Bentley Little - The Burning

"No problem," Anna May promised. "We're very flexible around here." She patted Jolene's shoulder. "Besides, I know you're a good hard worker. And your mama told me about what a difficult time you're having."

Jolene forced herself to say nothing. If her mother had been blabbing about her situation all over town, there were undoubtedly a dozen different versions of events all currently circulating.

"Let's go out to the Williams place. I've been boxing things up here since seven, and I think it's time to take some of them over. Besides, I can show you what our plans are for the future, and you can help me with a few things I haven't been able to do on my own."

"This sounds like mostly physical labor," Jolene said. "Are you sure you wouldn't be better off just hiring some high school boy?"

Anna May laughed. "No. I want someone who understands the importance of what we're doing. Someone smart I can talk to. Besides, between the two of us, we can lift almost anything that needs to be lifted. If not, there's always George and his dolly. He can be here in a heartbeat."

Jolene was still not sure she'd be any better at this than a muscle-bound teenager, but she didn't say any more, and after they'd loaded eight of the ten packed boxes into the historical society's van and she'd called Leslie to tell her the revised schedule, Anna May drove the two of them to the Williams house.

It was as nice as Jolene remembered it. Chester Williams had died over five years ago, but someone had obviously been keeping the place up. The landscaped flowers were in full bloom, the windows spotlessly clean.

"I'll bet you're happy to have gotten this home," Jolene offered.

"Oh, it's wonderful!" Anna May said enthusiastically. "The Williams estate not only donated the house but everything in it! Combined with our existing archives, plus extra donations, we'll be able to turn this into an authentic eighteen-eighties residence and remake the grounds into a sustainable homestead with native plants. That'll take a while, of course. For now, we're just going to relocate our museum, but our goal is to eventually turn this into a destination-worthy learning experience."

Jolene found herself smiling. And not in a cynical or superior way. She was genuinely caught up in the other woman's enthusiasm and despite her initial dismissive attitude found herself thinking that the Bear Flats museum really could be the crown jewel of the county. She imagined school kids from all of the other mountain communities coming here for field trips, families visiting on weekends.

Anna May unlocked the house's front door, and the two of them carried in the boxes, placing them in the center of the front room. Couches, chairs, a bureau and a coffee table had been shoved against the far wall, and the middle of the room was filled with boxes from previous trips. "We'll get these sorted once everything's moved over," Anna May said. "Right now, I'm just trying to figure where everything's going to go."

Jolene peered down the hallway toward the kitchen.

"Do you want to look around? Go ahead. I'm just going to look through a few of these closets and see if there's anything that can be thrown out. We're thinking of having a rummage sale to

raise money."

Jolene walked through the dining room, the family room, a formal parlor and a study, then checked out the bedrooms upstairs. Like the exterior of the building, the rooms of the house were in perfect shape. It looked like a museum already. By the time she walked back downstairs, Anna May was in the pantry off the kitchen.

Jolene opened a narrow door on the opposite side of the kitchen and saw a series of steps leading down. She flipped a switch next to the door and a light went on.

Anna May emerged from the pantry carrying a notebook.

"What's down here?" Jolene asked, gesturing.

"Like I said, I haven't had time to go over everything in detail. That's one of the reasons I need someone. I'm still going through the closets, but why don't you look around and see what you can find? If you come across anything interesting, call me. Or, if you want, you can start cataloging the items downstairs. Just grab that other notebook on the counter that says Inventory and continue on with the next number in sequence. It's pretty simple to figure out. All you have to do is copy the other examples and put one of those little orange stickers on each item you write down."

Jolene picked up the notebook and a pen, and walked down the steps to the basement. It was chilly and damp, but that was not what made her shiver as she passed beneath the floor of the kitchen. No, it was the feeling of the place, the emotional rather than physical atmosphere. Maybe she'd been conditioned by too many movies, but the vibe here was that of a haunted house, and she found herself wondering exactly where and how Chester Williams had died. Beneath her foot, a stair creaked. Ahead, the far corner of the basement lay in shadow, illumination from the single bare bulb unable to reach that section of the * room. She reached the bottom of the steps and looked * around. She'd been expecting a massive storehouse of C covered furniture and arcane treasures from Williams' t storied travels. Instead she found herself in a medium- sized space only slightly larger than her mother's living room, with a low bare wood ceiling, a dirty wooden floor, a workbench with tools along the west wall and few leftover household items scattered around the » open area in the middle.

Maybe it had been cleaned out before being donated to the historical society.

No. If that were the case, the basement wouldn't have been so dusty.

Most likely, this was an area of the house that simply hadn't been used for years, perhaps decades.

She walked slowly through the dark room, still feeling the strange sense of cold dread that had come over her as she'd descended the stairs. Up ahead, near the south wall, she could see a square outline on the floor.

Was that a trapdoor?

Jolene moved closer, pushed aside a wicker basket. Yes. The light here was dim, but that was definitely a recessed handle lying flush with the wood.

Was there a basement beneath the basement?

If there was, it had not been entered in quite some time. The floor here was covered by a coating of dust even thicker than that in the center of the room. Jolene heard Anna May's footsteps above her. She glanced up at the cobweb-covered ceiling, then looked down at the floor, wondering what was beneath it. She'd never heard of a double basement before and couldn't imagine what the reason for its existence might be, but whatever it was, she had the feeling it was not wholesome.

Wholesome?

What kind of word was that?

She didn't know, but it fit.

Jolene bent down, touched the handle of the trapdoor and jerked her hand away the second her fingers touched the cold metal, her heart pounding. She wasn't brave enough to open it herself, wasn't sure she even had the right to, so she called up to Anna May, and when she didn't get an answer she bounded back up the stairs to the sunlight and the real world. It felt as though she'd emerged from Dracula's dungeon. Windows had never been so welcome. Anna May was indeed in a hallway closet that appeared to be right over that section of the basement, and Jolene explained to the older woman what she had found.

Anna May's face lit up. "Oh, this is exciting! A secret cellar! This is the kind of find I live for." She put down her notebook on a closet shelf and followed Jolene back through the kitchen.

"Do you have a flashlight or something?" Jolene asked. "The basement itself is pretty dark and I'm not sure there's any light ... down there."

"I'll be right back!" Anna May ran out to the van and returned a few moments later with two flashlights. "A good historian is always prepared," she said as she handed one to Jolene.