Chapter 25. Ezra shrieked and fell backward, stumbling over the stones strewn at his feet.

Ezra shrieked and fell backward, stumbling over the stones strewn at his feet.

He landed hard on his back. Stunned, he lay there for a moment, panting and staring up at the hole in the wall.

The skeleton arm was draped over the wall, not moving.

Still breathing hard, his back aching from his fall, Ezra climbed to his feet.

He peered into the opening he had made. The skeleton had merely fallen forward, he realized. It hadn’t really grabbed him. But what was that scratching sound? Had the skeleton been trying to break free?

Ezra pushed the skeleton out of his way, raised himself up on his hands, and peered into the room. Too dark in there to see anything.

Grumbling, he turned back into the room, his eyes searching the grayness until he found a candle on a low table. Carrying the candle into the kitchen, he located a tinderbox near the hearth.

It took several minutes of concentrated work, rubbing the kindling together in a hard, fast rhythm, to get a small fire started. Then Ezra was able to light the candle. It flared, then flickered out, then flared again.

Eagerly he returned to the dark walled-in room.

A second skeleton greeted him on his return. This skeleton was seated at a low worktable.

Ezra held the candle close to the grinning skull. From all the decay he couldn’t even tell which skeleton was his great-uncle Matthew and which was his great-aunt Constance.

In the yellow candle glow Ezra’s eyes came to rest on a document on the table under the skeleton’s bony hand. Pushing away the hand, Ezra carefully lifted the brittle papers.

Raising the candle close, he struggled to read the scrawled words on the page. “It’s a journal!” he cried. “Written by Matthew Fier.”

Eagerly Ezra read the words on the last page of the journal:

I still laugh the hideous laugh without cease, the laughter an unending torture for me and for Constance. But the wall is in place, and at last we are safe from the Goodes and their treachery.

Constance attempted to escape. The poor woman did not realize that the wall is for our safety. I had to hit her over the head and render her senseless so that I could put in place the final stones and secure our safety.

We are now as safe as we were in the old days in Wickham, and will remain safe from the Goodes for the rest of our lives.

The manuscript ended there.

Ezra set it down gently.

The Goodes, he thought.

The Goodes have destroyed my family. I will not rest until I find them. The Goodes must pay for their evil.

His heart pounding, Ezra took a step back.

The skeleton seated at the table suddenly creaked and toppled backward. In the dim light Ezra spied a strange object at its neck.

Holding the candle in front of him, Ezra leaned over the skeleton and lifted a round silver amulet from around the neck bone. He stared at the tiny three-toed claw in the center of the disk. Words were inscribed on the back of the medallion, but Ezra could not make them out in the dim light.

With a wistful sigh Ezra slipped the cord around his neck and adjusted the amulet over his chest. “My only inheritance,” he said bitterly.

A few moments later he was out of the cold, dark house, walking into the sunshine, thinking about the village of Wickham, thinking about the Goodes, driven by his bitterness toward the sweetness of revenge.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20