The Spirit Wood by Robert Masello Read Free Book Online Page A

grandfather had arranged for the house to be built came as a great surprise to Peter; it meant that the place couldn't possibly be more than fifteen or twenty years old, though it looked as if it had stood there for centuries. And it wasn't just the archaic, jumbled design that gave that impression; it was the dour, dilapidated look of the stone, the way that the fluting on some of the columns appeared to have been worn away by decades of rain and wind, the cracks and crevices in the steps, distinguishable even from across the drive. The casement windows, in black lead frames, appeared to have been set there forever, likeso many blank and unwinking eyes. The doors, two massive black panels—Peter couldn't be sure, but they appeared to be made of some sort of metal rather than wood—had a dull, antique patina to them and looked as if they were no more meant for use than the iron doors of a mausoleum.
    “Your grandfather,” said Nikos, as if the old man were somehow present in the house still, “he was a great man. But yes, you know that?” he asked, half, it seemed, as a question, and half a challenge.
    Peter cleared his throat. “I never really had the chance to meet him. Until a few weeks ago, I didn't even know he lived here.”
    Nikos shook his head sadly while looking at the ground, as if he couldn't understand how such things could occur in a family. As he did so, he uneasily shifted his weight back and forth from one leg to the other, once or twice suddenly stepping backwards to regain his balance. Meg wondered what exactly was wrong with his legs; the pants were so baggy it was impossible to guess.
    “I hope we're not interrupting your work,” she said, thinking he might be in pain and want to go and sit down somewhere. “If it's all right, we could just wander around on our own for a while. There isn't any quicksand or anything to watch out for, is there?”
    The joke was lost, because the term clearly meant nothing to Nikos. “Sand?” he said. “No, there is no sand. Just rocks, down at the water. At the boathouse. Did you want to go down there?” he asked, as if the request was not what he'd expected.
    “Well, no, not particularly,” Meg said, “not if it's a problem, certainly.” She laughed self-consciously and looked to Peter for help. “I don't think I even remembered there was a boathouse.”
    “We just thought we'd spend a couple of hours poking around the place,” Peter stepped in. “Youknow, seeing what my grandfather had built here, how he lived.” He thought a bit of reverence toward his forebear might impress Nikos. “I'd like to get to know him, as much as I can, from looking around the grounds and"—he paused, not sure how Nikos would react, then was suddenly irked with himself for needing a caretaker's approval—"the house itself. We'd like to look over the house, too.”
    Nikos, to Peter's relief, appeared pleased. “Yes, good,” he said. “But can I ask you, can you wait for just another hour or so before you go inside? My daughter, Leah, she's been cleaning, putting things right. I think she would like to finish what she's doing and show you everything the way it should be. Can you wait that long?”
    Peter and Meg raced to assure him that was fine. Meg, for reasons she couldn't exactly pinpoint, wanted to get away from him; at first she'd thought it was concern over the old man's discomfort—funny, she caught herself thinking of him as old, even though he wasn't really—but then she realized it was something else. He was being perfectly pleasant, even accommodating; he'd given her absolutely no reason to take offense or to be uneasy. And yet, she was. She felt, inexplicably, the way she had when she was a little girl and her father had taken her for a pony ride at a carnival. The pony was beautiful, her father had said, the pony was her friend. But when she'd looked into the pony's lowered eyes to judge the safety of climbing onto its back, she'd seen no expression