Margot sat on the porch’s top step. Her feet were numb, and the skin around her fingernails had turned blue. She couldn’t bring herself to move, though—not back into that home, not back past the row of nooses suspended like a barricade around the doorway.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d sat there already but knew it couldn’t be long. The sun was barely rising, just in the earliest stages of transforming the sickly purple into its more vivid golds.
In the distance, a figure moved toward her. She recognized the stride. Kant, moving in long, loping steps that made his limp more pronounced. He must have come because of her phone call.
Margot was faintly aware that she wasn’t in a good state to meet anyone. Clad in pajamas, her hair clinging to the condensation that formed on her throat and jaw, unable to slow her heart or even think coherently. It still wasn’t enough to make her turn around and go inside.
Behind her, one of the ropes creaked.
“Margot.” He’d been moving fast, but it hadn’t made him breathless. Kant stopped when he was still a half dozen paces from her and turned, slowly, to survey the house at a distance. “Something happened?”
She wasn’t sure if her voice would work, but tried regardless. “Bells.”
The word was cracked and raspy. Her throat was parched. She tried to swallow but it only hurt.
“The bells were ringing?” He glanced at her, then looked away again, still surveying the property. “Did anything else happen?”
She wasn’t sure what he expected of her but raised one numb hand toward the ropes hung from her home. “Look. Someone wants me gone.”
He nodded once, calm eyes flitting across the nooses. “I suppose it would look that way to you.”
Margot blinked furiously to calm her burning eyes. “They’re…nooses. That’s got to be meant as a warning.”
“Maybe. But not toward you in particular.” Kant exhaled deeply, his shoulders slumping. He closed the distance between himself and Margot and leaned one weathered hand on the stair’s banister.
“But…”
“Nooses have been appearing around here for as long as I’ve worked the place. That’s near thirty years. Sometimes you won’t see them for a few years at a time, and then they’ll come in batches. Like now.”
Margot turned just enough to glimpse the ropes. Aged, frayed, clogged with dirt, they moved slowly in the wind. The knots where the nooses were tied appeared viciously tight. “But…why?”
“You don’t know much about the place, I suppose.” His gray eyes scanned her, and there was something in them. Sadness? Or regret? He turned away before Margot could get any proper reading on it. “Come up, then. Let me get you something warm to drink.”