Chapter 31 - The Figure at the Gate
The flame flickered against the cool draft, its pale reflection wavering across the dark glass of the bay window. My heart hammered against my ribs with an intensity I hadn’t felt since the trial concluded.
I snapped the lighter shut, shoved it into my trouser pocket, and bolted from the study.
"Mr. Vance?" Nora’s voice drifted from the kitchen as I blew past the hall archway, but I didn't stop.
I threw open the heavy oak front door and vaulted down the stone steps. The crisp afternoon air bit at my face as my dress shoes tore across the manicured lawn. Fifty yards. Thirty yards. My eyes stayed locked on the old stone pillar where the shadow had been resting just moments before.
By the time my hand slammed against the cold wrought iron of the main gate, the road was completely empty.
A winding ribbon of asphalt stretched north toward the forested ridge and south toward the highway, desolate under the canopy of swaying pines. The only sound was the dry rattle of autumn leaves skittering across the road surface.
"Julian!" I shouted into the wind, my voice breaking on the syllable. "Julian!"
Nothing replied except the caw of a lone crow perched on the telephone wire above.
My breath misted in ragged plumes as I dropped to one knee on the shoulder just outside the gate. There, pressed deep into the damp earth where the grass met the asphalt, was a fresh footprint. A heavy, treaded boot. And right beside it, deliberately placed atop a smooth river stone, sat a single spent wooden match—its head struck clean, snapped neatly in half.
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It was Julian’s old calling card. Whenever we had played hide-and-seek across our father’s hunting grounds as boys, Julian would leave a broken matchstick at the bases of trees to let me know I was getting warmer.
My dead brother had stood here not three minutes ago.
