The Reckoning - Page 169/223

Listening, motionless, nostrils dilated, every sense concentrated on that narrow crack of light, I crouched there. Then, very gradually, I raised the trap, higher, higher, laying it back against the upright of white oak.

I was in a tiny room--a closet, lighted by a slit of a window. Everywhere around me in the dust were small moccasin prints, pointing in every direction. I could see no door in the wooden walls of the closet, but I stepped out of the stair-well and leaned over, examining the moccasin tracks, tracing them, until I found a spot where they led straight up to the wall; and there were no returning tracks to be seen. A chill crept over me; only a specter could pass through a solid wall. The next moment I had bent, ear flattened to the wooden wainscot. There was something moving in the next room!