Page 89 of Because I Could Not Stop for Death

When we arrived home, Emily went to her room to write, I was certain, while I went through my daily duties around the house. After I washed the dishes from the evening meal, there was a knock at the back kitchen door.

I opened the door to find a boy no more than ten standing on the back step. The boy handed me a note.

“Wait? Who are you?”

He ran away without looking back.

Willa, I need help.—JY

I stared at the note. “JY.” Jeremiah York.

It was already dark outside. What did Jeremiah expect me to do?

The kitchen door opened and Emily came inside. She smiled at me. “I thought I would bake a cake tonight for Father’s return. He always liked my black cake. It’s quite an undertaking, so I will start...” She trailed off when she saw my face. “Willa, whatever is wrong?”

I handed her the note.

She read it. “This means only one thing.”

“What’s that?” I twisted the hem of my apron.

“We have to go, and we have to go now.” Her tone left no room for argument.

“We should call the police and send them over to the stables. If Jeremiah is in serious danger, the police need to know.”

Emily frowned as if she didn’t like this idea at all.

“We can at least tell Matthew,” I said.

“Fine, I will have the neighbor boy run a note to your Matthew, and then we will leave.”

“He’s not my Matthew,” I said.

She gave me a look that said I was kidding myself. Maybe I was.

Emily sent the note as promised, and she and I snuck out the back door of the house. As we ran through the backyard, I looked up at the clapboard home. I could clearly see Miss Lavinia watching us from her bedroom window. I would hear about that later, and even though our nighttime adventure was Emily’s idea, her sister would blame me for corrupting her again.

The streets of Amherst were quiet. We only passed a wagon making an evening delivery on Main Street. All the shops and businesses were closed. Even the college with all those students was silent.

When we reached the stables, they were even darker than I remembered. With dense forest on one side of the property, a wall of shadows seemed to fall over every inch of the place.

“I wish we had brought Carlo,” Emily whispered.

I wished we had too.

We stepped into the barn, and it was pitch-black inside. There was a lantern hanging from a nail and a matchbook on a board. I struck a match and lit the lantern. It gave off a small four-foot ring of light. Everything beyond that was cloaked in darkness and shadows.

The nearby horses blinked at us.

I held the lantern high. “Jeremiah?”

No one answered.

My stomach tightened. “Emily,” I whispered, “I think we should go to the big house and talk to Mr.Johnson. Let’s find out from him what’s going on before we go too far into the stables. We don’t know who is in here.”

“Mr.Johnson won’t be happy to see us,” she whispered back.

“I know, but that’s better than—”

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