Streaks of sunlight cut through a fog of disturbed dust and shone across dingy gray walls covered with writing. Esther had taken comparative culture courses for her masters in sociology, but her language research hadn't prepared her for anything like this.

Chris's eyes widened while gazing at the string of foreign words that coated all four walls in the cabin's main room. "Looks like it was written in brown paint."

Harry leaned close to a wall and sniffed. He shook his head. "Not paint. I think it's blood."

Esther stepped out of the Jeep and into a yard bursting with wildflowers and the dozens of hummingbirds that fed on them. The birds' beating wings buzzed like swarming bees as they flitted from blossom to blossom. Just beyond lay the weathered old cabin that had belonged to her grandfather before he'd disappeared.

A shove from behind made Esther stumble forward.

Laughing as he pushed past her, Chris said, "You're blockin' the road, Buckwheat."

She glared at his ample backside and watched him mow down a swath of wildflowers with his size thirteen Reeboks. The hummingbirds darted out of his way.

Esther followed Chris's path of crushed flowers to the cabin's front porch. "You have no respect for nature."

He dropped both boxes of cleaning supplies. "So what?" He wiped sweat from his freckled forehead with a shirt sleeve. "It's all getting bull-dozed anyway."

"Maybe not."

Chris chuckled. "You think anyone in their right mind will buy a shabby, seventy-year-old cabin with a leaky roof and no indoor plumbing?"

Esther frowned. "It has its charm."

"The cabin is a piece of crap."

She dug a key from her back pocket and angled it in the door's enormous keyhole. "Grampa loved it here."

"Grampa was crazy."

Esther refused to believe that. He'd only been a little mad before he disappeared, but that was because of the stroke. It wasn't Grampa's fault.

She rattled the doorknob and pushed. "It's stuck."

"Let me," Chris said, reaching for the knob.

"I'll do it." Harry, Esther's brother, heaved their luggage from the back of the Jeep. He dumped the bags on the porch, then shouldered himself between Chris and Esther. His lanky body towered a foot above them both. "Wussies. Leave it to a man to do a man's job."

Chris rolled his eyes.

Harry rammed the door with his shoulder. "It's not... stuck... any... more," he grunted, and flung his whole body against the plank of old boards. The hinges gave way with a pop and the door flew inward. Taking a casual step over the threshold, he said, "I'll fix it tomorrow."
Esther remained in the doorway, staring in disbelief. "Good lord!"

Chris stood beside her. "What the hell happened in here?"

"Some cobwebs and a little dust. No big deal." Harry peeled a matted web from his shoulder. "What do you expect after two years --?" He took one look at the walls. "Holy shit!"

Streaks of sunlight cut through a fog of disturbed dust and shone across dingy gray walls covered with writing. Esther had taken comparative culture courses for her masters in sociology, but her language research hadn't prepared her for anything like this.

Chris's eyes widened while gazing at the string of foreign words that coated all four walls in the cabin's main room. "Looks like it was written in brown paint."

Harry leaned close to a wall and sniffed. He shook his head. "Not paint. I think it's blood."

Esther stayed in the doorway, amazed by the scope of writing that filled nearly every inch of wall space. The alphabet was English, but the combination of letters looked like nonsense. Was this Grampa's work? She squinted, a word she recognized catching her attention. She pointed at it and said, "Does that say 'humbenthalos'?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "That's what Grampa called the hummingbirds. It's repeated over and over. See?"

"He'd told us he made it up. I wonder if he made all this up, too." Esther stepped inside to take it all in. "But when? Before or after his stroke?"

Chris shook his head. "Doesn't matter. It's all coming down anyway."

"I wish you'd stop saying that." She ran her hand across one of the words and sniffed her fingers. Grimacing, she wiped her hand on her jeans. "I wonder where the blood came from."

Standing in the kitchen doorway, Harry tilted his head and said, "I think your answer is in here."

At the far corner of the kitchen lay the dried, partially decomposed corpses of several animals. It was hard to tell exactly what they'd been before their mutilation, but Esther recognized at least one raccoon and a skunk. The long, skeletal snout peeking from the bottom of the heap was either a coyote or a wolf.

"Now that's disgusting," Chris said, covering his nose with the hem of his shirt. The carcasses were so dried out, mummified even, that there was hardly any odor.

The kitchen smelled musty, like dry earth mixed with a faint scent of rotting vegetables; no putrefying meat smell at all. And though it was the height of summer, not a single fly hovered around the mound of decaying corpses.

Esther knew she should feel repulsed, but she was fascinated. The condition of her grandfather's cabin was like a puzzle and she couldn't help thinking its solution might open doors to places she'd only dreamed of...

continued . . .