Hide and Seek

I was beginning to realize that I hardly recognized the place. For

one thing, I didn't remember any stairwell at all. Maybe there had

been too much going on that day. And I'd been pretty young. Maybe the

place had done some shape-shifting in my memory since then.

I realized it must have been the kitchen where they'd found the

bodies.

Inside, though, the house lost a lot of its ominous quality. Except

for Casey, I think we all were glad of that. You couldn't get too

worked up over fruit-and-berry wallpaper.

I walked past the stairwell into the living room. Casey followed me.

Kim and Steven had a look inside the kitchen.

The living room was pretty empty. A single over-stuffed chair and an

old couch with half the stuffing ripped out of them in tiny chunks and

scattered all over the floor. I wondered if that was mice. Mice would

eat nearly anything, or try to. Then there was another end table, this

one still standing, beneath the window to the rear of the house. If

you opened the shutters and looked out the window, off to the right you

could see the dark weathered boards of the woodshed.

There was a fireplace in the room, and an old set of andirons. A

standing lamp and a single straight-back chair made of pine, with one

of the dowel spines missing. That was all.

Steve and Kim appeared in the doorway. They leaned into the room and

looked around.

"Not many places to hide," said Steve. He turned and deposited a brown

bag with two six-packs of beer inside on the kitchen table.

"We'll find places," said Casey. "There's upstairs, and Clan says

there's a basement. There's a woodshed right outside this window, if

anybody's interested."

Kim made a face. "Yuchh."

"Did anybody find the basement?"

"There's a door off the kitchen." Steve looked slightly em bar

"That's probably it," I told them. "I didn't notice." We went into

the kitchen. The door was built into the internal wall off to the left

opposite the back door to the house, so that the steps ran under the

stairwell. I saw why I hadn't noticed it at first.