The Writing on the Wall: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

simpler than downstairs—two bedrooms and a small bathroom grouped around the lopsided craziness of the hall.
    She took the lamp, explored the bedroom next to hers, and immediately came upon another of the house’s secrets. There was a closet in the middle of the wall, and when she opened it, stuck in the lamp, she could see it ran the entire length of the house. She wasn’t sure, the light wasn’t quite strong enough, but it seemed to end in a small, Alice-in-Wonderland-type hole. Where could it lead? It would open out from the house, not back into the hall. Was there a shed there? Had there once been an attached barn? Why would anyone use a closet to exit the house? Her opening the door must have disturbed the air flow, because a soft panting sound started up at the tunnel’s far end. “Be still!” she commanded, in her best teacher’s voice, and immediately the sound stopped.
    As tired as she was, the core knot of restlessness had its way with her—she woke up at midnight just as she had the first night. Once again, she went out onto the balcony over the porch. Again the shutter began flapping, but she expected that now, it was probably caused by her weight on the planks. With less mist, the moonlight was purer, and the house threw out shadows so fang-like and vicious they looked make-believe.
    The house enjoyed its distortions, but there was one that was genuine. Little motes of chartreuse danced up and down over the lawn, none of them managing to make it higher than the porch, but startling her all the same. Fireflies—it was late in the season for them—and they seemed bigger than the ones at home and many degrees brighter.
    She had an impulse to duck, watching them. It was odd, they were nowhere near her head, but she felt that she must immediately duck. One summer when Cassie was seven, the fireflies had been unusually thick, and they brought her outside to show her how to capture them in a jar. Cassie didn’t want to do this—she already hated any kind of cruelty to animals, even though they promised to immediately release them. Instead, she ran inside to her room, came back out again holding something hidden behind her back. When she had their attention, she brought it out, her tremendous surprise.
    A lite stick, a chemical lite stick she had been given on Halloween and had kept hidden in her bedroom ever since. She shook it back and forth now the way the instructions said, and when the light started glowing it was exactly the same chartreuse color as the fireflies. She held it out to them and waved it back and forth like she was conducting their dance, laughing in joy.
    The memory of Cassie’s lite stick came back to Vera so vividly it was almost staggering—again, she felt thankful for the railing. But it was cold and she felt more than dizziness centered in her stomach, so she wanted to lean over and clutch herself, clutch herself hard. She felt tears forming close to the surface ready to come spilling out—useless tears, sentimental tears, tears that weren’t deep enough to help. She didn’t let herself bend to them— she made the hard little grimace that was enough to hold them in. Later she could cry. Later when the tears came deeper. Later when they could do her some good.
    She changed strategy in the morning. With the foyer stripped, she had planned to start on the front parlor, but on her way there, walking down the hall, she decided to test the velvet wallpaper with a scraper to see if it would come off any easier than the knotty pine. Once she got going, it was impossible to stop, even though the velvet turned out to be a much tougher proposition. With the knotty pine paper, she could sometimes manage to scrape off four- or five-inch pieces and occasionally be rewarded with a foot-long peel. With the velvet, she was lucky to pry off an inch at a time, and it was all about niggling, chipping, trying not to curse.
    She put the radio on—the Quebec station with its soft j’adores and je