The Back Door of Midnight

  The area beneath the gazebo was about three feet deep and appeared to extend to the edges of the structure.

  “Put out your light,” Aunt Iris said. “It’ll shine through the cracks.”

  I did so with great reluctance. The moist earth smelled strong, a mix of something cloyingly sweet—mulch, I thought—and something rotten that I couldn’t identify.

  Aunt Iris heard me sniffing. “What do you smell?”

  “I—I don’t know. It’s cold in here.”

  “He can’t help it.”

  I did not find it reassuring that she believed Uncle Will was in there with us. After all that had happened, I was no longer certain that only the things I saw existed. I sat hunched, the wetness of the earth seeping through my shorts. When I rested my hands on the dirt beneath me, it felt sticky. Blood-soaked, I thought.

  “His blood has dried,” Aunt Iris assured me.

  “Dried here?”

  “Yes. Be quiet. She’s coming.”

  “Who?”

  “Quiet!”

  My ears strained to hear something. Minutes ticked by. No one came. Still, something was going on with the outside lights.

  “Aunt Iris, why are you hiding in here?” I whispered.

  “I don’t exactly know.”

  Oh, great, I thought.

  “I knew I had to come here, just as you and she had to come here, but I don’t know which one of us is drawing the other two.”

  I repeated her words in my head, trying to tease out their meaning.

  “Anna?” The voice came from beyond the gazebo, from the direction of the house. “Anna, where are you? Are you all right?”

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I pressed my fingertips against the boards above us to open the door. Aunt Iris’s powerful hands grasped mine and pulled them down.

  “It’s Marcy,” I said.

  “Of course it is!” she hissed.

  “But—” I stopped. My aunt’s tone of voice was that of a frustrated teacher speaking to a student who was slow to catch on. I struggled to piece together events.

  I had left a note for Zack. Marcy had probably read it. She considered me her responsibility. She probably had keys to the property, knew the gate code, and—no, wait—I hadn’t told Zack I was coming here. I hadn’t even mentioned borrowing the boat.

  “She’ll look in here,” Iris whispered. “Push back as far as you can from the opening. I’ll go out and talk to her.”

  I heard footsteps on the gravel. Marcy was approaching the gazebo, walking more slowly as she drew closer. Aunt Iris gave me a final shove with her bare foot, raised the trapdoor, and climbed out.

  “Well, look who it is.” Marcy’s voice had a strange flatness to it; I couldn’t tell if she was surprised.

  “Hello, Marcy. I was expecting you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing as you are,” Aunt Iris replied.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Cleaning up,” Aunt Iris went on. “You’ve been sloppy, leaving the hose out, washing only half the gazebo floor. I hope you properly disposed of the weapon.”

  “I did.”

  “And his fishing gear?”

  “Temporarily, but I will take care of it. Thomas isn’t due back from his vacation for another week. No one’s minding the place, so there was no need to hurry. Nor was it possible—I’ve had my hands full, keeping track of Anna.”

  “I want you to leave her alone, Marcy.”

  “Do you, now? Don’t tell me, you’ve become fond of her!” There was something creepy about Marcy’s voice—an artificial cheerfulness. Then it darkened. “You foolish old woman, don’t you realize why Anna has come?”

  “Because William died.”

  “Because William was applying for guardianship of you. We have discussed this a hundred times. Once he had guardianship, he would have legal control over your money—”

  “I’m not listening to you,” Iris said defiantly.

  “Control over where and how you live, control over your health care—”

  “I’m not listening!”

  “Control over your entire life. And once he did, he and Anna would arrange to have you committed.”

  “No!”

  “He did it before,” Marcy reminded her. “Or have you forgotten those days with your special, sniffling, filthy-haired friends?”

  “William promised he’d take care of me.”

  “Of course. Of course he’d take care of you, by shipping you off to an asylum.”

  “No! He promised he wouldn’t do that again. He—he swore it.” Aunt Iris’s voice, confident when the argument started, had begun to waver.

  “It wouldn’t require much effort,” Marcy continued calmly, “not with his legal power and a bright young niece to support his claims. That’s why you killed him, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Tell the truth,” Marcy challenged.

  “I didn’t !” Aunt Iris insisted, but her denial melted to a rough whisper. “At least, I don’t remember doing it.”

  “You let it happen,” Marcy replied. “You knew I would try and you let me. Just like you let me kill Joanna.”

  I shoved my fist in my mouth to keep any sound from escaping.

  “I didn’t want you to,” Iris argued. “I didn’t mean for you to.”

  “What else could you have intended? You told me Joanna was using her gift, figuring out how Mick died,” Marcy said. “It wasn’t a matter of what you didn’t want to happen but, rather, what you wanted more: whatever was best for your little girl. I’ll always be your little girl. You’ll always love me best, Mommy Iris.” Marcy’s childlike lisp turned my skin to gooseflesh. “So, where is Anna?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you know what has to be done, don’t you, Mommy Iris? Perhaps you foresaw it.”

  “I can’t stand any more killing!”

  “Anna is piecing together our story, and she is not going to give up on it. There’s some family resemblance between her and me. We have the same approach to life’s little challenges, and I have found that unexpectedly enjoyable. It’s unfortunate that we both can’t survive this.”

  “I can’t stand the voices!” Iris cried. “I can’t endure any more ghosts!”

  “Close your eyes, Mommy Iris, and you won’t see them.”

  “I will always see them,” Iris replied. “Only a—a psychotic, heartless person would not.”

  There was a moment of silence, followed by a sound that made my muscles tighten, a soft, fleshy thump.

  “Don’t!” Aunt Iris cried. “Don’t!”

  I pushed open the trapdoor. Aunt Iris lay sprawled on the ground. Marcy, with her hand still raised, turned quickly. “Pop goes the weasel.”

  “If you’ve hurt her . . . ,” I warned, starting toward Aunt Iris.

  “I find it touching the way you two have bonded.”

  The pale skin of Iris’s left cheek was darkening with a bruise, and the corner of her mouth oozed blood. I tried to raise her, but she was dazed, unable to sit up without my arm around her. If I ran for help, I’d have to leave her behind.

  “There was no need to come to her rescue,” Marcy told me, resentment seeping into her voice. “I wouldn’t kill my own mother.”

  “You killed your father,” I replied. “The image in my mother’s reading referred to you. You were the seed of Mick that produced a snake rather than a flower.”

  “He hated me.”

  “You killed him in the car accident. The snake was masked. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but his death only appeared to be a heart attack.”

  Marcy laughed her bright, tinkly laugh. “Oh, it was a genuine coronary. Mick took heart medicine. I changed his pills for something a bit more exciting.”

  She spoke in the same light and informative way as she did when explaining trends in holiday ornaments. Not a hair of her smoothly styled cut was out of place. Her pressed shirt was t
ucked neatly into casual pants. Did she have a weapon? The night was too warm, I thought, to be wearing that jacket.

  “It was so easy,” Marcy went on. “I knew they wouldn’t do an autopsy, not in this backwoods place, not on a man with a serious heart condition whom everyone seemed to like too much to kill. The lack of bleeding after the accident confirmed their belief that he had died of a heart attack just prior to it.”

  While talking, she moved herself between the garden exit and Aunt Iris and me, trapping us. I looked back at the house. Marcy must have entered the garden through the large double doors; it appeared that one was open, but it was dark inside. I thought about the way the outside lights were instantly extinguished: Had she cut the electric power? Did she know how to turn off the security alarm? If I ran through the house, would the front gates open?

  “Mick was an interfering old fool,” Marcy continued, “spying on me and telling my parents every little thing I did. They came to hate me, thanks to him.”

  I needed to keep her talking while I sorted out my options. And I needed to separate myself from Aunt Iris. She could sit up on her own now.

  “I don’t see how one employee could make parents hate their child.”

  “True enough. My adoptive parents were inclined that way from the beginning—or rather, from the time my brother was born. Once they held in their arms the spitting image of a blond Fairfax, they wanted me out of their lives. They stuck me in a corner with Audrey. And they spoiled my brother—they gave him things that I should have had.”

  “Like what?” I asked, but she didn’t need encouragement.

  “Whenever I got the opportunity, I took back. I took my share. Then Mick would go running to them, tattling on me.”

  “Maybe he was trying to help,” I said, defending him, baiting her. “You were his child, and he wanted you to grow up right. I think it was Mick’s way of loving.”

  “He feared me! I could see it in his eyes. He hated and feared me, and he persuaded everyone else to, with one exception: Audrey.” I heard the scorn in her voice. “Mick hadn’t a clue how to handle Audrey.”

  “But you did,” I replied. “You’re good at manipulating people.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hadn’t meant it as a compliment. “It’s you, not Aunt Iris, who needs to be committed. You’re crazy.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’m certainly not psychic. And you know the choice that we O’Neill women have.”

  Psychic or psychotic. Uncle Will had known that too. The child whom he and Aunt Iris had argued about was Marcy, not me. What he feared had come true: Living close to her child had caused Iris great pain.

  “When Uncle Will found my mother’s client book, he realized that you had killed Mick. He poached here, and he recognized the images in my mother’s psychic reading.”

  “William always hated me. Last month, when he figured it out, he rather stupidly told Mommy Iris, told her what she already knew. It didn’t take much for me to discover why she was suddenly so upset. Have you decided what it is going to be for you?”

  I looked at Marcy, puzzled.

  “Psychic or psychotic?” she asked, her voice pleasant, as if she were inquiring about a preference for regular or decaf.

  Aunt Iris, I said silently, if you can hear me, I need you to distract Marcy. Aloud I said, “I don’t think a person chooses to be either.”

  “Perhaps not chooses,” Marcy responded, “but allows it, nurtures it.”

  Aunt Iris, please help me. I need a running start.

  “Who’s there?” Aunt Iris murmured, turning her head slowly toward the gazebo. Marcy and I followed her gaze. “Is it you, William?” she asked.

  It’s me, Anna.

  “William,” Aunt Iris murmured.

  No. Anna!

  “William, let it rest,” she moaned. She moved her head from side to side, grimacing, but kept her eyes fixed on the space above the trapdoor. With the bright moonlight reflecting off the gazebo’s roof, its interior looked dark and murky.

  “William,” she groaned.

  Her eyes shimmered in the silver light, then began to rise under the wrinkled tent of her eyelids.

  “Stop it!” Marcy said.

  “William . . . William . . . William!” Aunt Iris cried, her voice climbing higher each time she spoke. She rocked back and forth.

  “William . . . William . . . William!”

  The sockets of her eyes shone white, like those of a marble statue.

  “Stop it, Mommy Iris!”

  Her mouth twitched, stretched, had a life of its own. Then her eyes rolled forward again, and another face, a stranger’s face, looked out of my aunt’s.

  “Stop it now!” Marcy demanded.

  Run, Anna.

  I blinked. What?

  The stranger’s face retracted, grew back into Aunt Iris’s. Her body shuddered, as if she were going to vomit whatever had possessed her.

  Run, Anna.

  I stared at her in amazement. This is for me?

  Her mouth stretched again. She looked like a snake about to swallow something larger than itself.

  Marcy crouched with fear. “Stop it, Mommy! Stop it!”

  Run, Anna, run.

  I took off.

  twenty-four

  I RACED TOWARD the house and found the door open. Behind me I heard Iris wailing and Marcy shouting at her. How long could Iris keep Marcy distracted? Long enough for me to get to the front door and up the driveway, that’s what I needed.

  The moment I stepped into the dark house, I remembered that my flashlight was under the gazebo. There was no time to wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I plunged ahead. I didn’t know the floor plan, didn’t know even the basic shape of the house, having seen only the section of it that backed up to the walled garden. But big houses often had center halls. If the pond and the children’s garden were centered, it was likely that I had entered the hall that ran straight to the front door.

  I ran straight into a wall. For a moment I was stunned, then I felt the surface in front of me—wood—a door. I groped for a handle. When my fingers touched the metal knob, I wanted to yank open the door, but I forced myself to turn the knob slowly, quietly, then I tiptoed through and closed the door again, just as slowly and quietly, not wanting to call attention to myself.

  There wasn’t a pencil line of light visible. I moved forward steadily, trying to walk straight, my hands out in front of me. I felt as if I had stumbled into a room the size of a gymnasium. In a house like this, the rooms could be large, I thought, and so could the halls.

  I heard footsteps. Marcy had entered the house. I heard her walking in the room behind the door. I fought the urge to race through the house: I was a mouse in a pitch-black maze being pursued by a cat who knew the maze by heart. The moment I made a noise, I had better be close to an exit. I moved steadily forward, listening for Marcy, wondering why she didn’t burst through the door between us.

  Because she knew other doors, other ways to get to me, I thought. She wasn’t going to give herself away, not until she had me where she could strike quickly and easily—from behind, her favorite method.

  I kept walking. My legs felt strange and rubbery. With each step, my sense of direction became less certain. My hand touched something that felt like wood and was shaped like a thick rod. I felt to the right and left of it—the spindles of a staircase. The banister they supported was wide, like that of the main stairway of a large house. But the stairs weren’t straight ahead. They didn’t point to what I had hoped was the front door, or maybe they did and I had veered off course. I was confused.

  Having nothing else to follow, I followed the stairway wall, losing track of the steps as they rose. I came to another wall with a door in it. Finding the knob, I turned it quietly, pushed against the door, and stepped through. I lurched forward, hanging on to the door handle and swinging wildly. Another set of steps. The door had saved me from tumbling headlong down them.

  Regaining my balance,
I took one step down and groped in vain for a railing. The walls on either side of me were close, like those of a stairway down to a basement, but the air didn’t smell like a cellar’s. I took two more steps, then jammed my foot against a level floor.

  I was just four steps down, in a wing of the house, I thought. Wings were often smaller, at least in the historic houses I had seen; I reasoned that it would be easier to find an exit. I’d do it methodically, feeling my way around a room till I found a window. I quietly shut the door to my wing and moved along the hallway.

  I felt a door frame and turned right, assuming that I was in the first room of the wing. I kept thinking I’d see a crack of moonlight somewhere, but it was so dark, I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face.

  Starting with the wall immediately to my right, I felt a smooth wood surface and a vertical groove, then another smooth surface and another groove: paneling. I worked my way around a chair, then past a corner, continuing till my hand touched a wood ridge. My fingers followed the ridge up to a shelf about chin high and surprisingly long. I tripped on a rough surface: a fireplace. An outside wall! I thought triumphantly, then remembered that some houses had chimneys inside. I bumped into a table placed next to the fireplace and, taking a half step back from it, moved sideways till I reached a second corner in the room.

  I turned the corner and prayed for a window. At last my hands grasped loose fabric. I felt behind it, shoving back what seemed like yards of material. The walls of the house were thick, the windowsill deep. My fingers searched for cool panes of glass but touched wood—a set of inside shutters. I felt for the center, tried unsuccessfully to pry the pair open, then ran my hands up and down the crack, hunting for a fastener. My fingers grasped a knob, and I pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge. I felt around the knob and discovered a metal circle with a jagged edge inside. Terrific!—they had locks on their shutters, locks that required keys. This place was secure, even with the electricity off.

  I sagged against the deep windowsill for a moment, then straightened up and listened, my attention caught by a sound that seemed to come from behind the fireplace. A heavy object was being dragged across the floor in the room behind the one I was in.