Free Good Lord, Deliver Us by John Stockmyer

the two of them inched
along.
    What she was looking for, Z couldn't
guess.
    Finished with scrutinizing the short
hall, Miss Stewart spent the same ridiculous amount of time in the
living room.
    As far as Z could tell, the only thing
"spooky" about the house was that the girl's footsteps were all
that could be heard. (On crepe soles, Z moved like the fleeting
shadow of the "invisible man," no sound except the squeak of
floorboards underfoot.)
    The living room ... smelled like the
rest of the house.
    Dry.
    Musty.
    The odor ... of old-woman
flesh.
    And ... something else. .... An ...
animal smell. Urine. Wet fur. ..... All smells of long
ago.
    Nor was there anything in the room
they hadn't seen on first glance.
    If you didn't count fuzz
balls.
    Here.
    There.
    Drifting out of corners on the
air-puffs Z made by walking by .....
    That's right! The crazy old woman
who'd lived here had been called the "cat lady."
    Using his own penlight, Z captured one
of the strange "fuzzles," tearing it apart to find it to be mostly
cat fur ...
    Thud! ... the sound of the girl
colliding with Z, Miss Stewart apparently unaware he was there and
walking right into his back.
    Not that Z minded.
(It was something
of a shock, though, to discover what she'd grabbed in order to keep
herself upright!)
    "Sorry," she said softly, smiling up
at him.
    "Dark," Z mumbled, letting her know he
understood.
    It was a little bit later
that Z discovered what he wanted to know. With Miss Stewart across the room
inspecting something by the arch, Z used his light to check the
front door lock ... finding no signs of tampering. If someone was
breaking in like the girl thought might be the case, it wasn't by
the front door.
    Finished with the living room, the
girl motioned Z over, the two of them following the girl's slender
beam through the arch, across the narrow hall, and into the kitchen
at the back: a larger room than Z had imagined.
    The strobing penlight showed: hook-ups
for a gas stove; electric outlets at the back of the space where
the refrigerator had stood; and faded, badly scarred linoleum
counter tops. (Had the nutty, previous occupant been using a
cleaver to chop up cats?)
    Above the counters were old-fashioned
cabinets, their heavy doors mostly open, barren shelves lined with
cracked oilcloth.
    As Z had figured from his
"walk-around" that afternoon, access to the backyard was through
the kitchen, Z crossing the room to discover that no matter what he
did, he couldn't budge the back door. ... Not a fraction of an
inch.
    Why?
    Using his light, Z
discovered that the door had been nailed
shut! Moreover, battened down by someone
with no carpentry skill, round, hammer marks in the woodwork
telling him that; bent nails adding their collaborative
testimony.
    But ... why?
    The only reason Z could imagine was
that the crazy old "cat" lady was afraid of prowlers.
    Backing out of the kitchen, neither Z
nor the girl speaking in the empty old house, the two of them took
a couple of steps down the hall, the girl stopping to twist the
scratched-glass knob on another door, shoving the door in to reveal
the bathroom, the girl pausing in the doorway, Z coming up close
enough behind her to see over her head.
    Perfume.
    Musky. As puzzling a scent on the
fresh, young girl as her age-old smile.
    Taking a step inside, the
girl tripped the stool's handle, water gurgling from the tank, then
hissing in slowly to fill the rust-streaked, narrow-throated bowl.
"I asked the Vice Chancellor to have the water turned on in the
house." In spite of her brave talk about the nonexistence of the
spirit world, Z noticed she was speaking quietly. "I don't mind
doing these jobs, and I don't mind doing them alone, but I try to
get at least this modern convenience."
    Z hadn't thought about the empty
house's water being turned off. Or what that meant to someone stuck
in the house overnight.
    Off again down the hall, they explored
the larger bedroom. Which was ... larger. Nothing else.
    Backtracking, Miss