Free Eden's Eyes by Sean Costello Page B

to its summit, shone the flashlight into the high, cobwebby recess above him, and cursed. It was going to be one of those tough, hands-over-your-head, pain-in-the-ass chores, and for a moment he considered just saying to hell with it. But Eve had complained time and again that she had trouble seeing when she went in there for her bottled preserves, which occupied a triple row of dusty pinewood shelves at the top of the staircase. She was afraid she'd roll too far forward sometime when she was at home alone and topple down the steep series of steps to the moldering cement floor below. The house was old, the stairs rickety, and Bert knew she was right. It would be a bad way to go.
    It became quickly evident—after holding the flashlight in one hand, a Robertson screwdriver in the other, and balancing his knees against a ladder rung—that he was going to need some help.
    "Eve?" he said mildly. "Would you come over here and hold the flashlight a minute, please?"
    There was the crinkly sound of her hands leaving the sewing pattern, the dry squeak of the wheelchair crossing the linoleum, then she was there in the doorway, looking up at him with a strange, tight smile which to Bert seemed false. . . sculpted somehow, like the smile on the plaster Virgin in the hallway.
    Eve swung the chair into the doorway, leaned forward, and reached out a knobby hand.
    Bert handed her the light. "Just shine it up here, will you?"
    Eve rolled forward a bit. As she did, one of the wheelchair's footplates struck the base of the ladder, jarring it slightly. Bert's body jerked in surprise, and the ladder took a skidding step closer to the brink. In a sickening flash he remembered that same footplate digging into his ribs the night he had told her about their son.
    "Careful!" he shouted, more anger in his tone than he'd intended. He glanced down the dark, sloping staircase—it seemed to vanish into nothing down there—and shuddered.
    "Sorry," Eve said in her smallest voice. But that weird, plastic smile still clung to her face. She trained the light on the faulty fixture.
    Breathing heavily, Bert loosened the first screw, scrunching his eyes shut against a shower of dust. When he reached for the opposite screw, the one closest to the stairwell, he saw that it was a Phillips type. He fished around in his tool-apron, but found only a regular flat-head. The open toolbox was on the floor next to Eve's left wheel.
    "Could you reach down and get that screwdriver?" he said. "The one with the blue rubber handle?"
    The flashbeam shifted, crossed Bert's eyes in a blinding sweep, then extinguished. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Eve brandishing the tool like a weapon.
    "Is this the one?" she asked sweetly.
    Bert nodded, leaned forward to take it—
    And with the same deadly swiftness she had shown on that night three weeks ago, Eve thrust the point of the screwdriver an inch into the meat of Bert's calf. Crying out, Bert reeled dangerously backward, his suddenly canted weight lifting the ladder's near legs right up off the floor. . . but at the last possible instant he shifted back, defying the will of gravity in a combination of thrusting hips and pinwheeling arms.
    "Jesus Christ!" he bellowed, suddenly furious. He took a step down the ladder. "What. . . ?"
    Eve rammed the footplate into the ladder-base again, really rammed it, and Bert froze in mid-motion. With a quick backward glance he saw that the leading shoe of the ladder hung halfway over the rim of the top step.
    "Don't you move from there, blasphemer! Murderer! Don't you move a muscle!" She nudged the ladder again, and it swayed vertiginously. "You so much as breathe and you're going over the edge. Do you understand me, Bert Crowell?"
    Bert looked down at a complete and deadly stranger. He nodded, dismissing any thought of jumping on top of her when the ladder shifted again. In that first violent flurry the spreader had flexed its elbow, rendering the ladder even more unstable. Now it seemed to wobble