by Bill Bright
A jolt surprised him. A big one. And he’d missed it.
He waited. Another jolt. This time he was ready. He threw himself against the side. Another jolt. He threw himself again. And again.
The casket slid. It tilted.
Epps cried out.
The casket dropped. Hit the ground hard on its side, knocking the wind from Daniel’s lungs.
He’d hoped the casket would break open like an egg. It didn’t. It rolled.
And Daniel rolled with it.
Epps was shouting now.
The rolling increased. Inside, Daniel was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling like a pile of clothes inside Cyrus Gregg’s washing machine. The casket held together, a tribute to the workers with whom Daniel worked. He wished they hadn’t done such a good job.
Over and over, he went, getting sick, wanting it to end. But it didn’t. It picked up speed. He tumbled faster.
Then…nothing.
All was silent, except for the air whistling through the cracks.
Daniel found himself floating, falling, in a wooden cage without windows, doing a slow tumble.
Then, just as he realized that the longer he fell, the smaller his chances of survival, it came to an end.
Suddenly.
Painfully.
Asa gripped a note in one hand and the reins to his coach in the other as it barreled down Centre Street toward Gregg’s casket shop. The sun was going down. On a gray, overcast day like today, he couldn’t see it, but it was time, and the low clouds were getting darker.
The dark day matched Asa’s mood.
Just as he was settling down in front of the fire to read the newspaper, a boy showed up at the house with a hastily written note from Cyrus Gregg.
Asa,
I must speak with you. Utmost urgency. Concerns Daniel.
Cyrus Gregg
Asa’s anger propelled him, despite a throbbing ache in his bad leg. On cold days and wet days, the leg refused to be ignored. Right now, it burned like fire. Asa clenched his teeth and did his best to ignore it. He had other things on his mind.
What has that boy done now?
When he’d left Cyrus Gregg’s office, everything was fine. He’d managed to negotiate what he thought was a working relationship between Daniel and his boss, despite Daniel’s unfounded allegations.
Cyrus Gregg had impressed him. Not many men accused of plotting murder would be so gracious to their accuser. Asa wondered if Gregg would have acted the same had he not been friends with him and Camilla.
“Yes, yes, I think he would,” Asa said under his breath. “That’s the kind of man he is.”
Daniel, on the other hand…Asa was ready to wring his neck. The boy had thoughtlessly cast aside one opportunity after another. Asa was tired of it. He had run out of patience.
Trickling water roused Daniel. With a moan, he lifted his head. It felt wet. And his entire left side too. One by one his senses began returning and making reports. The reports were not good.
His insides were scrambled. His head felt like it had exploded. He was wet and shivering.
He hurt everywhere. But pain meant he was alive!
He tried to sit up. His hand splashed in water, and he hit his head on something.
The top of the casket.
Wait.
No, the bottom of the casket.
Daniel took stock of his situation. The casket had landed upside down. It had split open, and the stream was running through it.
He shoved the shell off of him and kicked away a portion of the lid. He managed to sit up. He found himself sitting in a pool in the middle of a shallow stream. The water was freezing. His fall had broken through the ice.
Struggling to his feet, his teeth chattering, he looked up from where he had plunged. Coming down, he remembered it being higher than it was. The cart on the road was unmanned.
A movement upstream caught his eye.Epps. He’d found a trail from the road to the stream and was coming down it.
Epps stopped and caught Daniel’s eye. He shook his head and smiled slyly.
Daniel got the message. He may have thought he’d escaped, but he hadn’t.
With Epps upstream, Daniel turned downstream. He splashed his way out of the water to the slippery, muddy side, looking for some way back up to the road.
He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see Epps slip. His feet flew from under him, and he landed hard on his tailbone and slipped the rest of the way down the slope. He grabbed at branches and dug his heels into the mud in an attempt to slow himself down.
But his momentum was too great. One foot found a rock. Instead of slowing him down, it flipped him over onto his belly. Like a coin deposited into a tray, the slippery path deposited Epps into the river.
He slid across the ice and slammed headfirst into some rocks. He lay motionless.
Daniel couldn’t believe his good fortune. He turned to run before Epps had a chance to get up.
But something stopped him. As badly as he wanted to put distance between him and Braxton’s killer, something deep inside kept him from running away.
He stared at the man lying on the frozen stream.
Epps had yet to move a muscle.
Daniel took a step toward him.
Now another voice inside Daniel spoke up.What if Epps is only acting hurt to draw you in?
What a fool he’d be to walk into the arms of a killer when he had a chance to escape. And he had every right to run, didn’t he? The man had tried to kill him!
Daniel took a tentative step toward the fallen man. Then another. And another.
Epps moaned.
Daniel stopped.
Slowly the killer lifted his head. His head hanging, he took inventory, just as Daniel had, and managed to get up on all fours.
He saw Daniel. Reached for him. He tried to get to his feet but couldn’t seem to maintain his balance. Sliding back down with his back against a rock, he stared at Daniel with glazed eyes. Blood streamed down the side of his face.
“Just give me a minute,” Epps said. “No need to make this hard on both of us. You know you have no place to run.”
Complete sentences. That’s all Daniel needed to hear. If the man could speak in complete sentences, he couldn’t be that hurt.
Daniel turned and sloshed his way downstream as fast as his legs and the terrain allowed. With every step it felt as though someone were hitting him in the head with a hammer.
The door to Cyrus Gregg’s office was ajar. Asa stepped inside. The front room was dark and unoccupied.
“Cyrus?”
“Asa? Thank God, you’ve come. I’m back here.”
The front room had two desks with chairs on one side for salesmen and on the other side for customers. On top of the desks were catalogs of caskets and palls and related funereal items. On the far side of the room was another door, lit by an unseen flickering light.
Passing through it, Asa found a disheveled Cyrus Gregg slumped in his office chair, pressing a towel to the back of his head. His hair was mussed, and his face flushed.
“What happened to you?” Asa hurried toward his friend. Asa had never seen Cyrus with a single hair out of place.
“Daniel,” Cyrus said.
“Daniel?”
Cyrus Gregg blinked, finding it difficult to focus. He nodded. Tears filled his eyes.
“Daniel did this to you?”
As angry as he was with Daniel, Asa had a hard time believing that the boy would assault anyone.
“I suppose I’m to blame,” Cyrus Gregg said.
Asa bent over to get a better look at the back of his friend’s head. Cyrus lifted the towel for him to see. A bump the size of a large walnut had formed at the base of his skull. The towel was red with blood.
“He followed me in here as we were preparing to leave for our meeting with the woodcarver. In retrospect, I should have asked him to wait for me at the wagon.” Cyrus Gregg replaced the towel and winced. “I needed to get some cash to pay the woodcarver.�
�� He motioned to an empty cash box on top of his desk.
Asa put two and two together. “Daniel hit you over the head and stole your money?”
“I’d been meaning to deposit the money in the bank,” Cyrus Gregg said. “I know better than to let it accumulate to that amount.”
“How much was in there?”
Cyrus Gregg looked him in the eyes. “Over five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred dollars!” Asa exclaimed.
“I know, I know. That’s why I say it’s my fault. What young man, seeing that kind of money, wouldn’t be tempted? It was just too much for Daniel.”
Asa rubbed the back of his neck. If Daniel had done this, it was a side of the boy he’d never seen before. “What could he possibly be thinking? Did he really think he could get away with it?”
“I don’t think he meant to leave behind any witnesses,” Cyrus said.
The comment stunned Asa. “Do you really believe Daniel meant to kill you?”
“I don’t know.” Cyrus shook his head sadly. “Is it more likely to think he knew exactly how to hit a man over the head without the possibility of killing him?”
Asa didn’t know what to think. “We need to have someone tend to that. Let me help you up.”
Cyrus stopped him. “I should probably send for a physician.”
“My coach is outside. Let me take you home. It’s not far. Camilla can tend to you while I go for the doctor.”
Cyrus’s eyes quickened. “Now that you put it that way, I can’t think of any better balm than the ministrations of your lovely wife.”
Leaning heavily on his cane, Asa assisted Cyrus to his feet and ushered him to the carriage. A minute later, with the winter wind assaulting his face, Asa transported Cyrus Gregg to his house.
And all the while he wondered what sort of bedevilment could have possibly come over Daniel to get him to commit such a terrible act.
Chapter 13
Daniel shivered uncontrollably as he burst through the front door of the house. He went straight to the fire in the front room. He couldn’t soak the warmth from the flames fast enough.
“Asa? Is that you?”
Aunt Camilla appeared, removing her apron. Her face lit with shock when she saw Daniel. “Good heavens! What happened to you?”
Daniel’s jaw was clenched so tight from the cold he couldn’t answer her. He let his shivering speak for him.
His aunt came halfway toward him, then turned and went back, disappearing down the hallway. Daniel heard cabinet doors opening and closing.
She reappeared with an armload of blankets. Tossing two of them onto the sofa, she unfolded a third and wrapped him up in it. She repeated the process with the second blanket. The third she spread as a seat cover on the sofa.
“Here…sit down.” She guided him to the sofa.
Daniel basked in her mothering. It was as comforting as the fire.
“I’ll get you some hot tea.”
Exhausted, Daniel sank back in the sofa. It felt good to rest, but the warmth felt better. He stood and moved closer to the flames, then had an idea. Getting behind the sofa, he pushed it closer to the fire.
That’s where his aunt found him when she returned. If she objected to his rearranging her furniture, she didn’t voice it.
Setting the teacup down on her Pembroke table, she moved it within Daniel’s reach next to the sofa and perched on the edge next to him.
Daniel drank some tea. The warmth traveled down the back of his throat all the way to his stomach. It was a heavenly sensation.
His aunt looked at him anxiously. He could tell she was trying to be patient.
“Did you have some kind of accident?” she asked.
Daniel tested his jaw. The tea seemed to have lubricated it enough that it was working again. “Is-is Uncle Asa home?”
“No.” She looked at a clock on the mantel. Her eyes widened, as if fearing the worst. “Oh Lord! Was he with you when—”
Daniel shook his head. “Cyrus Gregg—”
“Cyrus Gregg was with you?” She put a hand on his arm. “Is he all right?”
She cared for him! Daniel could see it in her eyes. How could she? How could she not know what kind of man he was?
She might just as well have slapped him.
Daniel steeled himself with another sip of tea. “You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you. Your Cyrus Gregg just tried to kill me.”
“No!”
She pulled back from him. Stared at him, as though he was the monster, not Cyrus Gregg.
Daniel expected as much. It would be a waste of words to try to convince her. And if she didn’t believe him, what chance did he have with Uncle Asa?
All of a sudden, Daniel felt uncomfortable even sitting next to her on the sofa. He stepped closer to the fire and stood, his back to her.
“Daniel, surely there’s some sort of—”
He whirled around. “Explanation? Some sort of misunderstanding? Possibly I misunderstood Mr. Gregg’s intentions when he lured me into a shed and locked the door. Or maybe I misread him when he sicked his two hired hands on me and had me nailed into a casket and carted into the woods to have my throat slit! You’re right—maybe I have misjudged the man. Maybe that’s just Cyrus Gregg’s way of saying he really likes me.”
She stared at him in horror.
A carriage passed by the window.
Daniel ran to the window and pulled back the curtains.
His uncle and Cyrus Gregg rode cozily together like twin oysters in a black shell.
The sight of them together threw Daniel into a turmoil of indecision. His instincts told him to run. He’d listened to them, done it their way, and it had nearly got him killed. He had no friends here.
Daniel pulled the blankets off his shoulder and threw them onto the sofa next to his aunt.
“Daniel?”
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t have time to. A single thought possessed him. He had to get out of the house.
No more talking.
No more listening to reason.
There was only one person he could trust. Only one person who could save him, and that was himself.
His foot was on the first step of the stairs when a plan began to take shape in his mind. By the second step the plan had clarified enough for him to reverse his course.
His aunt was looking out the window now. “Good. It’s your uncle and Cyrus Gregg. We can all sit down and clear this up.”
Daniel wasn’t listening to her. He grabbed the two blankets from off the sofa and vaulted up the stairs, taking them two steps at a time.
Halfway down the hallway he stopped long enough to open a cabinet and grab a handful of candles and a tinderbox.
In his room he tossed the candles and tinderbox and blankets onto the bed. Dropping to his knees, he retrieved a haversack from beneath the bed. Next he grabbed handfuls of clothes and began stuffing them into the haversack.
He could hear the front door open.
“Camilla,” Uncle Asa called. “Cyrus needs medical attention. He’s been hurt.”
“Hello, Camilla,” Cyrus said weakly.
“Oh dear!” Aunt Camilla cried. “Let me see that!”
Daniel threw the candles, tinderbox, and a small utility knife from the bedside stand into the haversack. He tried to stuff the blankets in, but after the first one fit only halfway, he pulled it out and tied the haversack closed.
Downstairs the voices had turned to mumbles until—
“Daniel’s here?!” Uncle Asa bellowed.
“Upstairs,” Aunt Camilla said. “He’s had some kind of—”
“You-you saw him?” Cyrus Gregg asked.
Daniel rummaged under his bed, feeling with his hand until he found a length of rope.
“Yes, I’m here, you deceitful, lying murderer,” Daniel said more to himself than anyone else. “And how I’d love to see the expression on your face right now, but I think I’ve just run out of time.”
Uncle
Asa’s cane sounded on the stairway with surprising speed.
“I’ve said it before,” Daniel murmured to himself, “it amazes me how fast you can move when you’re motivated, Uncle. Why is it that I’m always the one doing the motivating?”
He slung the haversack over his shoulder, grabbed the blankets and the rope and double-checked that his recorder was in his waistband. The last check was second nature to him now. It was there. His trustworthy friend. Through it all, it was still with him.
The steps on the stairs were louder now. And it was more than just Uncle Asa.
Daniel ran to the window and opened it. A blast of cold air greeted him.
The tree that had been his stairway of escape was gone, courtesy of Uncle Asa. Daniel couldn’t help but wonder if his uncle had foreseen this day. Until today he would have dismissed with a laugh the idea that his uncle could be involved with anything connected with murder. But then, until recently, he would have done the same with Cyrus Gregg.
Daniel tossed the haversack, blankets, and rope out the window. He threw one leg, then the other, over the sill and ducked to clear his head.
He could hear his uncle charging down the hallway. Daniel looked back just as he appeared in the bedroom doorway. Their eyes locked.
“Daniel Cooper! Don’t you dare!”
Daniel dared. He pushed off and felt a rush of air, followed by a bone-jarring landing. He rolled, ending up on his back, looking up at the window.
His uncle’s head appeared. “Daniel Cooper, get back up here! You have a lot of explaining to do!”
Daniel got to his feet and gathered his things.
“Do you hear me?”
Throwing the haversack over his shoulder, Daniel backed away from the house.
In the window frame, next to his uncle, a tight-lipped Cyrus Gregg appeared. His eyes flashed with anger.
Daniel didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore.
Not Cyrus Gregg.
Not Uncle Asa.
Not Aunt Camilla.
Tucking the blankets under his arm, he turned his back on all of them and ran.
Chapter 14
Darkness covered the earth by the time Asa Rush returned home, unhitched and fed his horse, and hobbled toward the house. With nightfall, the wind had turned nasty, finding all sorts of slippery ways to get past his defenses and chill him.