Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

crowning touch. Then he could lay down his gun and enjoy the life of power that he was meant to live. And no one would ever know what he’d done to acquire that power.
    It was time. He opened the door to his room and stepped out onto the landing that encircled the staircase like a square doughnut. Rain fell on him so hard that it ceased to be individual drops, melding into sheets and masses of solid water. This was more than a roof leak.
    Looking up, he saw that the entire cupola was gone, leaving a great open hole through the house that was broken only by the landing where he stood and the staircase that rose through the center of it all. When the joints in the wooden floor beneath his feet failed, he dropped to his knees and reached for the doorjamb of the bedroom door. Fear propelled him on all fours into the room he had just left. Behind him, the landing crumbled and dropped to the house’s main level.
    It was clear why the landing failed. It had been engineered to work in conjunction with the staircase. Should the staircase fail, the landing simply could not support itself. Sheets of wet plaster flaked off the dying spiral. A slow tremor shook the balusters out of their railings until, unsupported, the handcarved banister clattered down with a godawful racket, followed by the treads.
    He was trapped in his room, but so was Faye. He could get to her only by taking her path over the roof, but that would put him at a disadvantage when he came through the window to attack her. Neither of them was going anywhere until the storm passed. He would wait until then for his chance.

    Faye was encouraged. There were worse places to hide in the old house than in the master’s bedroom. The sneak stair terminated there. As soon as it was wise to leave the house, they would be able to get out unseen. A moment’s fumbling under the bed yielded one of the flashlights she had stashed throughout the house. It had been a prudent emergency measure for a woman who lived in a house without electricity, but she could never have foreseen this particular emergency.
    The flashlight’s narrow beam swept over their hideout. Each wall was lined with glass-fronted shelves, proudly displaying her heritage—the family garbage that she’d pulled out of the ground. When the storm hurled a piece of metal through the glass protecting one of the shelves, she shrieked and almost dropped the flashlight. Joe clapped a hand over her mouth, and he left it there for a long time while she sobbed. The wind drove water through the empty window frame as if it would never stop.
    Faye knew they could survive this hurricane. It had been done before. Cally did it.
    ***
    Excerpt from the oral history of Cally Stanton, recorded 1935
    It was dark when the wind died down, but the moon was bright and I could see a clump of trees. I set out swimming for it, dragging my dresser drawer behind me. I was glad for the Sunday afternoons when Miss Mariah took me swimming in the salty Gulf. I wasn’t glad a bit for the Missus’s company, because her spunk left her when the storm did.
    She whined and she fussed and I had to just about drag her fat self through the water. Then she wouldn’t climb up the tree. She was afraid to let go of the drawer, because it saved her life and she might need it again. I threw up my hands and left her, holding her drawer with one hand and a tree trunk with the other.
    I sat in my tree and let the water drop off me. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the moon shone like it had a secret. I wasn’t surprised when the wind came back from the other direction.
    I wrapped my arms and legs around the tree trunk and wished for my dresser drawer. The Missus was hollering for me, but I couldn’t go to her. If I got down out of that tree, I would never see the light of another day. I didn’t need a dream to tell me that.
    The storm played out and the sun came up along about the same time. I could see a long ways from my tree, but there wasn’t much to see, just a few other treetops. Last Isle was gone.
    I figured rescue boats would come, since the hotel was full of rich people. There wasn’t any other way I was getting out of there alive, so I figured I might as well stay in my tree and hope for a boat. I was hoping hard, because my dream said the Master was going to die. It didn’t say anything about me or the Missus.
    Maybe hoping works. When the boat came, I was hungry and thirsty and bug-bit, but I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t alone,