Hold The Dark: A Markhat story Read Online Free PDF Page A

Hoobin place.
    It wasn’t far. My feet sent up a fresh pair of aches to let me know what they thought about that judgment, but I waved at my audience and moved on.
    Maybe, thought a small petty corner of my mind, maybe they’ll have supper done by now.
     
    I found the Hoobin place, banged on the door, waited while windows flared with sudden lights, dogs began to bark and I heard the sound of tramping feet behind the door.
    A panel opened in the door, and a pair of suspicious blue eyes regarded me from a cautious distance.
    The eyes went wide.
    “The finder!” shouted a Hoobin. Young Borod, I decided. “Ethel, it’s the finder!”
    Latches clicked, and bolts clacked, and I counted the release of four different locks before young Borod flung the massive door open and hauled me indoors with a frantic beefy handshake.
    His face was aglow, but that didn’t last long.
    “You did not find our Martha, no?” he asked.
    “No,” I said. “Not yet.”
    Ethel came clambering down the stairs to the right of the door. He was wiping his mouth with a napkin. The other brothers were fast behind him.
    “Finder,” said Borod. “It is after Curfew. What is the matter?”
    I blinked in the light. My shoes scraped on clean white tiles.
    “Nothing,” I replied, trying not ogle. Tiles on the floor, walls of smooth new plaster, doors framed out in oak and cherry. “I’ve been out asking around, came up with a few more questions for you and your brothers.”
    “After Curfew?”
    I shrugged. Let them think I was Markhat the fearless finder, heedless of the halfdead. That was better than telling them I lost track of time and, by the way, I could use a bite of supper.
    “Finders can’t keep banker’s hours. Forgive me for interrupting your meal.”
    “You will join us of course,” said Ethel. “We talk and eat, no?”
    I nodded, and there was maybe just a ghost of a grin on his wide burn-marked face.
    “Yes,” I said, and Ethel turned and led the way.
     
    “Martha did all the cooking,” said Ethel. I suppose he was apologizing for the rudeness of the fare. He need not have, and I told him so.
    Roast beef, hot and plentiful, and steaming butter-filled sweet potatoes too. The Hoobins ate with the gusto one normally doesn’t see outside barnyards at feeding time. I noted that “leftovers” were a concept unknown to our brave New People as every morsel of every dish quickly vanished.
    Borod pushed back his empty plate and belched, and Disel caught him an open-handed slap on the back of his head. Ethel returned the blow to Lowrel with about double the force, and then everyone laughed, punched each other in the shoulder and stood.
    “We talk in great room,” said Ethel. He nodded at Borod, who sighed and set about clearing the table.
    And to the great room we went.
    We went down a hall filled with doors, two on each side, and then down the stairs, and then through a set of tall double-doors that creaked and screeched as they opened. Disel and Lowrel darted about lighting lamps, and Ethel motioned me toward a chair.
    “Nice room.” I meant it. They’d apparently gutted the bottom two floors of the building, just to make this one room. The walls were stone and plaster, rough-hewn beams spanned the far-off ceiling, and a monstrous soapstone fireplace and hearth covered most of one wall.
    I sat. The Hoobins took their places. Three chairs were empty—one for hapless Borod, who had garnered kitchen duty, a dainty one that must have been Mama Hoobin’s before she’d had her stroke and a well-upholstered cherry-framed Regency style recliner that I knew instantly was Martha’s.
    Ethel’s chair wasn’t central to the fireplace. Martha’s was. And beside her chair sat a small Regency claptrap table, its polished round top covered with a neat assortment of sewing goods, a pair of expensive gold-rimmed reading glasses and a thick leather-bound black book with gilt-edged pages.
    Ethel saw me look and nodded.
    “Martha’s,”