Free Shadows by John Saul

it had originally been built as a private residence. “My Lord,” she breathed. “Can you imagine living in a place like that?”
    “It was Mr. Barrington’s house,” Josh told her. “You know—he built Barrington Western Railroad.”
    Brenda gazed blankly at her son. “No,” she replied, “I didn’t know. But obviously you do.”
    Josh grinned, his face taking on an impish look. “I went to the library yesterday and looked it up. The man who built that was named Eustace Barrington, and he used to own practically all the land from here to San Francisco. This was his summer house, and the town started because it took so many people to run the ranch.”
    “Ranch?” Brenda echoed blankly. “I thought you said he started a railroad.”
    “He
did,”
Josh insisted, his tone indicating that he thought his mother was being deliberately dense. “But he made a deal with the government, and got most of the land next to the railroad tracks. That’s when he started the ranch, and just kept buying more and more land. And he got most of it practically free, too, because the only way to get to it was the railroad, and he wouldn’t let the trains stop at anyone else’s land.”
    “And now they think he was some kind of hero, right?” Brenda replied, shaking her head in wonder at the sheer gall of Barrington’s scheme. To her, it sounded like nothing short of blackmail. She put the car back in gear and started up the long drive toward the house. As they passed between the twin rows of redwoods, they could glimpse childrenhere and there, some of them in groups of two or three, but several of them by themselves, sprawled out on the lawn, reading or working over sketch pads. And yet, though the scene looked perfectly peaceful—idyllic, even—Brenda felt an uncanny chill of foreboding creep down her spine.
    It was
too
peaceful.
Too
quiet.
    There was something wrong, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
    But that’s ridiculous
, she told herself.
There’s nothing wrong! You just have cold feet about Josh leaving home!
    Of course, she decided. That was it. There wasn’t anything wrong with the scene. It was just different from Eden, that was all.
    In Eden, if a group of kids this size—and there must have been nearly twenty of them—had been thrown together, raucous games would already have sprung up, and they would be milling around, shouting and arguing with each other.
    The children of the Academy, however, were subdued, absorbed in quiet activities. Even the groups of two or three were quiet, the kids talking softly among themselves.
    Firmly, she put aside her first reaction of instinctive apprehension and drew the car up to the immense Mediterranean-style villa. Two boys, no more than twelve years old, were hunched over a chessboard that was set up between them on the tiled loggia that ran the full length of the front of the mansion and curved around it at either side. The boys glanced up at her, then their gaze shifted to Josh, who was just coming around the front of the car.
    “You the new guy?” one of them asked.
    Before Josh could reply, the front door opened and a somewhat overweight woman of about forty-five appeared. She was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting white cotton slacks and a brightly colored tunic that made her look somewhat thinner than she really was. Her feet were clad in sandals, and around her neck was draped an elegantly patterned silk scarf. Suddenly Brenda felt embarrassed by her own lime-green polyester pants and jacket. Back in Eden, the outfit had seemed like the right thing to wear today. Now it felt like exactly the wrong thing.
    But the woman on the porch didn’t seem to notice her clothes at all. She had started down the steps, her hand outstretched. “Mrs. MacCallum? I’m Hildie Kramer. I was beginning to get a little worried about you.”
    “I—We weren’t really sure how long it would take,” Brenda stammered. “We’re not too late, are we?”
    Hildie