“But that’s terrible,” she said when Kevin was finished. “How could Emmaline say such things about me? I’ve never done anything to hurt her—nothing at all. Why, she must have scared poor Jeff half to death.”
“But where is Ruby?” Kevin finally asked. “If she didn’t go to Emmaline’s, where did she go?”
Marguerite’s right hand fluttered at her bosom. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” she replied. “Perhaps she was lying to me. She’s like that, you know. Mother always said you couldn’t trust a word Ruby said. Not a word—” Abruptly she fell silent. As Kevin turned toward the front door, she asked, “Where are you going?”
Kevin turned to look at his sister, his eyes troubled. “Nowhere,” he said. “I’m just going to have a look around the house, that’s all.”
He stepped into the gloom of the house, closing the door behind him. He paused for a moment, feeling the atmosphere. For a moment he noticed nothing different: the house seemed as it always had. But then, as he started through the living room toward the dining room and the kitchen beyond, he began to feel a strange sense of something being amiss.
Somehow, though he knew he was alone in the house, it did not feel empty. There was a sort of presence in the house, and as he crossed to the dining room, his neck began to tingle. He stopped walking, spinning around as if expecting to catch someone staring at him.
But the room was empty.
And then he knew what it was. The portrait of his mother still hung above the fireplace, and it was his mother’s eyes he’d felt watching him, as if she were still alive and in the room. He paused for a moment, staring at the portrait.
It looked so much like Marguerite that a chill passed through him. His mother and his sister, he realized, could almost have been the same woman, they were so much alike.
Except that they weren’t. His mother had been hard, cruel, and unloving. Even now he could remember the dream he’d had—the dream of being locked away in a tiny room, with his mother coming to kill him.
A tiny room.
That’s what Jeff had said was in the basement—a tiny room, where Marguerite had been locked up.
He shook his head. It was crazy—it made no sense. He chuckled out loud, deciding the heat was now getting to him, too, but his small laugh echoed hollowly in the expanse of the room, mocking him.
Turning away from the portrait of his mother, he hurried on to the the kitchen.
Dirty dishes were piled in the sink, and the remains of Marguerite’s solitary lunch still sat on the kitchen table, as if his sister expected Ruby to reappear at any moment to clean up the mess. Then Kevin’s eyes fell on the door to Ruby’s room.
Uncertain what to expect, he strode to it and opened the door.
It was exactly as it looked last night—the bed still neatly made up, Ruby’s nightgown still hanging from a hook on the open closet door.
But then Kevin noticed some other things—things he hadn’t noticed last night.
On the table in the corner behind the door, he saw a tray.
On the tray a supper was laid out—a plate of gumbo, cold and congealed, and a small salad, its lettuce limp and already beginning to shrivel.
A supper, as if Ruby had been about to eat alone in her room when—
When what?
Kevin rejected the thought flitting around the edges of his mind, and continued his inspection.
On the shelf high up in the closet, he found a suitcase, its top still thickly coated with dust.
No empty hangers hung on the clothes bar, nor did anything seem to be missing when Kevin inspected Ruby’s drawers.
Suddenly the nightgown hanging from its hook stood out from the scene.
If Ruby had gone somewhere, wouldn’t she have taken her nightgown with her? Wouldn’t she have taken something with her?
And she certainly wouldn’t have left a full meal, uneaten, sitting on a table in her room.
A knot of fear congealing in his belly, Kevin left her room and retraced his steps back through the dining room and living room.
His mother’s eyes seemed to bore into him as he passed the portrait, and he quickened his step until he came into the entry hall. Marguerite was standing just inside the front door, and as Kevin started toward the door below the main stairs—the door that led to the basement—she spoke, her voice quavering.
“Wh-Where are you going?”
Kevin turned to face her, his eyes meeting hers. “Downstairs,” he said.
“B-But you mustn’t,” Marguerite whispered. Once more her hand was fluttering at her bosom, but suddenly it dropped to her hip, and when she took a step forward, her limp was suddenly more pronounced. “Please, Kevin—don’t go down there.”
The knot of fear tightened its grip on Kevin, but he shook his head. “I have to,” he said. Then he pulled the door open, tugged the string overhead, and started down to the cellar, the white light of the naked bulb overhead glaring coldly. He was already at the bottom of the stairs when he heard Marguerite’s uneven footsteps as she slowly followed him.
* * *
He stared at the door numbly for a moment. It was still half hidden, almost lost in the shadows behind the furnace, and he understood now why he hadn’t seen it before. Until a couple of days ago it must have been completely lost behind the mass of cardboard boxes that had been stacked there. He must have uncovered it himself just yesterday.
Indeed, if he hadn’t let himself become so angry with Jeff, he surely would have seen it.
He could feel Marguerite now, just a few steps behind him, and hear her breathing coming in strange, half-strangled gasps. He turned to her, but her face was lost in shadow, the naked bulb above the stairs forming a brilliant halo behind her head.
“What’s in there, Marguerite?” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice low. But still his words seemed to echo ominously, hanging heavily in the air.
“N-Nothing,” Marguerite stammered. “There’s nothing in there, Kevin. Really—”
“Then open it,” Kevin said. “If there’s nothing in there, then there’s nothing to hide, is there?”
Marguerite seemed to shrink back. “No,” she whispered, her voice taking on a childish whine. “I can’t go in there. Please don’t make me. Please?”
Kevin’s heart began to race, and the cold knot of fear in his belly turned to ice. “Why?” he asked. “Marguerite, why can’t you go in there?”
“I can’t,” Marguerite pleaded. “It’s where Mama kept me. It’s where she kept me during the bad times, when I was sick. Don’t make me go in there, Kevin. Don’t make me.”
Taking a deep breath, Kevin stepped to the door and tried the lock. It held firm, hanging from its hasp and glittering dully in the light from the bare bulb.
“I need the key, Marguerite.”
Marguerite bit her lip, and took an unsteady step backward, her hands clasped behind her back. “I—I don’t have it,” she whispered. “Ruby has all the keys. I wasn’t ever allowed to have them.…”
Dear God, Kevin thought. What did Mother do to her? But he said nothing. Instead he stepped around Marguerite and hurried up the stairs.
In the kitchen he began rummaging through the drawers, searching for the ring of keys that Ruby always kept close at hand. And then he heard the door swing open and turned to see Marguerite, her eyes glistening strangely. Next to her, on a hook just behind the door, hung the ring of keys. He stepped forward and took it in his hand.
“No,” Marguerite begged, the word strangling in her throat. “Don’t go back down there, Kevin. Please don’t.”
Part of Kevin wanted to give in to his sister, to put the keys back on the hook and never go into the basement again. But he couldn’t do that. Whatever was down there, he had to see it. He shook his head and stepped around Marguerite, starting back toward the stairs.
His back was already to her when she took the butcher knife out of one of the open drawers, concealing it in the folds of her skirt.
As s
he started once more after Kevin, the burning pain from her hip washed over her in throbbing waves, each one worse than the last. Descending the stairs, she had to clutch tightly to the railing, for her right leg, totally numbed by the pain now, was almost useless.
Kevin fumbled with the keys, trying one and then another. Most of them wouldn’t go into the lock at all, and the ones that would, refused to twist as his fingers worked at them.
He was only vaguely aware of Marguerite now, only half sensing her presence as she stood behind him, her eyes, smoldering darkly, fastened on his fingers as he worked.
He tried the next to the last key, and suddenly the lock fell open in his hands.
He stared at it vacantly, a fragment of his mind wishing that none of the keys had fit.
Then, his hand trembling, he lifted the lock from its hasp and pushed the door open.
It swung slowly, creaking on its hinges, and from over his shoulder a shaft of light from the bare bulb above the stairs illuminated the tiny cell.
The first thing he saw was Ruby.
Propped up on the wooden cot, her eyes wide open and staring blankly at him, she still had the belt of Marguerite’s robe knotted around her neck. One arm was outstretched, and her fingers seemed to be reaching out to him, pleading with him for help.
On the floor, her body twisted, lay Jennifer Mayhew. Her eyes, too, were open, staring sightlessly upward. Her head was wrenched back against one of her shoulders, and her arms sprawled lifelessly outward, the fingers of her left hand barely brushing against one of Ruby’s legs.
“My God,” Kevin groaned, involuntarily stepping back, then turning to face Marguerite. “What have you done?”
Marguerite stared at Kevin, her eyes wild. “Ruby was going to tell,” she murmured. “She was going to tell on me, and make you go away. And Jenny was going to leave me. You understand, don’t you, Kevin? I would have been all alone.…”
Kevin stared at her, shock numbing him. Then he stepped toward her.
“You’re going to tell too,” Marguerite suddenly cried. “You’re going to tell, and take Julie away from me!” She raised her right arm, and the blade of the knife glittered evilly in the glare from the light. “I won’t let you!” she screamed. “I won’t let you take Julie. I won’t!”
She hurtled herself forward, and Kevin, his body refusing to obey his mind, stared at her mutely, watched helplessly as the knife arced through the air.
The blade slashed into his chest, but for a moment he felt nothing at all. And then, as hot blood began gushing out of the wound, a strange heat seemed to emanate from the hardness of the blade in his body. His eyes widened and he began to sink to his knees, then felt himself twist around as Marguerite jerked the knife free.
Then he felt it again, a searing pain this time as the knife stabbed into his back. He tried to roll away, tried to call out his sister’s name, but it did no good.
And then, as the knife slashed into him once again, he remembered the dream—the dream he’d had when he was a boy, and then again only a few weeks ago.
The dream, in which his mother was going to kill him, and he’d tried to call out to his sister.
He looked up now, and saw his mother’s face looming above him.
Except it wasn’t his mother at all. It was Marguerite.
And he was calling her name, but no sound came out. Only a hot, salty stream of blood boiled from his lips.
His lungs were filling with blood now, drowning him.
He was dying, and there was nothing he could do to save himself.
As his life ebbed away, he thought about the dream once more, the dream he had been certain held some deep meaning.
But the meaning hadn’t been deep at all, for the dream had not even been a dream.
Instead, it had been a premonition, and now he was living it out.
It had been a premonition of his own death, down here in this dark and hidden room, and now it seemed as if he’d been waiting all his life for this moment when his mother would come to kill him.
Except it wasn’t his mother at all.
It was his sister, who had somehow in her own madness become his mother.
Become his mother, and now become his children’s mother too.
And as he died, he knew that she would kill them, just as she had killed him.
For him, the nightmare was over.
For his children, it had just begun.
CHAPTER 20
Alicia Mayhew glanced at the clock on the dashboard of her car, then up at the lowering sky. It was nearly three o’clock, and she’d distinctly told Jenny to be home no later than two. They were due at Alicia’s brother’s home in Charleston in thirty minutes, and even if she found Jenny within the next couple of minutes, they would still be late. And the storm wouldn’t help, either. If Jenny got caught out in the rain—
She braked the car to a stop, for across the street Kerry Sanders and Julie Devereaux had gotten out of Kerry’s worn convertible and were struggling to put the top up. “Julie?” Alicia called. “Julie!”
Julie looked up, then smiled and waved to Mrs. Mayhew. “Hi!” she called back.
“Have you seen Jenny?”
Julie shook her head. “Not since this morning. She was going out to see Aunt Marguerite.”
Alicia frowned uncertainly. “But she said she was going out to see you—”
“We saw her on the road, right at the end of the causeway,” Julie explained. “But it was mostly Aunt Marguerite she wanted to see. Isn’t she home yet?”
Alicia’s lips tightened and she shook her head impatiently. “I guess I’d better run out there,” she sighed. She shifted into Drive, pressed the accelerator, and the car moved forward just as the first drops of rain began to fall. She waved to Julie and Kerry, but neither of them saw her as they struggled to get the torn top to Kerry’s car up before the rain began in earnest.
Why, she wondered as she started out onto the causeway, couldn’t kids ever learn to keep track of time?
* * *
It was going to be all right now, Marguerite Devereaux told herself as she gazed into the mirror of her mother’s vanity. Everything was going to be fine. Kevin wasn’t going to leave—not ever again—and she was safe. Sea Oaks was hers now. Sea Oaks, and Julie, and …
She paused.
And Jeff, she finished.
She mustn’t forget Jeff. But he wasn’t part of it—he didn’t belong here, any more than Kevin had belonged here. It should be just her and Julie. Herself and Julie, just as it had been her mother and herself for so many years.
She would have to decide what to do about Jeff. Perhaps she should ask her mother.
She gazed into the mirror once more, examining her carefully applied makeup. It had taken her nearly an hour to get it exactly right, but her brows were finally tweezed to a thin line and darkened nearly black with one of her mother’s eyebrow pencils. Her cheeks, heavily rouged, seemed to glow beneath a thick layer of almost white powder, and her lips were covered with a smear of bright red.
Carefully she wrapped one of her mother’s old rats into her hair so that it formed a thick roll over her forehead. The rest of her hair, cascading in soft waves down to her shoulders, softened her face, framing it so that the rouge-enhanced planes of her cheekbones stood out dramatically. At last satisfied, she went to the closet and selected one of her mother’s favorite dresses. Bright red, it had wide shoulder pads and a tapering bodice held snug by a wide, black patent-leather belt. As she slipped the dress carefully over her head, she remembered the last time her mother had worn it, more than forty years ago.
It had been a day much like today. A storm had been threatening, and her mother had been expecting guests for tea. Marguerite had hovered in a corner of the room, watching her mother dress, until Helena had finally noticed her and sent her upstairs to practice her dancing. “We have a recital tomorrow, and you want to be perfect, don’t you?”
Just as Julie should have been practicing her
dancing today, she reflected as she inspected herself in the full-length mirror on the closet door, instead of running off with that boy. She would have to do something about that—
The sound of the front door bell drifting up the stairs interrupted her reverie. Marguerite waited for a moment, certain that Ruby would answer it. But then, shaking her head slightly as she remembered that for now, at least, she would have to take care of such things herself, she checked her reflection in the mirror once more and hurried toward the top of the stairs. The pain in her hip had eased once again, diminishing to an annoying ache, and as she started down the stairs, her right hand rested only lightly on the banister. As the bell sounded for the second time, she drew the door open and gazed out at her unexpected visitor. “Alicia,” she said, her lips widening into a smile of welcome. “Why, what a surprise. Won’t you come in?”
Alicia Mayhew stared at Marguerite. What on earth had she done to herself? Her face was covered with a harsh mask of makeup, and that dress …
Alicia hadn’t seen a dress like that since she was a little girl, when her mother and all her mother’s friends had worn the same kind of clothes that Joan Crawford had worn in the movies. “I—I just came out to see if Jennifer was still here,” Alicia stammered. Then, realizing she was staring at Marguerite, she self-consciously forced her eyes away, looking into the depths of the house. But Marguerite didn’t seem to notice that she had been staring.
“Jennifer?” she asked, her voice taking on a note of concern. “Here?”
Alicia nodded. “I just saw Julie and Kerry, and they said Jenny was coming out to see you. She was supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” Marguerite replied, holding the door wider. “I’ve been here by myself all day, ever since Julie left.” She smiled, the understanding expression of one worried mother to another. “I don’t know what to do with her sometimes. There’s so much she needs to do, but she just seems to want to run off with Kerry all the time.”