Root Cellar

The GPS had stopped working three miles back, where the paved road gave way to gravel. Gideon Edgerly gripped the steering wheel as their sedan bounced through another pothole, the suspension groaning. Beside him, Maura pressed one hand against the dashboard, the other clutching the printed directions from the realtor.

“It should be just ahead,” she said. “Past the stone wall.”

The wall appeared through the bare November trees—fieldstone stacked without mortar, running parallel to the road before turning sharply inward. Gideon followed it, and the farmhouse emerged from the woods like something surfacing from deep water.

The photographs hadn’t lied, exactly. The clapboard siding was white, the foundation stone, the roof slate. But the pictures had been taken in summer, with the fields green and the maples full. Now the house stood surrounded by brown grass and skeletal branches, the nearest neighbor invisible beyond the tree line.

“Forty acres,” Gideon said, putting the car in park. “Just like we wanted.”

Maura didn’t answer. She was staring at the house, her fingers still pressed against the dashboard.

The front door key worked smoothly—the realtor had oiled the lock. Inside, the air smelled of dust and something else, something mineral and cold. Their footsteps echoed on the wide-plank floors as they moved through the empty rooms. The living room. The dining room. The kitchen.

Gideon stopped in the kitchen doorway.

The room was large, running the width of the house, with windows facing east and south. An old cast-iron sink stood beneath one window. A brick chimney rose through the center of the space where a wood stove had once been. And in the floor, between the chimney and the sink, was a door.

Not a trapdoor, exactly. More like a section of flooring that had been cut and fitted with iron hinges and a recessed handle. The wood was darker than the surrounding planks, worn smooth by use.