I peered through the trees. Off to my left a building stood where the land dipped. Of course we couldn’t just walk to it. Oh, no. We had to negotiate a barbed wire fence first. Jack walked under the lowest wire and stood wagging at us from the other side.
The fence posts tilted a little so that the wire sagged encouragingly. I shoved at a couple of the posts, but their off-plumb angle was deceptive—they were still firmly embedded in the rocky ground. I pushed down the top strand of wire, but it was too far off the ground for me to swing my leg over without endangering portions of my anatomy that were extremely reluctant to encounter barbed wire.
I looped Emily Ann’s leash over one of the posts and pushed down on the second strand of wire and up on the top strand. My right foot went through to the ground on the other side. I had to let go of the top strand to bend over and slide my body through, and my shirt caught on a barb and ripped. I cursed as I wobbled, balancing on the right foot as I brought the left past the barbs. I thought I was all the way through when I realized that my hair, short as it was, had tangled with a barb. The time it took to free it gave me a chance to think about when I had last had a tetanus shot. When I was finally through, I held up the bottom strand as far as I could and coaxed Emily Ann through. She might have been able to leap over the top, but I couldn’t take a chance on her getting ensnared by the wire.
Throughout my negotiations with the fence, my heart pounded as hard as when I had been running. My imagination created vivid scenes in which I heard a shot a split second before being pierced by a bullet. The short tragic film ended with the villain burying me in these woods and never being caught, while Kay spent the rest of her life wondering where I was.
The building I'd seen proved to be an old barn, not very large, built into the side of the hill so that you could enter either floor from ground level. The foundation, made of the same stone as Bob’s house, supported boards weathered to silver.
I took a deep breath and listened. Birds still sang their morning chorus, in the distance traffic hummed, and Jack shuffled through fallen leaves as he sniffed at the base of the upper-level door. Both dogs were calm, so I went over and pulled at the door. The hinges gave a loud creak but the door opened easily.
Inside, slanted morning light streamed through two windows high in the wall as well as gaps between the boards. A drift of leaves and a few stray pieces of paper—some faded gum wrappers, an old flyer for someone’s gardening business—decorated the floor. Jack went to a stack of hay bales piled near one wall and gave them a searching examination with his nose. They looked old; dull and faded and not fragrant like I think of hay being. Jack gave a huge sneeze; they must be full of dust.
A sudden rustling in one corner riveted both dogs’ attention, and Jack hopped over to check out the source of the noise. He sniffed and snuffled, while I held my breath, fervently hoping that no mice—or worse—would come running across the boards toward me. Whatever it was remained hidden, and Jack gave up the search to follow his nose across the floor to the wall.
A narrow, steep staircase went down into the gloom below. Jack walked his front feet down a couple of steps, stopped, and looked back at me. “We’ll explore another time,” I told him. “Right now it's dark down there and I don’t have a flashlight and that guy is following us. You’re the one who wanted to run away from him, remember? We need to get going.”
Emily Ann sneezed delicately from the position she’d taken beside me.
“Come on, let’s figure out how to get out of these woods,” I said.
Jack came back to stand by me. I turned toward the door. Jack pricked his ears and growled. He was looking toward the stairway that led into the lower part of the building. Before I could react, hinges creaked and more light flooded in as the lower door was opened.
Except for the intake of breath that caught in my throat, I was frozen in place. The dogs became statues. Jack gave the faintest of growls, but the pounding of my heart was as likely to be heard.
The door downstairs creaked again. I imagined the man in the sport coat and slacks holding the door and looking around. A heavy gun gleamed in his hand. Just when I thought I would scream with fear and frustration, the elderly hinges spoke once more. The light dimmed. Silence from below. He must have gone back outside.
I wanted nothing more than to dash out the door we’d come in, but we would run right into him. I looked around hastily. I could climb down the ladder and hide in the space he’d already seen, but I couldn’t leave the dogs. I flung myself behind the bales of hay that Jack had inspected earlier. Wedged my back between the bales and the wall and drew up my knees. Emily Ann pressed against my side. Jack scrambled between my knees and my chest. We’d barely squeezed into place when the door into the upper level creaked. I felt as much as heard the heavy footsteps on the wooden floorboards.
The footsteps came closer and my nose began to tickle.
It must be a nearly uncontrollable human compulsion to sneeze when you’re hiding. I've always been skeptical when someone in a book or movie just has to sneeze at the worst possible time. Now I realized it was a cliché based on true human experience. Of course, surrounding oneself with dusty hay might be a contributing factor.
I held my breath. I could hear his breathing across the few feet that separated us. I caught the mingled scent of aftershave and cigarette smoke. I wiggled my nose to distract it. Didn’t help. My right arm was around Emily Ann’s shoulders. I moved just enough to pinch my nostrils shut. That slight movement made the floorboard creak.
Absolute silence. Then one more heavy tread thudded on the old floorboards. What should I say when he found me? I hoped I could come up with something wittier than “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” Or would he just shoot me before I had time to say anything? Then on the other side of the hay bales little paws scrabbled and a tiny voice squeaked.
From a point far too close to our hiding place, the intruder sucked in his breath and jumped back, hitting the old floorboards with a resounding thud. I clenched my eyes shut, praying for him to go crashing through to the floor below. No such luck. He said loudly, “Shit! Stupid mouse.” Jack and Emily Ann and I held our breath.
And then a dog barked outside, not far away. To my ears it didn’t sound like either Jack or Emily Ann, but it diverted our follower. His footsteps hastened toward the door. Hinges creaked, and again as the door banged shut. Silence held the barn.
Gradually the pounding of my heart slowed and my breathing became that of a person sitting down instead of a marathon runner or a fleeing Victorian heroine. The sneeze must have been scared right out of me, for now my nose was fine. A new discomfort edged into my awareness—the hay bales were making me itch. A sweatshirt and jeans were scant protection from their prickliness.
It took a while to let go of the dogs. I finally loosed my arms from around Jack and Emily Ann and whispered, “Okay, guys, I think we can get up now.”
They both shook themselves hard when they got outside the confines of the bales; the whipping sound of Jack’s long ears seemed thunderous. I froze again, but the man did not reappear. My knees had locked and I had to crawl out of my cocoon and lean on a bale to hoist myself back to my feet. I dusted pieces of hay off my clothing and scratched the itches that I could reach. Finally we crept to the door.
I pushed it open a couple of inches to peek outside and listen. Other than the normal—what I assumed were normal—bird and breeze noises the morning was quiet, and neither dog seemed to hear anything untoward. I trusted their hearing far more than my own. We slipped outside.
A path beaten in the withered grass encircled the barn. I turned to the left and tramped down the hill that the structure was built into. Reaching the front corner, I took a cautious peek and saw that an old road ran past double doors in the center of the barn’s lower level and continued in the direction of Bob’s house. It was patchy with grass and weeds and couldn’t have had a tractor using it for years. Walking the road would be easier and faster than continuing haphazardly through the woods. Also, given my level of navigational skills, if I followed a road I was more likely to actually arrive somewhere.