The Dead Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

a smoke. The young woman gave Barbara the disdainful look affected by townspeople who didn’t like college students, and stubbed out the cigarette with the toe of her cheap pump before flouncing through the double glass doors.
    When Barbara reached Thorney Antiques Emporium at the end of the street, she unconsciously slowed down. This was the one old store she really loved, though her friends laughed at her when she insisted on stopping. Two stories crammed with several centuries worth of furniture and bric-a-brac, the shop looked as if it had stood there forever.
    The owner, Mrs. Thorney, was slightly deaf and in some indeterminate period of old age between seventy and ninety. She dyed her hair shoe-polish black and wore it in a twisted cone, pinned to her head, so that it looked like a knob of polished ebony. She was fond of 1960s boldly patterned caftans and 1940s Bakelite jewelry and she called everybody “hon,” though her tone of voice could make that either crotchety or a caress.
    She didn’t like the “college kids,” but made an exception for Barbara, who treated her store and its possessions with respect, and Barbara returned her affection.
    There was no sign of Mrs. Thorney through the front window, but she’d obviously been busy over the weekend. There was a new display, Victorian-themed with an emphasis on white. Clusters of lush white flowers and greenery framed the window and curved around silver picture frames and a gilt-edged porcelain tea service on a wide silver tray. There were carved ivory fans and a few sparkling broaches mounted on a velvet pillow, and a wide-brimmed hat with fluffy white feathers curving around its brim.
    Barbara stared at the montage, oohing and aahing over the various elements and able, as was Mrs. Thorney, to ignore the fact that the flowers were silk, the broaches made of rhinestones, the velvet pillow moth-eaten on one corner, and the band of the hat stained yellow with some long-ago wearer’s perspiration.
    Her eyes flitted over everything, but came back to rest on a photograph in one corner. It was fairly small, maybe five by seven, and black and white with a sepia tone. It was in a silver frame that was tarnishing on its edges. This in no way detracted from the beauty of the young woman depicted, lying full-length on a chaise lounge, her body covered by a filmy-looking white dress with a high-neck. Her raised head rested on a pillow and she clasped flowers in hands folded demurely just below her chest.
    Barbara looked, then looked again. She pressed her face so close to the window that it fogged up and she rubbed away the steam with an impatient hand. The young woman’s eyes were closed, but she knew what color they’d be if they were opened. Watery blue. She’d seen them before. She’d seen them in the halls of her dorm and staring out at her from posters all over campus.
    “Lily!” Barbara rapped on the window, staring from the photo to the street and back again. “It’s Lily Slocum,” she cried to a passing car, but the driver only gave her a strange look and didn’t slow.
    Barbara rushed to the door, but the knob wouldn’t turn. She knocked anyway and repeatedly pushed a grimy buzzer adjacent to the mail slot. “It’s Lily,” she kept repeating, and when Mrs. Thorney finally came to the door, looking angry, then startled, she fell into her arms repeating the same thing over and over.
    “Stop it, girl, take a breath,” Mrs. Thorney said, giving the much larger Barbara a firm shake belied by her small stature and voluminous green robe. “Get a hold of yourself!”
    But Barbara pushed past her and raced to the front window, knocking over a wicker carriage and a tower of moldering books in the process.
    “Hey, stop that!” Mrs. Thorney yelled, but Barbara was already reaching into the display and grabbing the frame. She held it out to Mrs. Thorney with shaking hands, pointing at the young woman.
    “It’s Lily!” she said. “Lily Slocum.”
    Mrs.