“The skeleton of the house,” she said a little uneasily, somewhat uncomfortable about the unknown reasons a person might have to do such a thing to the wall. She silently made a mental note to call the online real estate agent in the morning and ask a few tactful questions, such as ‘Did anybody die in here?’
After another series of futile attempts to gain access through the blocked doorway, she backed out and decided to explore the rest of the house before she determined what to do with the once lovely library.
The hallway leading out of the foyer was long and narrow. It grew slightly darker at the end of the corridor, but Danielle could see a swinging door with a brass hand plate attached at the end. Sunlight streamed from underneath the crack, and she felt encouraged to go forward.
The door itself weighed nothing and easily swung inward at her touch. She immediately found herself standing inside a white tiled kitchen, with tall windows that generously let in the early evening sun. An old, grey enameled table was the centerpiece for the well used room, the chips and scratches along the top and edge displaying years of loving use. The counters were black and white tile and supported an array of antique looking appliances she had never encountered in the sophisticated kitchens of the big city.
“I’m guessing China Fortune probably doesn’t deliver out here,” she remarked casually to an old mixing bowl nestled next to the noisy refrigerator.
She was going to have to get that rattle fixed before too long or it would drive her crazy.
The moment she had the thought she realized electricity was alive and well…and probably coursing precariously through the old circuit breakers in a dark and gloomy basement at her feet.
“Score one for the city girl!” she exclaimed and flipped the switch for the bulb overhead. She felt an unreasonable amount of joy at the knowledge there would be lights on in the house tonight. Danielle suddenly thought maybe this was really what she needed, after all. She needed to be thankful for the basic things in her life so she could build up the foundation for her future once again.
The moment she felt positive her decision to move away from the only existence she had ever known was correct, the lights flickered ominously and then went out altogether.
“See what happens when you decide to feel good about something?” she stated sarcastically to her shadow, which was growing longer and longer across the white tiled floor.
She wanted to tell herself she better find the fuse box before it got dark, but she knew it was most likely dark wherever it was located. Still, just knowing she could pound up the stairs in a frightened sprint and into the light of the setting sun made her feel much more like seeking out the cold, damp basement.
She went back through the flapping door with the intention of returning to the car to get a flashlight when she noticed a small, latched cubby door along the wall on her left, just underneath the stairs.
“This has to be the lair of malfunctioning fuse boxes,” she said with a little humor as she lifted the small brass lever on the wooden paneling. It came open to reveal a tidy coat closet in addition to the entrance to the underworld.
Fortunately, she found a wide array of helpful devices lined up underneath the raincoats and galoshes at the edge of the stairs leading down. Many of the items appeared to be flashlights or spotlights, and though she was still not an expert, one long rod closely resembled a cattle prod.
“We will not be needing that, thank you,” Danielle said politely as her hand hovered over the unusual selection of tools before it came to rest upon a Mag light. She didn’t know a lot about cattle prods, but she did know that kind of flashlight lasted practically forever.
The handheld beam came on the instant she touched it, and she progressed down the stairs with slow confidence. She half expected the steps to groan in protest under her weight as unseen spider webs wound their way through her hair, but nothing of the sort happened.
In fact, the basement didn’t smell damp or dusty in the least, and the rail guided her reliably down. As soon as she reached the bottom she saw the metal panel on the wall to her left and was relieved to discover it was a breaker box and did not require fuses at all.
Danielle flipped all the switches, and the moment she did, the basement lit up with soft lamp light. Whatever she expected to find down there was not remotely what she saw at all.
Chapter Two
Her feet didn’t hit hard packed dirt or cement like she would have expected, but a soft carpeting of synthetic foam lay all along the floor, cushioning her advancing footsteps. The air was completely still and the unusual flooring cancelled out any sound she might have made.
“What kind of place is this?” she muttered under her breath, looking around the open area. Elaborate hooks hung on the walls, but nothing was attached. Empty glass cases sat atop modern looking pedestals as if this were some kind of private museum at one time or another.
Danielle had no illusions about the fact that anything of real value would have been removed before she purchased the house and its contents, though the idea she might never know what mysterious items had existed in the strange display area came as a surprising disappointment.
She was just about to turn away when she noticed a large garbage can tucked into a dark corner of the room where one of the lights had apparently burned out. Sharp pieces of wood jutted from the opening, and she could see it sat next to a bolted door now that her eyes had adjusted to the dim light.
“Shaggy, it’s a clue!” she said with her best Thelma impersonation but crossed over to the receptacle with a small feeling of excitement.
Danielle noted right away the door obviously subscribed to the old school way of thinking that a dozen or so bolts from the inside would probably keep the zombies out. In either case, it took her a minute to turn and slide them all by hand before she was able to push her way clear to the outside. The bottom of the heavy door dragged along a huge growth of weeds, but it laid them down flat as Danielle stumbled into what must have been a charming garden at one time. She shielded her eyes with her hands, but it still took a moment for her vision to shift back to the fading exposure of daylight.
There wasn’t much of the early evening left, but the sunset painted the overgrown garden in soft hues of pink and orange. She had never gotten the chance to grow anything in the city, and it was something she had always wanted to do in her lifetime. Just seeing the possibilities through the vines and thistle gave her something to look forward to.
“At least I can drag the trash out,” she said as she reached into the doorway for the overflowing can. “I guess they could clean the good stuff out of my basement, but they couldn’t take out the garbage.”
It was heavier than it looked and didn’t want to budge, so she got a good grip on the edge in the shadows. With a hefty yank, she tipped the bulky can onto the two wheels attached to the side and popped it over the threshold when she felt a searing pain across the back of her hand. She immediately let go of the bin and reeled in her wounded appendage.
A large gash streaked across her pale skin, and blood oozed from the cut as she stared at the offensive trash can sitting just outside the door. Though she was pretty angry at the carelessness of the person who’d filled the container, she had to try to settle the contents before the trash collector had a similar accident.
The culprit was right on top. Danielle gingerly pushed down on the corner of the broken picture frame and upon seeing it wouldn’t go deeper inside the bin, she had no choice but to pull it out. It came free instantly and a few more shards of glass fell away as she struggled with the heavy wooden frame.
It looked hand carved, quite exotic, and there was a vague scent of sandalwood or cedar oiled into the amazing piece of work. The glass inside the frame was decimated, almost as if someone had hit it with a sledgehammer to obliterate the picture inside. Deep, emerald greens peeked through the splinters, and she just had to see what deserved such callous treatment.
It was almost like reverse engineering a
jigsaw puzzle. Instead of putting the pieces together in a frame to see the picture, she was taking them out, careful not to scratch the contents. After a few minutes of quick work she saw it was a photograph and not a painting at all. She had uncovered a beautiful waterfall which spilled from an impossibly high cliff in what seemed to be a jungle or rainforest.
The scene looked overwhelmingly familiar to Danielle, and she was just sure it was someplace she had been before as she worked faster to remove the shards.
“Florida’s the farthest south you’ve ever traveled, my dear,” she said to herself with a teasing voice. “I don’t think we’ve ever stumbled across a rain forest there.”
She finally had her fingers on the epicenter of the impact and the glass there was nearly dust, resting in a crater about the size of a baseball. She gently dislodged the light coating and closed her eyes as she blew away the remnants of the broken glass.
When she was sure the dangerous motes had time to settle, Danielle cautiously opened her eyelids and lost her breath at the same time.
He looked back at her with his stunningly beautiful hazel eyes, alive and glowing with nearly every color of the jungle which surrounded him in the photograph. His mid length blond hair came to the top of his shoulders and he had a darker, rugged growth on his chin… his beautifully chiseled chin that held the kind of smile that made your knees weak and your tongue tied. His skin was golden underneath the white T-shirt plastered to his chest in the humid air of the tropical forest, and he stood with confidence next to a native whose own dark pigment presented quite a contrast.
She felt foolish, but her heart beat like a thousand drums as she reached out hesitant finger tips to touch his face on the glossy photograph. With her imagination running wild, she could almost feel his hot, bronzed cheek along the palm of her hand as she pulled him forward to meet her parted lips in a kiss she fantasized would bind them together for eternity.
She tasted his salty skin with the tip of her tongue and pushed herself closer to his barely concealed chest, his shirt sticking to his form with an intoxicating mixture of sweat from the heat and earthy moisture of the jungle. The sound of the falls pounded in her ears in a rhythm that felt as natural and as right as her heart beat that pulsed in time with his.
Danielle wound her fingers in his thick hair as he held her arched figure up against his body. Warm water ran from her fingertips and down her exposed arm. It tickled a little, and she pulled away for a moment to shake it free…
That was when she found herself holding the picture above her head, in the ruined garden, as her cut bled freely down her extended arm.
“Oh crap!” she shook her head to clear it of the bizarre daydream, though her heart still remembered with its erratic beat as she struggled to get her bearings.
“There must be carbon monoxide poisoning in the basement!”
* * * *
“The website says twenty-four-hour customer service, and I want my customer service right now!” Danielle insisted to the non- emotional person on the other end of the telephone.
The phone company had actually activated her line before she arrived, which was a miracle in and of itself after this whole experience. She would need it for sure in case she had to call the hospital and tell them she was suffering from hallucinations.
“Just so you know, I’m contacting you before I call my lawyer, but I can assure you he’ll take my call no matter what time of day it is.”
Danielle’s joy at the presence of an operating phone was almost overshadowed by the fact it had a cord about two inches long and she was having a difficult time reaching the stove where she had put the tea kettle on to boil water. There didn’t seem to be anything as modern as a microwave anywhere on the premises, but the obvious placement of the kettle on the stove next to the packets of hummingbird nectar gave her a pretty good idea about what she could do with all her hold time while the answering service decided how to handle her call.
After what seemed like an eternity of cradling the old fashioned phone receiver between her shoulder and her neck, Danielle began to feel an uncomfortable ache that did nothing to soothe her agitation with the situation. She longingly wished for the cell phone and Bluetooth attachment that was practically part of her existence back in the city.
She was just about to hang up to go in search of a local phone book when the passive hold music clicked on and off a few times in a clumsy manner before it stopped altogether.
“Country Pumpkin Realty, how may I help you?” the voice of a sweet, older sounding woman came on the line in what Danielle considered to be an overly friendly tone considering her situation.
“Listen, Country Bumpkin Realty,” Danielle was unable to keep a little sarcasm out of her voice. “I purchased a house from your agency online, which I now know was not the smartest move a person can make if you want to live in a place which even remotely resembles the one in the picture.”
“Why, you must be Miss Taylor, then!” The stranger immediately responded with what seemed like genuine delight. Danielle instantly felt like she was at a disadvantage and wondered how many people in the nearby small town knew of her arrival as well.
“Do you think I could have your name, please?” She tried to start at the beginning, but was already losing steam. Somehow, she just knew it would be next to impossible to argue with the woman on the other end of the connection.
“My name is Mary Jane, of course,” she spouted off again with the same excited tone. “I left a note on the front door for you to call me when you arrived.”
“There was no note on the front door when I got here, and I have to say I don’t appreciate the state you left the house in, either. I mean, I wasn’t expecting a palace, but one room is completely torn up, there’s carbon monoxide everywhere and I got stabbed in the basement!”
Though it would be impossible to gauge the shocked reaction someone could convey over the phone by the mere presentation of total silence, Danielle had a pretty good idea that she had impressed her real estate agent thoroughly.
“Well, honey,” the disembodied voice on the other end eventually replied, but with much more uncertainty, “I was here when the University moved the professor’s things out of the house and I locked up when they were finished. It was perfect when I left, I promise you.”
“I knew it! Some college teacher died in here, didn’t he?” Danielle exclaimed, thinking it was just about as safe in the country as it was in the city, after all. “Was he murdered in the library, with the candlestick?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that!” the real estate agent answered quickly, a little too quickly, because an awkward silence soon followed her hasty reply.
“I might be wrong, but isn’t there some kind of disclosure rule where you have to tell me if people got sacrificed in the basement or warn me not to build a pool because the house is on an Indian burial ground?”
“Now dear, it really isn’t anything like that,” the woman had an edge of panic to her voice, and Danielle could imagine she’d already spent her commission check on a new tractor or uniforms for her square dancing group.
“I can honestly tell you I did not know the professor well. He was a rather new addition to the University, though he was rarely in town long enough for most anyone except his students to form an opinion of him before he disappeared.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Danielle whispered to herself with relief as she set the hummingbird nectar aside to cool, trying not to stretch the line too far.
“Oh, he was a handsome man, to be sure,” the country woman followed up her previous statement with what Danielle really wanted to hear. “He entertained people from all over the world when he was home, but as far as I know, they came to see the collection of ancient artifacts he’d gathered from his trips to South America.”
An unbidden vision of the smashed photograph pushed itself to the forefront of her mind, and she could see the professor’s face as clearly now as she could when she’d rescued the p
icture from the garbage. Of course the photo was taken in South America. She knew that without being told. Something inside her longed to see that place and she silently vowed to take whatever chance she could to go there one day.
“My daughter Anna took quite a shine to him, she did,” the woman continued, and Danielle could tell she was in full gossip mode now.
“She would bring him a freshly baked apple pie every time he was in town, though he never did more than pat her on the head and send her on her way. I am thankful for it though, because she signed up at the school and is taking classes in Archaeology now. She never did get in with him, but she is doing well with the other instructors.”
Despite the fascinating conversation, Danielle found she was growing rather weary, all tethered to the counter like she was, so she took a chance and chimed into the story before she could be regaled with tales of the young girl’s prom night or how tall the tomato plants were in the woman’s garden.
“So, you say he disappeared? How can you sell his house?” She felt a little guilty for being a bit rude, but she had asked the woman for an explanation after all.
“He went away for another one of his trips. He called them his ‘sabbaticals’.” Mary Jane seemed to take no offense with her interruption. “I knew it right away, because Anna was so downcast. She always got that way when he left town. This last time he never came back.”
“Was he doing any special research? Did anyone even try to look for him?”
Danielle suddenly had visions of him coming home in the middle of the night and crawling unexpectedly into her bed. Just as she began to consider the idea that scenario might not be all too unpleasant, her new acquaintance answered in a matter of fact voice that interrupted the fantasy.
Through Ancient Eyes (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 2