“You stop pulling my hair! Take your filthy hands off me! You’re ruining my dress. Leave me alone. You just dare to do one thing to hurt me and my papa will see all of you put in jail and burned!”
Spencer Longtree grinned. His buck teeth seemed fit for a horse. He thrust his long face full of pimples closer to mine. His breath smelled bad. “Do you know what we’re going to do to you, pretty face?”
“You’re going to let me go,” I said defiantly, but something in me quivered. Sudden fear made my knees weak, made my heart beat faster, made my blood sink into my heels.
“Nooo,” he growled, “we’re not going to let you go … not until we’re finished. We’re going to rip off all those pretty clothes, tear off your underwear and you’re going to be naked, and we’re going to see everything.”
“You can’t do that,” I began staunchly, trying to be brave. “All the Adare women born with my color hair can put the curse of death on those that harm them. So beware of your life when you harm me, Spencer Longtree Spiderlegs. With my violet eyes I can burn you with the fires of eternal hell while you still live!”
Sneering, he shoved his face so close his nose touched mine. Another boy grabbed my arms and pinioned them behind me. “Go on, witch,” he said, “do your worst!” The rain plastered his hair to his forehead in a fringe of spikes. “Curse me now and save yourself. Go on, do it, or in another few seconds I’m going to take off my pants, and my buddies are going to hold you down, and each one of us will have our turn.”
I screamed it out: “I curse you, Spencer Longtree, Curtis Shay and Hank Barnes! May the devil in hell claim all three of you for his own!”
For a moment they hesitated, making me think it was going to work. Looking from one to the other gave me the chance to run … but just then a fourth boy rose up from behind the same bushes they’d used to hide, and I froze and stared at him. His dark hair was wet and glued to his face, too. I swallowed and grew weak. All my blood turned to rainwater. Oh, no, not him, too, not him, too, never him. He wouldn’t do this. He’d come to save me, that’s why he was there. I called his name, pleaded with him to save me. He seemed in a trance, staring blindly ahead. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he pick up a stick, a stone, hit them? Batter them with his bare fists … do something to help!
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He was my friend. He stood there more petrified than I was. I cried out his name … and he turned and ran!
My mouth opened to call him back, but a dirty rag was stuffed inside.
“I was wrong, Audrina. You really are a pretty thing.”
They ripped off my clothes. My new dress was torn from neck to hem and hurled away to land on a bush under the golden raintree. Next my pretty petticoat with the Irish lace and the hand-embroidered shamrocks was ripped off and trampled in the mud. I fought like crazy when rough hands tried to pull down my panties, kicking, screaming, twisting, turning, trying to tear violating eyes from their sockets.
Then the lightning flashed, the thunder rolled. I was terrified of being outside in an electrical storm. I screamed again.
It happened fast, but not mercifully fast enough. My pretty underpants were yanked down and torn off. My legs were spread wide as one boy held me under my chin … and every one of those three participated in my desecration. Even as I was being despoiled I kept thinking of him. That coward who’d turned and run! He could have stayed to fight even if he lost, for then I could forgive him. Maybe they’d have killed him, like they were really killing me … better that than this …
I came back to the rocking chair in the playroom. My eyes were wide, so wide they hurt. I’d seen him again with the rain pasting his hair to his face. Arden! That was the name she’d called … and he’d run. Oh, the lies they’d told me to shield me from knowing just who Arden was. Oh, no wonder Papa had warned me against all boys, and Arden most of all. Papa knew him for what he was—a coward, as bad as the others, maybe worse, for she’d known him, trusted him, thought him her friend, and then he’d turned to me … years later?
He’d been there! Through me he was redeeming himself!
Oh, oh, oh … now I knew why my memory was full of holes. I’d seen him before in visions, many times, and had made myself forget that he’d been there when those boys had raped, then killed her, just because she was a Whitefern and all the villagers hated Whiteferns.
Papa had lied to me when he said the First Audrina was nine years older! Vera had told the truth!
And Papa had put me in the rocking chair so I could capture contentment and peace. He’d taken my empty pitcher and filled it with horror so that never again could I trust anything male.
I sobbed, knowing I’d betrayed her, too, and married the friend she’d hoped would protect her and fight for her … and he’d run. I jumped from the chair and ran from the room. Oh, if only I’d known before I would never have gone to his cottage! This day would never have happened. Papa, why didn’t you tell me all the details about your first daughter? Why did you hold back so much? Didn’t you know the truth always serves the purpose better than a lie?
Lies, so many lies … and to think Vera had told me the truth all the time when she said she’d known the First Audrina, who was so much better than me—prettier, smarter, more fun …
As I ran toward my room, determined to wake Arden and face him with the truth, a gaslamp came on. Next a flashlight was shone directly into my eyes. Blinded by the lights after the darkness of the hallway, I barely made out the vagueness of a hand that dangled a crystal prism before the beam of strong battery light. Colors refracted in my eyes. I staggered backwards, throwing up my hand to shield my eyes from the light. Then I turned to run. Someone followed. I heard the thump of footfalls. I screamed, whirled around and shouted, “Arden, have you come to finish what they started? What are you trying to do to me?”
More lights came on. Strung down the main upstairs corridor were hundreds of crystal prisms, catching colors, sparkling, stabbing and blinding me, threatening me. I spun about, confused and disoriented, unable to find the direction of my bedroom. Then the hands … hands that struck me on the shoulders from behind. Hard, strong hands that sent me pitching forward into space … and down, down, down … hurting all the way until my head struck … and then blackness.
Whispering, whispering, on the shallow waves of evening tide voices drifted. They called. Forced me back from a place I couldn’t name. Was this me, this tiny pepper dot in the sky? How could I see above, below, behind and before? Was I only an eye in the sky seeing everything, understanding nothing?
Whose name was that I heard spoken so softly? Mine? Whose room was this? Mine? On a narrow bed I lay, staring up at the ceiling. Fuzzily I made out the dresser across the way with its wide mirror that reflected what was in back of my bed. My vision cleared more so I could see the white chaise lounge that Arden had wanted me to have. Whitefern, I was still in Whitefern.
In the adjacent room Vera’s voice drifted to me as she spoke softly to Arden. I cringed, or tried to. Something was wrong with me, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that. I had to concentrate on what Vera was saying.
“Arden,” she continued in a stronger voice, “why do you keep objecting? It’s for your own good, for hers, too. Certainly you know she’d want it that way.”
What way?
“Vera,” answered the unmistakable voice of my husband, “you have to give me time to make a decision like that—an irreversible decision.”
“I’ve had about all I can take from you and from her,” said Vera. “You have to decide just who you want, her or me. Do you think I’m going to hang around here forever waiting for you to choose?”
“But … but …” stammered my husband, “at any moment, any day, maybe today or tomorrow, she could pull out of the coma.”
Coma? I was in a coma? I couldn’t believe this. I could fuzzily see, hazily hear. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“Arden,” said Vera’s deep and sultry voice,
“I’m a nurse and I know about things you’ve never heard of. No one can stay in a coma three weeks and pull out of it without irreversible brain damage. Think about that for a while, a long while. You’d be married to a living vegetable to burden the rest of your life. When Damian is dead, you’d have Sylvia, too—don’t forget her. With the two of them to care for, you’d be praying to God that you’d done as I suggested, but then it would be too late. I’d be gone. And you, my dear, would never have the courage to do it alone.”
Courage to do what?
The two of them were coming closer. I wanted to turn my head and watch them enter my room. I wanted to see Arden’s expression, and watch Vera’s eyes and see if she really loved him. I wanted to swing my feet to the floor and rise. But I couldn’t move, not anything. I could only lie there, a stiff, still thing, feeling only mental anguish and an unbearable sense of loss. Again and again I was flooded with panic. Drowning in panic. How could this have happened? Wasn’t I the same as earlier today, last night, yesterday? What had made me this way?
“Vera, my darling,” said Arden, now sounding even closer, “you don’t understand how I feel. So help me God, even as she is, I still can’t help loving my wife. I want Audrina to recover. Every morning before I leave for work I come in here and kneel by her bed and pray for her recovery. Every night before I go to bed, I do the same thing. I kneel and wait for her eyes to open, for her lips to part, for her to speak. I dream about seeing her well and healthy again. I’m in hell and I’ll never be free of hell until she’s herself again. Just one sign of life and I’d never … never consent …” He paused, sobbed, choked out, “Even as she is, I don’t want her to die.”
But Vera did. I knew now that somehow Vera was responsible for this situation, as she was responsible for the most disastrous events in my life.
“All right!” shrilled Vera. “If you still love Audrina, then you cannot possibly be in love with me. You have used me, Arden, used me! Stolen from me, too! For all I know I may be carrying your child again—as I carried your child once before and you didn’t know it.”
“One time between us then, Vera, only one. You don’t know that I was the one responsible. The odds against it were too great. You came to me, too, and let me know you wanted me, and were willing to do anything, and I was young, and Audrina was still a child.”
“And she will always be a child!” Vera shrilled. Then her voice dropped an octave as she continued to persuade. “You wanted me, too. You took me and you enjoyed it, and I had to pay the price.”
Oh, God, oh, God … on and on all of us kept paying prices, I thought, my mind going in circles as I tried to grasp at something stable.
“But if you love her, Arden, then you keep her. And I hope her arms will give you comfort when you need it and her kisses will warm your lips and her passion will satisfy your desire. Lord knows I’ve never known a man who needs a woman more than you do. And don’t you stand there and think you can hire another nurse to take my place. You may not know this, but Audrina needs me. Sylvia needs me, too. Somehow, despite all you’ve said about Sylvia not responding to anyone but your dear wife, I’ve managed to make Sylvia trust and even like me.”
“Sylvia doesn’t trust or like anyone but Audrina,” Arden said.
I stared at Vera. Her shining apricot hair peaked out below a starched white cap. Every strand was perfectly in place. Her pale complexion appeared as soft as putty, but even so, she was very pretty wearing white, with those glittering black eyes of hers. Hard, cruel, spider eyes, I thought.
Just as I used to do, she cupped Arden’s handsome face between her hands, resting her long, crimson fingernails on his cheeks. “Sweetheart, there are many ways to know when Sylvia is trusting. I’m beginning to know her …”
Oh, God! Sylvia shouldn’t trust and believe in Vera! Of all people, not Vera!
As if she heard me speak, Sylvia shuffled forward into view. I sensed she must have risen from her perpetual crouch and realized, too, that she was desperate now that I could no longer protect her. In her meandering way she advanced toward my bed as if to shield me. Poor Sylvia, all I wanted was to keep her safe, and now she had to keep me safe.
Her aquamarine eyes stared at me blankly, as if she saw through me, beyond me, and into some far, far distance.
Sylvia, Sylvia, what a burden she’d always been. My cross to bear for the rest of my life. Now I was the cross for someone else to bear. I tried to swallow the self-pity I felt and found I could barely manage to make my throat muscles move. I went on thinking of that far ago day when I was eleven and Papa had brought Sylvia home for the first time. My baby sister, who was nine years younger and born on my very birthday. Cursed, the Whitefern girls, each born nine years apart …
Or was that why my Aunt Ellsbeth had always said, “Odd, so odd,” and she’d looked at me as if to give me a clue. And, of course, it was odd. My life was built on lies. That older Audrina had not been nine years my senior.
Why was I thinking as I was? Something was in the back of my brain, something that had happened in the playroom … something that made me hate Arden …
“Goodbye, Arden,” Vera said, breaking into my reverie as she moved toward the door, leaving my husband staring after her with a stricken expression. Suddenly all that the rocking chair had revealed came back, and I remembered what he had done to the first, dead Audrina. Still I ached for his terrible dilemma—to keep me, now a nothing thing, and to keep Sylvia, a mindless, wandering creature, or to leave and take what happiness he could find—or steal.
“Don’t go!” cried Arden. His voice was deep and hoarse, as if the words were torn from his throat against his will. “I need you, Vera. I love you. Maybe not in the same way I love my wife, but it’s love nevertheless. I’ll do what you want, anything you want. Just give me a little more time. Give Audrina a little more time—and promise you won’t harm Sylvia.”
Vera came forward again, all smiles, her spider eyes sparkling. Her voluptuous figure swayed from side to side as she glided into my husband’s eager open arms. Together they melded, to move in rhythm to silent music as their earthy lust began right before my eyes.
Sometimes nature was kind. My vision fogged. I began to drift away, but etched deep on my brain was the thought that I had to save Sylvia and rid Arden of a woman who would ruin his manhood in the end. Still, why should I care? He’d failed the First Audrina, too, when she needed him most… and that’s when I knew. Arden was mine to punish, not Vera’s.
I had to stay alive for Sylvia, to save her from an institution. Papa had to be somewhere—I had to save him, too, from Vera. But how, when I couldn’t move or speak?
As the monotonous days slowly passed, I began to really know Vera as never before, by the cruel words she said to me. Thinking I couldn’t hear, she always spoke the truth.
“I wish you could hear and see me, Audrina. I’m having sex with your beloved Arden. He calls it making love, but I know what it is. He’s going to pay for everything I’ve been through to win him. He’s going to give me the world, this house, Papa’s fortune, and everything this monstrosity holds will be sold at auction. As soon as I have everything in my name, I’ll get rid of Sylvia … and Papa, too.” She laughed cruelly. “Arden is so appealing in some ways, so dependent on women for his happiness. A man is a fool to allow that to happen. I admire a man who always keeps his wife in her proper place—but I’ll be the man in our family. Sooner or later Arden will be mine, never doubt that.”
Her long nails scratched as she brutally rolled me over on my side to change the sheets. She’d placed me so precariously near the edge I almost fell to the floor. By my hair and one bare leg I was seized and yanked back to safety. She delivered a hard slap on my bare bottom, as if I’d purposefully tried to roll off the bed. Next she moved me from my side over onto my back, came around to the opposite side of my bed and finished tucking in the clean sheet before she stared at my naked body in an appraising way.
It was so awful to be n
aked and vulnerable and unable to help myself—and her eyes were no kinder than those ravishing eyes of the boys in the woods.
“Yes, I can see why he loved you once. Nice breasts,” she said, pinching my nipples so I felt a dull pain. Pain … that meant I was going to recover—if she gave me time. “Slim waist, too, flat stomach, nice, very nice. But your beauty is leaving, Audrina darling, leaving fast. All those rich young curves he loves will soon be flabby flesh to hang and droop, and he won’t want you back then.”
I lay staring at the ceiling high above. Where was Papa? Why didn’t he visit me?
In the corner Sylvia leaned forward, her aqua eyes in focus as she studied Vera intently. Warily she was inching closer and closer, too. I could barely see the drift of her long hair in the dimness of the large room. Yet, I kept willing her to do something to help. If you don’t want to be put away in one of those awful places, help me, Sylvia! Help me! Do something to save my life and your own, too!
Sylvia had inched forward enough to find a spot of random sunlight that fell on her hair and turned it copper. In her hand she turned the crystal prism constantly, like a baby watching the colorful light rays sparkle myriad rainbows about the room. One ray of scarlet and orange she beamed directly into Vera’s spider eyes.
“Stop that!” yelled Vera. “That’s what you did to my mother, wasn’t it? You did it to Billie, too, didn’t you?”
Crablike, Sylvia sidled back to her place in the shadows, keeping a watchful eye on me, on Vera.
On and on Vera rambled as if I were her confessor and when she put me in the ground I’d take her secrets with me and never again would she be haunted by any of the awful things she’d done.
“You know something, dear sister, there are times when I think Arden believes it was me who shoved his mother down the stairs. When he thinks I’m sleeping, he rests on one elbow and stares down into my face, and it makes me wonder if I talk in my sleep and say things he hears. He talks in his sleep. He says your name, trying to call you back from wherever you are. And if I wake him up, he turns from me unless I want to make love. I sense that’s all he wants from me. In many ways I don’t think he trusts me, and doesn’t really love me, only needs me now and then. But I’ll make him love me more than he loves you. Ten times more than he loves you. You were never a real wife to him, Audrina. How could you be after what happened?” Brittle as thin glass her laughter tinkled, like the wind chimes in the cupola. “Wasn’t it a nice birthday present those boys had for Audrina?”