The Rascal Read Free

There looks to be something in front of the barn too. It’s covered by a big stone. Maybe a well.”
    Jeff let himself into the cottage. Chloe still held tight to herself. The front door was unlocked as Miss Donna Tharp had told them it would be. As promised, the place came fully furnished. Neither Chloe nor Jeff knew much about antiques—they were adventure sports recreationists, after all—but they knew “old” when they saw it.
    As they lifted the thick plastic protective sheets, Chloe looked at Jeff. “Call the Antiques Roadshow . We’ll make a mint.”
    The cottage was small and cozy. A large mantel and fireplace were the focal point of the living area. A small, ancient TV sat insignificantly on a stand. A scratched coffee table, a rocking chair, and a worn but comfortable couch rounded out the room’s furnishings. A kitchen connected directly to the living area just past the couch. Deeper in the cottage, down a narrow hallway, was a bedroom. There were no trinkets or personal knickknacks left behind from the last inhabitants of the cottage. And it was strange, but Chloe had half expected there to be some evidence that someone was still living there. It was just a feeling she had, one she couldn’t shake, and one brought on by the feeling she had encountered on the porch.
    Chloe drifted from room to room, carefully pulling away the plastic sheeting to reveal the old treasures or junk beneath them. The sound of the stiff plastic was similar to that of an ocean wave, though stirring dust instead of dirty seagulls. Chloe found her way to the bedroom. Jeff had gone to the kitchen, stripping, ripping, and tearing the old furnishings of their plastic shielding as he went. The force with which he tore the sheeting away reverberated through the cottage, putting Chloe on edge.
    She found a bureau in the bedroom and uncovered it as delicately as she could to combat her husband’s violence. The dark wood was warped in areas and could have used a new finish. Two brass knobs were missing and the bottom drawer looked to be crooked. All the same, it would serve its purpose. So much of the furniture would keep her and Jeff busy fixing and sanding and readjusting. She sighed in relief at this thought. They wouldn’t have time to think about other things.
    The drawers were cranky and stubborn, but Chloe managed to eventually open and inspect them one by one. Decades-old scent of staleness and moths overcame her to the point that she backed away for a moment. They were all empty but for the crooked bottom one. Therein lay a small assemblage of photographs. Chloe gathered them up and shuffled them neatly. They were old black and whites, some torn and bug-eaten, all stained by time and neglect. They looked like photographs from a movie magazine. These were scenes of the adored glitterati at fabulous parties by large pools. Scenes of excess given respectability by black and white. Chloe recognized some of those in the photographs. They were movie stars, most of them still living, but way past their prime now. She didn’t know many of their names, but she knew their faces. Everyone did. She had seen a film or two every now and then. The world was all about entertainment these days. About selling one’s business and selling out one’s past.
    “Look at this,” she said to Jeff, thinking he had come into the room with her. There was that discernible dimming of light by shadow, as if someone was behind her in the doorway. She didn’t bother to look up from the photographs, mesmerized by their glamour. Then there was a whisper, a breeze, like a door had been left ajar and an uncomfortable cool wind had been let into the room.
    Only when Jeff answered from the other side of the small house (“Did you say something?”), did Chloe look up, startled. Jeff was not in the room with her at all. There was no one in the doorway as she had thought. She swallowed back a prickling fear and caught the wisp of a ‘feeling.’ The chills ran