The Betrayal (15 page)

His round face bright scarlet, his enormous stomach heaving, his mouth gaping open, he laughed and laughed.

Loud, helpless laughter.

Maddened by his triumph, Matthew would laugh without stop for the rest of his life.

Ezra Fier dug his bootheels into the horse's sides and urged the old mare on. Low branches and shrubs brushed against his worn leather breeches. Ezra kept his eyes straight ahead.

Twenty-one now, a slender young man, Ezra had his mother's straight black hair and broad forehead and his father's thoughtful eyes.

As he rode through the thick brush, Ezra thought of his father and his aunt Mary, and his bitterness grew.

My poor father, he tried so hard to keep us alive in this lonely wilderness. He worked so hard to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths.

But he was never the same after that strange night, my last night at Great-Uncle Matthew's farm.

Ezra remembered that night as one might view a faded photograph. He could picture the young man
Jeremy Goode. Something bad had happened to Jeremy Goode. Aunt Mary had started to scream. Great-Uncle Matthew had started to laugh crazily.

And then Edward—Ezra's father—had pulled Ezra away, pulled him into the night, away from the farm, along with Aunt Mary.

Ezra had been only six. But the frightening memories of that night haunted him still.

As he rode through the thick woods to his Great-Uncle Matthew's farm, the bitterness of the past fifteen years washed over him, blanketing him in darkness despite the dappled gold of the bright sun filtering through the trees.

Edward had died of exhaustion, still a young man. Ezra's Aunt Mary had never recovered her senses. She would go for weeks without speaking, then suddenly declare, “I am a witch! I am a witch!”

Often Mary would stare out into the trees for hours on end. “Is Jeremy coming?” she would ask in a pitiful small voice. “Is Jeremy coming soon?”

Ezra took care of his aunt after his father's death. Then, one horrible afternoon, he had found Mary floating facedown in the pond behind the small cabin they had moved to. She had drowned herself.

Now I am alone, Ezra thought, after burying Mary beneath her favorite beech tree.

Thanks to William Goode, I am alone in the world.

The Goodes cursed my family.

The Goodes ruined our lives.

And now it is up to me to pay them back.

But where to begin? Where can I find out if any Goodes remain in the Colonies?

Ezra needed information to start his angry quest for revenge. Strapping his few possessions on his back and abandoning the small cabin in the woods, he returned now to Matthew's farm.

As the farmhouse came into view, Ezra urged the exhausted horse on, kicking its sides, whipping its neck with the worn leather reins.

I remember it, he thought, gazing at the two-story house in wonder and surprise. I remember that tool-house at the edge of the garden. And that little house on the far side of the pasture—that was
my
house!

His heart pounded with excitement.

Are Matthew and Constance still here? he wondered.

As he rode closer, his excitement faded to disappointment. The pasture was high with overgrown weeds. There were no cows or sheep in sight. No crops. No bales of wheat or straw. The garden was barren and weed choked. Brambles and weeds stretched across the unplowed field.

The farm hadn't been worked in years, Ezra could see.

Did Matthew and Constance die? Did they abandon the farm after Father, Aunt Mary, and I left?

Eager to solve the mystery, eager to gain the information he needed to begin his quest for revenge against the Goodes, Ezra jumped down from the horse.

His legs ached from the long ride as he made his way to the front door. He took a deep breath. And knocked.

Silence.

The whisper of the wind through the shimmering trees was the only reply.

He knocked again. “Is anyone home?” His deep voice echoed strangely in the empty yard.

Ezra pushed open the door. Stepping inside, he found the front room dark and cold, despite the warmth of the afternoon. A layer of dust had settled over the furniture, making everything appear ghostly and unreal.

“Anyone home?” Ezra called loudly.

The floorboards creaked under his boots.

This room hasn't been used in years, he realized, rubbing his hand over a table, making a long smear in the covering of dust.

He had come so far, driven the horse so hard. He had been so eager to find his great-uncle, to speak to him, to hear the story of the Goodes, to learn where he could seek his revenge.

He had come so far to find only dust and silence.

“No!” Ezra cried. “I will find what I need in this dark old house!”

He began a rapid, determined search of all the rooms. The dining room was as gloomy and dust covered as the sitting room. In the common room two field mice gazed at him from the barren hearth, as if he were intruding in their domain.

Retracing his steps, Ezra moved quickly back toward Matthew's study, his features set in a disappointed frown.

Perhaps Matthew left some papers, Ezra thought hopefully. A journal or diary. Something that will tell me what I need to know.

The wooden door had become warped.

Ezra struggled to pull it open. It wouldn't budge.

“I cannot give up!” he cried. “I must see what lies behind this door!”

He sucked in a deep breath, grabbed the edge of the door, and pulled. With a burst of strength he finally managed to slide it open partway.

Breathing hard, he peered inside—and gasped.

Ezra stared in amazement. At first he didn't believe his eyes.

The opening was covered by a wall of stone!

Ezra pulled the study door open a little farther.

“What on earth!” he exclaimed, scratching his dark hair. The room had been completely walled in.

Gaping in astonishment in the dim light, Ezra saw that the stones had been piled one on top of another but not cemented together.

“What I am looking for must certainly be on the other side of this strange wall,” he said. The sound of his voice reassured him.

He reached for a stone and attempted to pull it away.

It was then that he heard the scratching sound.

He lowered his hands.

The scratching continued, low and steady.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

More field mice? Ezra wondered, listening hard.

No. The sound is too regular, too steady.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

What is making that sound?

With renewed energy Ezra began pulling the heavy stones out of the wall and tossing them down on the floor behind him.

Dust flew as he worked, choking him, burning his eyes.

The scratching sound grew louder.

Did my great-uncle wall in his own study? Ezra wondered as he worked, pulling the stones away, heaving them behind him.

Did he hide something in here that he didn't want anyone to find?

He could see only darkness through the small opening he had made. With a quiet groan he pulled away more stones.

He worked feverishly for several minutes, thinking about what he might find on the other side, pulling away stone after stone.

“So much dust,” he muttered. “So many stones….”

Blinking, he resumed his back-breaking work—and gasped.

A grinning decayed brown skull leaned toward him from the darkness on the other side of the wall.

Ezra tried to cry out—but he was too late.

The skull slid toward him.

The skeleton's brittle arm slid out through the hole in the wall, and its bony fingers closed around Ezra's throat!

Ezra shrieked and fell backward, stumbling over the stones strewn at his feet.

He landed hard on his back. Stunned, he lay there for a moment, panting and staring up at the hole in the wall.

The skeleton arm was draped over the wall, not moving.

Still breathing hard, his back aching from his fall, Ezra climbed to his feet.

He peered into the opening he had made. The skeleton had merely fallen forward, he realized. It hadn't really grabbed him. But what was that scratching sound? Had the skeleton been trying to break free?

Ezra pushed the skeleton out of his way, raised himself up on his hands, and peered into the room. Too dark in there to see anything.

Grumbling, he turned back into the room, his eyes searching the grayness until he found a candle on a low table. Carrying the candle into the kitchen, he located a tinderbox near the hearth.

It took several minutes of concentrated work, rubbing the kindling together in a hard, fast rhythm, to get a small fire started. Then Ezra was able to light the candle. It flared, then flickered out, then flared again.

Eagerly he returned to the dark walled-in room.

A second skeleton greeted him on his return. This skeleton was seated at a low worktable.

Ezra held the candle close to the grinning skull. From all the decay he couldn't even tell which skeleton was his great-uncle Matthew and which was his great-aunt Constance.

In the yellow candle glow Ezra's eyes came to rest on a document on the table under the skeleton's bony hand. Pushing away the hand, Ezra carefully lifted the brittle papers.

Raising the candle close, he struggled to read the scrawled words on the page. “It's a journal!” he cried. “Written by Matthew Fier.”

Eagerly Ezra read the words on the last page of the journal: