Page 63 of Night Falls on Predicament Avenue
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He was definitely limping. Yet she didn’t see any injury that would have created what appeared to be bloodstains on his clothes.
“Floyd, I—”
“You got to run, miss.” His voice was deep. His words held no emotion, neither urgency nor concern.
“Pardon me?” Effie dug her nails into the railing.
“Run.” He looked over his shoulder for a quick moment, and when he turned back to her, the ominous look in his eyes matched the one Effie had seen in his mother’s. There was a glint of malevolence. Of darkness. “Do you know how to run?” His question sliced through her like the blade of a killer silencing his victim. “If you do, then run.”
Frozen, Effie stared as Floyd turned and lumbered away, calmly bending over to pluck a dandelion and then stuff it in his pocket. As he did, the yellow blossom popped off its stem and landed in the grass, its face staring at Effie as though the blossom knew it was dead even before it hit the earth.
Floyd Opperman.
Yes. He would probably be a frequent visitor of his mother’s property on 322 Predicament Avenue. If Floyd had an attachment to it, then of course Mabel Opperman would be protective over the place.
His warning to run? He had seen Polly—maybe Effie too—the night of the woman screaming. The night Effie’s world tilted off its already precarious axis and threatened to plunge into the unknown. He had probably been the one to attack her in Polly’s room!
The bloodstains—if that was what they truly were—on his clothes? They could be Isabelle’s. He would know where he’d taken her body. He would know what had happened to—
“Baby Cora!” Effie breathed.
“What’s that?” Her brother Charles came from behind her, causing Effie to yelp and twirl in fright.
Collecting herself, Effie reached for Charles and pulled him into a quick uncustomary hug.
Charles’s eyes widened, and he drew away from her. “What is wrong with you?”
“Charles, I need you to watch Polly.”
“Where’re you going?” Charles called after Effie as she raced down the steps, trying not to trip over her dress that tangled about her feet. She was wearing house slippers, and she didn’t even care.
“I’ll be back!” She waved her hand over her shoulder as she ran in the direction where Floyd had disappeared.
This was what Anderson would do were he here, she was sure of it. And there was no time to try to find help or to reason through the dangers involved. If the baby was still alive, Floyd Opperman might lead her right to Cora. Images of returning the baby girl to her father flashed through Effie’s mind.
Effie ducked under branches as she pushed her way into the woods. Floyd hadn’t taken the main walk or gone by way of the cobblestone street. Instead, he had gone into the woods, and now Effie struggled to find his path. She knew the direction he was headed. Knew it was at least a mile away through the woods if he was going to Predicament Avenue. Her feet sank into a mud puddle hidden by dead leaves still wet from the spring rains. The mud seeped into her shoes, and she could feel the moisture hit her toes. Branches clawed at her hair, pulling it from its simple yet tidy roll and leaving it to trail down her back and tangle.
She was out of breath and filthy by the time she caught sight of Predicament Avenue through the trees. She hadn’t seen Floyd once, and as she pushed her way through the brambles, she debated the wisdom of her actions in chasing after him. But every question was answered by the recollection of the man who had broken into Polly’s room, and by the knowledge that,somewhere, Anderson’s baby girl was without her father and now most likely without the woman who, for better or worse, had been her caregiver.
Effie stumbled against a tree, palming its bark as she caught sight of the gravestones through the trees. The old cemetery. Though it was mostly forgotten now, the place remained a bold statement, reminding Effie of death’s shroud, one that was moment by moment lowering over her.
Isabelle Addington, Anderson’s wife, Laura, Polly, now maybe baby Cora too?
Effie pushed forward. She stretched out her arm to hold back a branch covered in thorns and green buds promising to be wild roses—a bush that should exemplify beauty, but instead infected the woods around them, an invader that was uncontrollable.
Not unlike death.
When Effie reached the clearing, she ducked down behind a tall grave marker that tapered into a cross at its top. It was covered in moss, the side facing her boasting the name of a child no more than two years old who had died during the war. The year 1863 was not so long ago. Less than fifty years. This child would have been the age of her own mother. Life had not been a friend to this young one.
She turned her attention to the house that loomed ahead. The sky was growing gray, and Effie’s heart increased its rapid beating as she heard distant thunder. Only an hour before she had been perched in the sun in Polly’s room, listening to her sister’s labored breathing, pretending today was normal, pleasant. Now she was covered in dirt, her feet wet from trudging through the woods, and crouching at the headstone of a dead child while praying desperately to save another.
Movement on the back porch of 322 Predicament snagged Effie’s peripheral vision and she crouched lower behind the marker, knowing full well if someone was looking toward her, she was not fully hidden. But Floyd didn’t look in her direction.Instead, he crossed the porch and reached up to the lion’s head door knocker, the one Polly had kissed the first night Effie had stepped foot on the property.
He lifted it and knocked three times as though there was someone inside to answer. No one did. Effie studied the windows in the farmhouse that sagged as if exhausted after years of abuse and neglect. From the burden of watching people with no family or home come and go through its doors, peer out its windows, and then disappear. Carrying on with their travels? The people of Shepherd always assumed so. But what if they hadn’t? What if Isabelle Addington wasn’t the first to have met her demise here? What if the stains of blood were from more than one victim?
Effie watched as Floyd sank onto the top step of the porch, a smile stretching across his face. A wicked smile.
