The Fear Place [antikvár]

Dana expected the Kane house to be high on a headland of the Maine coast, with its roof lifting into the sky and perhaps sea gulls overhead. "A bleak old place, Hke a Scottish castle," her father had described it. She caught a glimpse of dark blue water from the taxi window, but it was lost again behind pines and a shingled house. Leaning across a suitcase, she bent down eagerly, trying to see the shore. "Are we almost there?" "Couple more tums," said her driver. His flat tone discouraged questions, she had foimd already. But now he was asking a question himself. "Expected, are you?" "Oh yes," Dana said. The car took a comer and then a second one, and headed down a narrow road between high bushes, a road that seemed to run straight into water at the end. Then they were in the open, slowing and stopping. The car top cut Dana's view, so all she could see was a sloping shore of scmbby grass and water beyond. And the driver opened the door for her on the land side, so she was out and walking around the car when she saw the house. It didn't lift into the sky. It faced her there across a stretch of water, a sullen mass of gray stone that seemed to grow out of the rocks, with the huge dark roof bearing it down. "That?" she said. And then she was seeing the water in between. "Driver, this cant be the place." "That's the Kane house," he said, nodding toward it, dumping suitcases down beside her. "But it's on an island." "Not all the time," he said. "High tide now, that's what you see. Water runs back out of the inlet here, good days you can walk across dry-shod. Dollar fifty, that'll be." 5 I 'hI I. ! . : ¦ < ' I 1,1 . i-I I, I- . I ; i ¦ ¦