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“You’re fine now?” Ben guessed.
I looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah, but who were they? Friends of yours?”
He shook his head. “My acquaintances have better fashion sense than that old style of coach. I haven’t seen one of those on the roads for well over two decades.”
“Maybe it’s somebody coming back to haunt you,” I teased as the dark cloud over my thoughts lifted.
“Perhaps.” Ben examined me. “But you’re sure you’re alright?”
I poked his chest with my finger. “I’m just fine, but I would like to know what it was I saw peeking out from behind the curtain.”
Ben lifted an eyebrow. “I saw no one.”
I nodded at where the carriage had stood. “The curtains moved and I swore I saw a face. I can’t be sure if it was a man or woman, but I know it was someone.”
Ben pursed his lips as he gripped the reins. “I see. We may have to investigate this mysterious carriage.”
I snorted. “Would that be before the evil fog or the mysterious attack on Gebur’s farm?”
“They could be one and the same,” Ben pointed out as he pulled on the reins and Ferox turned us around in a tight circle.
We returned to the intersection and I glanced down the road. My view was better than on the side street, but the road was still deserted. Goosebumps ran down my spine.
I looked up at Ben with some of the color drained from my face. “I was only joking about the haunting.”
“I wish I could be so sure,” he mused as we rolled onto the road and made our way northward once more.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
The road tookus deeper into the woods and we soon found the Gebur farm. It was a nice little homestead with two large open pastures dotted with round-topped trees. The light green grass was in stark contrast to the dark shadows of the forest that sulked at the edges of the pastures. The buildings consisted of several sheds, a large red barn, a small chicken coop, and a quaint little two-floor whitewashed farmhouse with decorative red shutters. Everything had a place, and everything was in its place as we drove up.
A young boy of ten popped his head out of the chicken coop and gazed at us with wide, curious eyes. “Hello there!” he shouted.
“Hello there,” Ben called back as we parked a few yards from the yard.
I glimpsed a large garden behind the house, protected by a mess of chicken wire as Ben helped me down. The boy set his full basket of eggs on the ground near the chicken coop door and scurried over.
The boy stopped a few feet away and studied us like we were aliens. “Are you folks from the city?”
Ben smiled and nodded. “We’re from Validen.”
The boy’s eyes grew larger. “Really? That’s a big city, isn’t it?”
“Quite big,” Ben assured him as he looked about the quiet farmyard. “But we were looking for Farmer Gebur. Is he around?”
The young boy stuck a thumb at himself. “He’s my pa. What were you wanting him for?”
“What are you doing there, Cip?” a voice shouted from the grounded porch.
A woman stepped one foot out of the house and clutched the door in one hand and the edge of a shawl in the other. She was on the better side of thirty with her brown hair done up in a tight knot behind her head and her cheeks reddened by a cooking stove. The women wore a simple white dress with a stained apron over the front. A small pouch hung from a sash around her waist.
She beckoned to the boy. “Come here, Cip, right this instant!”
The boy’s face fell. “But Ma. . .”
“Don’t ‘but Ma’ me, you get over here,” she demanded.
Cip turned around a little and nodded at the neglected basket. “But what about the eggs?”
