Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“Yeah, it’s stupid, I suppose, a kid’s game. I got work to do and I want to get the outside stuff done before the weather turns cold.” I shrugged. “It is a job, Jake. No one bugs me; even when she was here, she didn’t bug me. She worked upstairs mostly, and in the attic. There are more animals up there. A lot of smaller specimens like game birds and stuff.” Suddenly I felt kind of foolish. “Look, Jake, I don’t feel like hanging around today. Let me reset the timers and we’ll go. I got a paper to work on and...” For the first time the house didn’t feel quite the same. Instead of large and warm and safe, it had a different feeling: smaller now with Jake in it, and somewhat tainted or dirty. Despite all the work I’d done, it seemed I hadn’t done enough, and like the treasure hunt games still hidden in the house, the house itself was unfinished. I could see streaks in the windows where I had washed them and dust on the floor where the remaining afternoon sunlight was streaming in.

“Fine. I’ll wait in the car,” Jake said. “Come out when you’re done. No hurry.” Then he turned and left.

“Thought I’d come by, say hi.” It was Emma, the green-haired girl I’d been stupid enough to think liked me, the girl I’d been stupid enough to like back. “Did you have a good Thanksgiving?”

I let the wheelbarrow full of brush and privet branches drop to the ground and just stared at her. It was a gloomy Sunday and I wanted to get in some work before it started to rain. Emma Presley was an unwanted distraction.

No, rephrase that: Emma was just unwanted.

“Your friend, the cop, he told me where you were. But I already knew you were working here. Heard at school.”

I still said nothing. I had too much to do and the skies were growing ominously gray. I had an entire hedgerow to clean out; small pines and maples were growing up through the privet and each one had to be cut back or pulled up. I lifted the wheelbarrow up and turned it around.

“Herbie, you haven’t talked to me in weeks. I pass you in the halls and you just ignore me.”

Still, I said nothing, even though she was right there at my elbow. She wheeled her bike alongside me.

“Herbie, he... the kid you saw me with that day, he’s just a friend. I’ve known him since third grade. I’ve been trying to tell you that, but you won’t talk to me, Herbie.”

I dumped the brush behind the bigger of the two sheds; Sammy was there, tail high in the air, twitching back and forth.

“You know...” I heard the awkwardness in her voice. “I heard that the lady you’re working for, well, that she’s really beautiful and...”

“She is.”

Maybe it was my tone, or the fact that I responded to her, or to the mention of Frances, because Emma spun her bike around, glared at me, and said, “Very beautiful. Are you... are you in love with her?” Her entire face spoke ridicule and incredulity and bitterness.

I refused to answer. I lifted up the wheelbarrow to return to the front yard.

“Or... is it that you’ve been hurt so many times before, you can’t trust anyone? Is it that?” She hurried after me, trying to catch up. “Because I know. I heard about your mother. Everyone knows.”

I left the wheelbarrow where it was, figured if I got the ladder, went up to clean the gutters, she wouldn’t be able to follow me up there with her stupid bike.

“I wished you’d called. I wished you’d talk to me.” She was relentless, following me back to the shed and standing there while I wrestled an old folding aluminum ladder out of the back. Sammy was with me and I hit something in the rafters, a bucket or some clamming gear. It crashed to the floor and the cat went bounding out of the shed.

“Herbie, I want to talk. Why won’t you talk to me?” Emma demanded. She was standing in the door to the shed; I made a great act of dragging the ladder around her. “Damn you, Herbert Sawyer!” she cried as I headed back to the front of the house. “Damn you!”

“You don’t need girls. They’re worthless,” I told Samson as he sat before me, his broad tail pounding down on the wooden floor of the shed. “And untrustworthy.” I was wrapping a rag around my hand where I’d cut it on a broken gutter. The ladder was outside, lying on the ground. It was raining now; there was a steady drip-drip on the wooden eaves overhead. I needed to go inside, make some tea, and work, or maybe read. I had something to read, but I couldn’t even remember what novel we were doing in English class. I shut my eyes and leaned forward as Sammy’s tail went thump-thump-thump on the warped floorboards. “Come on, Sammy.”

I got up, went to the door, but Samson didn’t move. I turned around; he was still sitting in the middle of the little shed, his tail continuing to thump-thump-thump, but not the floor. He was sitting on something painted a pale green, something with...

I walked forward. Something with a brass handle attached to it. A trapdoor. A cellar door.