William Royden

One said, Stage One, and another just had a date on it from a previous year.

He set the tapes back in the box very gently.

When we had seen all there was to see in the cellar, there was a noise from above us.

It was a shifting sound, like something being moved across a floor, and then footsteps.

We froze where we were standing, both of us.

After a moment, we heard the footsteps again, creaking in the ceiling, moving three steps, then stopping.

I'd begun to sweat.

Finally, Cording moved toward the old wooden stairwell that led up to the first floor of the house.

He put his hand on the railing and stopped listening.

There came to us the sound of a female human voice singing softly in an African dialect, the elderly voice I had heard on videotape back on the Cotton Branch Trail.

It was muffled by distance in the floorboards above our heads, but we could hear it all the same.

We listened and did not move.

It sang for about 30 seconds, seeming to beckon us, and then stopped.

There was only the sound of the wind outside.

Almost immediately after that, there was a different, very distinct, deep, sharp female voice from just beyond the top of the stairs, behind the closed door that separated the two floors.

It said just one word in an accusing, angry voice.

LIAR!

I jerked back so severely that the camera lost its focus, and a sputtering sound of complete terror escaped my throat.

I had reached my breaking point and was in shock, all rational thoughts suspended.

That one word was meant for courting.