The Space Between Read Online Free Page B

blue, maybe green, and it stopped, still pointed at the house. It sat there for a half a minute before backing up to point itself in the opposite direction. Isaac squinted through the rain, trying to get a fix on the make of the vehicle. It was no use.
    "Local curiosity," Isaac chuckled. " Gotta love it."
    His hand finally found the umbrella pushed up under the passenger seat. He twisted back around, now adequately armed against the deluge. With a deep breath that soaked his insides with the pervading humidity, Isaac slipped out of the car and popped the umbrella open. He faced this new twist in his life head-on for the first time, separated only by a thick haze of water and wind.
     

Three
    Isaac stood on the front steps of the wrap-around porch. Very little rain was landing on him; the wind came from behind the house and swooped around, pulling most of the drops away in its wake. It was these drops flying across his peripheral vision that gave him pause. The motion of the rain seemed to slow for the smallest fraction of a second. Within that small window of time, Isaac also sensed a change in the air within the space he occupied. It was as if he'd entered an invisible bubble, one that stood outside of the time and space he regularly occupied. Then the feeling was suddenly gone.
    How's that for a grand reception? he thought, and took the final step up onto the porch. He turned around, sure he would see some disturbance in the air through which he had just passed. Of course he did not, and reflecting on how quickly the experience had occurred, Isaac reasoned it was probably just a combination of road fatigue and the weather.
    He turned to face the house again and noticed how the white siding practically glowed in the gloom of the afternoon. It had been painted recently, but there was no mistaking the real wood grain lying beneath that brilliant coat of latex. The bottom edge of each board seemed to follow a natural grain path as well, so it was a good bet that this was the original siding. As a passing thought, Isaac wondered when the house had been built.
    Closing the short distance from the stairs to the door, Isaac dug into his jacket pocket for the set of keys Mick had sent him. He pulled them out and flipped through them casually. There was one key labeled "Barn" while the last two appeared identical and were not labeled at all. He slipped one into the keyed knob and turned, then did the same with the deadbolt a few inches higher on the door. Putting the keys back in his pocket, Isaac turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
    Though he hadn't noticed while outside, it quickly became obvious the house was adorned with a metal roof. Even from the first of two floors he could hear the constant tapping of the rain echoing down the stairwell in front of him and just to the right. It was a sound he hadn't heard in a very long time, not since he'd begged his grandfather to let him camp out in the shed one night while visiting. That was easily twenty years ago, and the memory clung to his thoughts like a wet strand of spider silk, tickling his mood until a smile broke upon his lips.
    Isaac stepped further into the foyer and found a mud bench against the wall, a place where visitors could sit to remove and store their soiled footwear. Surprised by its presence, he glanced off to the left through an open doorway where he could make out the shape of a chair and couch in the shadows. Mick had made no mention of the place being furnished. Was Isaac going to be roaming around a dead person's home, still full of the deceased's possessions? A place that hadn't been lived in for at least ten years, forty if Harold from the restaurant was right? These ponderings sent chills up his spine, down through his arms and legs. It didn't help that the place smelled like it had been empty at least that long. Not a bad or rotten smell, just abandoned.
    He took a few more steps, the noise of his boots against the wood floors