, totally grateful that the farm could not be much farther now.

      Looking at the gnarled old branches of the thorny hedge-apple trees that rustled and whipped in the rising wind, Hallie knew she needed to reach Meadowsweet and batten down the hatches before the full fury of the storm was unleashed upon her.

      A tornado might even be brewing, and she would have no way of knowing. Frowning at her own stupidity, she flicked on the radio, trying to tune it to one of the local channels. Instead, static and then rock music blasted into the Mini, and after a moment she gave up, switching the radio off, knowing she needed both hands on the steering wheel.

      The rain pelted in splotches against the windshield, and once, a hedge apple was ruthlessly torn from one of the trees and hurled down to skitter like a poorly thrown bowling ball across the lane. Hallie could only feel relieved that the fruit had not struck her car.

      As she watched the hedge apple roll off the road into the ditch alongside, her headlamps lit up a weatherbeaten sign hanging by one rusty chain from the barbed-wire fence to which it was attached. It read “Meadowsweet Farm.”

      Spinning the steering wheel quickly, Hallie turned onto the narrow, serpentine drive that led up a small hill to the old farmhouse beyond. Her heart pounded with anticipation, and her nerves went taut as she quivered with a strange mixture of trepidation and excitement.

      Leaning forward, she strained for a glimpse of her childhood home, wishing she had arrived much earlier, when she could have seen it much more clearly.

      Still, abruptly emerging from the windblown trees onto the hillcrest, she spied the house at long last, looming ahead in the darkness, illuminated by a sudden, jagged flash of scintillating lightning that forked across the churning sky.

      Much to her dismay, the first unbidden thought that came into her mind as she instinctively paused the car on the knoll was that the Victorian farmhouse looked like something straight out of a horror movie. She suspected it would have been right at home next door to Norman Bates’s creepy old house on the hill.

      Silhouetted against the night sky, it was all dark, towering cupolas and pointed turrets capped with lightning rods that seemed to pierce the very firmament. As she caught sight of these last, Hallie felt some long-forgotten memory unexpectedly stir in her brain, and she heard herself as a child speaking to her grandmother in the expansive front yard.

      “I don’t like the lightning rods, Gram. They look like needles stabbing into God’s eye.”

      And in her mind, as had happened in her childhood, she saw Gram throw back her head and laugh, and heard her declare, “Shout at the Devil, and spit in God’s eye! That’s just the way I’ve lived my whole life, Hallie—standing on my own two good feet, working with my own two strong hands, and never asking either man or beast for anything. And I don’t mind telling you, it’s been a long, hard path to follow, child. But in the end, I reckon it’s a journey that’s been the making of me, and I’m too old to change now, besides.”

      “Don’t you believe in God and the Devil then, Gram?”

      “Of course, I do, Hallie. It’s merely that I’ve never noticed that either one has ever been of much use to humankind. Why, most of the wars in this old world have been fought in God’s name, and if the Devil hadn’t got into people, making them do evil to one another, I don’t know what has.

      “Sometimes, it seems like there’s not a lick of common sense or kindness or caring left on this entire earth! We were put here to take care of this planet and the creatures on it, you know, and it seems to me that between God and the Devil, we’ve done a mighty damned poor job of it all.

      “No, child—” Gram had shaken her head firmly to emphasize her point “—I rely on myself, and what I know to be right and wrong according to the dictates of my own conscience, to lead my life, and I leave God and the Devil to those who need them. I hope that one day, you’ll understand that and do the same.”

      Standing there with Gram in the yard that summer’s day, Hallie had not truly comprehended a single word of their conversation. But now, the full meaning of their dialogue dawned on her, and in that moment she grasped her grandmother’s character with far more clarity than she could ever have done in her childhood.

      “Gram—” Hallie spoke now, her words breaking the stillness inside the car “—I don’t know why you ever sent me away after Mom died. But I know you must have had a good reason, one you thought was right, just as you must have had one equally as good for bringing me home again. And while I’m not sure I’ve made up my mind yet about God and the Devil, I do have faith and trust in you.

      “So…here I am, Gram, home at last after all these long years. I wish…I really wish you were here, too, standing on the front porch to greet me, the way you used to when you heard the school bus drop me off at the bottom of the hill. Instead, you’re dead and buried in your grave, and I’ve got to rely on myself, just as you did.

      “Oh, I guess I’ll manage somehow. You see, I know how to stand on my own two good feet, too, Gram. Still, I’ve got to tell you that sometimes, like this evening, that’s pretty damned cold comfort. What I wouldn’t give for a cup of your hot Earl Grey tea, served with your smile and words of wisdom, right about now. Maybe if I’m lucky, there’ll still be a tin, at least, somewhere on one of your kitchen shelves. I can only hope.”

      With that last thought to sustain her, Hallie put the gearshift back into Drive and guided the vehicle on toward the old farmhouse that stood waiting silently for her, a momentous sentinel in the rainy darkness, relentlessly defiant against the blustering wind—and armed with needles that still dared to jab the thunderous sky.

      Chapter 3

      Home Is Where the Heart Is

      By the time Hallie pulled the car to a stop beneath the intricate wooden carport on one side of the house, the wind was lashing the trees unmercifully, the rain was pouring down and the fleeting dusk had well and truly died.

      She was inordinately grateful for what protection, however small, the carport provided as, with difficulty born of the storm, she lifted the vehicle’s rear hatch and СКАЧАТЬ