Phase Shift Read Online Free PDF Page B

the
more I thought about it, the more I was certain I wasn't getting
the whole story from him.
    For me, that settled it. The only way I was
ever going to resolve that conundrum of mine was to get up off my
ass and actually do the research, if for no other reason but to
prove Mr. Stanley Hume's micro-museum a hoax.
    So I bit the bullet and did the research,
which is how I find myself standing on Stanley Hume's front stoop,
waiting for him to answer the door, which he does, after what seems
like eons.
    Stanley greets me affably at the door,
wearing ill-fitted jeans, a Roots sweatshirt, and flip-flop sandals
over white exercise socks—eww! There’s something about socks and
sandals that reeks of old man in retirement villa in Florida. I
swear I would shoot Palmer if he ever wore socks with sandals.
    Stanley invites me in and leads me on an
impromptu grand tour of the house. Crossing the threshold of
Stanley's house is like crossing a threshold in time. Stanley's
mother, it appears, was a woman of bland taste. Stanley, it
appears, is a man of no taste but for that of his mother. Every
wall of the house's interior is covered with something that looks
like bitter mint green. All of the walls are bare, save for the odd
too-large, too-ornately framed oil painting caked with dust. The
house would be perfectly, tastefully decorated—if this were still
the nineteen-fifties, that is.
    In spite of the dust bunnies proliferating
on the floor and hanging from the ceiling and the odd cobweb
spanning the corner of the odd door jamb, the house is immaculate,
and gorgeous, I have to admit. From the original wood work framing
the room entrances and the cranberry and cobalt glass in the front
transom, to the dust and mildew in the air, this house is
definitely a piece of history.
    "What I really wanted to show you was out
back. This way," Stanley says, and starts walking down the narrow
hallway which leads to the kitchen, bath and bedrooms at the back.
Stanley detours into a door under the stairwell which leads us down
a narrow, warped flight of stairs and out to the backyard.
    Near the center of the yard, Stanley had dug
a very large hole, at least three feet deep. "In there," he tells
me.
    I kneel down at the lip of the hole, trying
to eye the stratigraphy of it. Good thing I brought my digging kit.
I lower the canvas sack from my shoulder to the ground and work my
trowel free. "May I?"
    "Please do," Stanley says. He sounds a
little too enthusiastic at the promise of having someone poke
around in what amounts to nothing more than a hole in the middle of
his backyard.
    I swing my legs over the edge of the hole,
gently lower myself down and begin scraping away at the exposed
soil facade. There seems nothing extraordinary about the layers of
soil on Stanley's property, but I already suspected this would be
the case based on my research. Stanely's father, Noel Hume,
purchased the house in 1955. Before that, it had been owned by one
Spencer Prescott, assumedly of Prescott and Prefect fame. Prescott
had purchased the property from John McNabb in the summer of 1932.
McNabb had purchased the property in 1909. Prior to McNabb's
purchase, the land had been a parcel of a one hundred acre farm
which was granted to Lockhart Wheeler in 1860. Around the time of
Wheeler's occupation, addresses were organized into lots and
concessions. Proper street addresses would not have applied until
sometime after McNabb had built the current Hume residence. As near
as I could tell, the Hume residence was built on land which was in
a subdivision somewhere in the north-east portion of the original
farmstead, i.e., in the middle of nowhere.
    I scrape down the sides of the hole and
spray the exposed surface with my handy-dandy water bottle, to
enhance the colours. The first two or three inches are very dark
brown, almost black, very loamy and imbued with grass roots,
typical of most topsoil layers. Beneath this layer, the soil grows
slightly darker, and loamier, but is