Chapter One
It had been six months, and Beth was still not ready. Yet here she was driving up the familiar gravel lane with the bright green spring leaves on the trees lining the way. Even though it had been a long time since she had been here Beth still knew where all the potholes where hidden and where the road overlooked the pond.
The road was not that long but it took longer since she was driving at a snail's pace. She had taken the week off to come up here and now she was not sure if she was ready yet. But since the drive was too small to turn the car around in she just had to keep on it. At the end of the drive was the ever familiar shed that stood across from her grandfather's home. Or at least where he use to live. It was just over six months ago when he had fallen ill and passed away. With the whirlwind of funeral arrangements, her job, and everything else she hadn't had time to go through the old house.
The grass had been cut recently, and Beth thanked heaven that the neighbor's boy had looked after the yard for her. She was living four hours away and would have come to a jungle if he hadn't. The house itself was in need in a new coat of paint but otherwise looked exactly like it did when she was last there. It was the house her grandfather had built for her grandmother. Where her father had grown up and where she had lived with her grandfather after her parents had passed away when she was only 12.
Beth did not know how long she sat in the car, but by the time she had gotten up the courage to get out it was nearly noon. She got out a cooler from the back and proceeded to go to the porch door. The lock stuck with misuse but the door opened when she pushed hard enough. The rain from the night before had made the wood expand and it had not wanted to open.
The house, though slightly musty, still smelled like it always had. Though he had been a widower when she had lived with him Beth's grandfather had always kept the house tidy and even at 80 years old he was well able to live on his own until he became sick. The fridge was empty when she opened it to put what little food she had brought with her. Milk, eggs, cheese, lunch meats, and the like would keep her well fed for the next week as she went through everything. Beth hated to come to the realization, but she just could not afford the upkeep for her grandfather's place on top of her apartment. So here she was to do some upkeep and go through his possessions. To find stuff to donate, sell and some few precious and sentimental items to keep before she had to sell the house.
The clock of the mantle chimed noon but Beth was not in the mood for lunch yet. She just stood on the worn yet clean carpet, half expecting her grandfather to come up from the basement from his workshop and make her eat something but that would never happen again. Shaking her head to keep the tears at bay, Beth went back to his room. The floor creaked with every step since he was no longer nailing the ever loose boards back down.
The door to grandfather's room was open and the blinds up so the noon sun shone in with a yellow warmth. On his desk sat the long wooden box just like he had told her when he had been laying in the hospital bed. He had been so upset that he would not be around for her birthday and had wanted to make sure she got the present he had been working on. But after the funeral she had not been in any mood for birthdays the next month and had thrown herself into work taking every extra shift that Beth could get her hands on. Now she could not put it off any longer.
Sitting on the edge of her bed in the room on the other side of the hallway, Beth let her hands go over the smooth wood of the box before pushing in the little latch. It gave a satisfying click before she opened the lid. What lay inside was a revolver that she had grown up seeing and had learned to shoot with. Her grandfather had taught her to shoot with this gun as well as self defense. Honestly he had been a rather awesome grandfather, and she had sometimes wondered what he had been like when he was younger but in that area he had not expounded on.
She carefully took the gun by the wooden grip and proceeded to examine in. The metal shone as if brand new, even though it had been made in the 70's. Grandfather had obviously spent a lot of time restoring it. She opened up the barrel to find it empty but it still smelled of the cleaning oil and gunpowder. The smell was sharp, metallic and smoky. It brought the memory of many a winter night she had spent helping clean the rifles and other guns her grandfather had kept. She noticed that he had apparently modified the gun to have a safety switch; he was always a stickler for safety. Grandfather had been a regular boy scout at times.
She snapped the box shut and almost put it away when Beth saw the pathway into the forest out her window. She stood there for a moment unsure of what she wanted to do but was soon had stuffed her old college bag with the box, some ammo boxes, lunch and her old metal water bottle. The screen door slammed shut as she walked out not bothering to lock the door behind her. She was out in the middle of nowhere where nothing happened and she was more than able to protect herself.
The pathway to the shooting range was a bit overgrown but nothing she could not handle. The air smelled of dirt and leaves as dew hid in the undergrowth beneath the trees. Not far down the path it opened up into a wide clearing that ran up onto a rise in the ground where the targets where set up. Any stay bullets went straight into the hill and stayed there. Right now all Beth wanted to do was shoot that hill full of holes.
Setting the bag down she took the revolver out and loaded it with the last six bullets that where in the first ammo box, she was sure to go through the other 50 in the second by the time she was done. She lined up the sights with the metal target one hundred feet away, clicked off the safety and quickly emptied all the chambers into the target.
She opened the gun back up to get out the spent casing only to find that she was crying. Wiping away the tears she tried to shove the gun back into the case but now it would not close all the way. Angrily she tried to get the lid to shut again but it still refused. Ripping the lid open again Beth finally noticed why it would not shut. The gun was pushed up higher than it should have been; the velvet lining seemed to have moved. Beth put the gun on top of her bag and carefully pried up the now apparent false bottom.
There were only two things in the bottom; a piece of paper with strange markings that she could on assume was some type of foreign language but she could not make heads or tails of it and under that was a pin in the shape of a star. But it was quite unlike the five sided stars she was use to, this one had six. It seemed rather old and worn and on the back of it was a single word inscribed on the back. Beth turned the pin over and over in her hand; the cool metal seemed to not want to get warm. Unbuttoning her jacket she pinned it to her shirt so she did not lose it. Surely if her grandfather had kept and hidden the pin it had to have been important to him. Maybe she would ask her old roommate in university to look it over; she always had been great with foreign languages and loved translating the stuff.
Hearing a disturbance in the woods Beth stuffed everything back into the box thankful that it shut this time. She shoved it in her bag before she started into the woods to investigate. This land was posted for no hunting but there was always the occasional lost hunter sometimes needed pointed in the right direction. She did not notice at all that the clearing she had just walked out of did not have the metal target nor the hill riddled with bullets. In fact it was a different clearing altogether.