Read Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) for Free Online

door shut, leaned in and tried to kiss her cheek. “Hey, baby . . .” He turned her face away from the house, toward him. “Let’s not think too big, hunh? Not this year anyway.”
    She smiled, a little guiltily. He moved away from her and stepped into the weeds, calling, “Dave? Where’d you go?”
    “Ben?” she called out. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
    “Why not?” He slapped something on his wrist. “It’ll save them a pitch.”
    He climbed up to the porch, bounced a few times for her benefit, and then grabbed for support. The door, when he was through clowning, was locked, and so were the shutters, tight. Marian watched him disappear around the side of the house.
    He was probably right, she realized: it was the cottage. And yet, hadn’t the ad said something about a large family? She pulled the torn page out of her tote bag, and, yes, that was exactly what it said – “Suitable for large family.” The cottage was small, three or four rooms at most. Besides, who’d attempt to rent a wreck like that? She folded the paper and slipped it back into her bag. “It’s the house,” she said aloud. “That incredible house.” She settled back in the seat and stared ahead, reassured. Her eyes rode along the curves and angles of the house – there was a small shaded porch outside one of the upper rooms – and rested on a huge rounded bay under the west gable. It rose a floor above the rest of the house, isolated, jutting above the water and the opposite shore which was a thin pastel line. And that was it, wasn’t it? – the spine, the focal point. The whole thrust of the house was toward that gable and those blank windows. The closer she looked at those windows, the lovelier and more irresistible the house became. “It’s the house,” she repeated.
    “What’s the house?”
    He startled her; he was standing beside her, outside the car. “Just thinking out loud. See anything?”
    “Nothing,” he said, “sealed tight. I can see all sorts of pos sibilities though. Malaria. Encephalitis. We’re wasting our time, babe.”
    “Maybe it’s not the cottage,” Marian said. “Could be the house, couldn’t it?”
    “In that case, we’re really wasting our time.” He raised his hands to his mouth. “Let’s go, Dave!” he called.
    David came running through the weeds. Ben crouched, ready to cut him off; he grabbed him as he leaped out into the drive, swinging the boy over his shoulder and carrying him squealing with pleasure back to the car.
    Marian tensed; that kind of rough stuff made her nervous. “When you two are through horsing around . . .” she said.
    They climbed in and Ben started the car, saying, “Here goes nothing.”
    David leaned forward between them. “I saw a bike in the weeds,” he said. “A three-wheeler.”
    “Must be kids around,” Ben said over his shoulder.
    “I don’t think so. It was all busted up.” He waited and then added, “There was blood all over it.”
    “No kidding?” Ben said.
    He used his scariest voice. “Dried up blood.”
    Ben shuddered. “Wowee!” he cried. “Think it was some kind of gorilla blood?”
    “Gorillas don’t ride three-wheelers,” David said.
    “Then what’s that coming up behind us?” Ben asked.
    David turned and looked out the rear window. “A twowheeler,” he said, “with training wheels.”
    Marian, staring intently at the upper windows, said to herself, Let it be the house, please let it be the house .
    For some distance the drive skirted the field which must have once been a vast and manicured lawn, terraced as it rose toward the house; there were traces of thin, low retaining walls. To the right, before the woods began, was a narrower piece of open land; formally planted at one time, there was a vague pattern of shrubs and hedges, gone to ruin, surrounding the remains of a delicate summer pavilion. What a shame, Marian thought. And the house, as they drew closer – that was more than a shame: a crime, a genuine old