Keith missed first the heap of stones on the floor, the hole in the foundation of the chimney, the box of quicklime. The stones were in place. There was no hole in the wall, no quicklime. The cellar floor was clean—cleaner than usual.
“I guess it was a dream, papa.”
He took his father’s hand. The hand felt funny, gritty and clammy, as if it had been washed very hard. He glanced down and the nails were white along the edges.
He said nothing as they started upstairs, but his backward look noted a thing he thought he ought to speak of:
“Papa, the stones in the chimney look like they’d been chiseled out and put back in again with fresh mortar.”
“Do they?” his father gasped, and sat down hard on the cellar steps. He nodded and groaned wearily.
“They do look that way.”
He thought a while, then rose and took an old broom and jabbed it into spider webs on the windows and whisked them away and spread them across the fresh lines.
“Does that look better?”
“If you could get the spiders to move there it would.”