“We’ll put in a generator,” she’d said. “Just a little one in the closet under the stairs. Just in case.”
And tonight, finally, the case had come.
She picked up the hurricane lamp that stood on the newel post and went to the door beneath the stairs. Inside, tucked away in a corner, was the generator. She stared at it for a moment.
Would it even work? If it had been left to that worthless Ruby to look after, it probably wouldn’t.
She studied the directions printed on the orange metal of the machine’s gas tank, then fumbled for a moment as she searched for the choke. Finally, bracing herself uncomfortably, she pulled on the rope that emerged from the side.
On the third pull the little motor caught, coughed, then fell into an uneven idle that smoothed out when she adjusted the choke.
She turned one more switch and the machinery of the chair lift hummed into life.
She left the closet and returned to the foot of the stairs. She pressed the button, there was a familiar clanking sound, and the chair began descending toward her from its place at the second-floor landing.
Julie and Jeff, their throats sore and their voices hoarse, finally stopped screaming. The nursery was cold now, and the wind was whipping the curtains beside the broken window, but they were oblivious to it all, their ears pressed to the door as they strained to hear what was happening downstairs.
The wind slackened for a moment, and suddenly in the empty silence that replaced the howling of the storm, they heard the sound of machinery.
“Wh-What’s she doing?” Jeff whispered, fearfully clutching Julie’s hand.
“I don’t know. It sounds like the chair lift. But it can’t be—there isn’t any electricity.”
Then Jeff remembered the generator his father had shown him in the closet under the stairs.
“But why?” Julie asked after he had told her about it. “What does she need the lift for? She never uses it—she hates it.”
“How should I know?” Jeff complained. “And where’s Kerry?”
But Julie made no answer to Jeff’s question, and he didn’t ask it again, for both of them were already certain that Kerry was dead.
They didn’t know how, and they didn’t know why, but they were both absolutely positive that it had happened.
Their Aunt Marguerite had killed him.
The chair lift rattled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, and Marguerite leaned down, sliding her hands under Kerry Sanders’s arms. Her right leg sprawled awkwardly across the floor, she rested her weight on her left leg, crouching low to keep her balance. Finally, straining with the effort, she pushed herself upward, lifting Kerry’s limp body into the chair. She held it in place for a moment, catching her breath, then let go.
The body swayed, nearly falling off the chair. She caught it at the last moment, then paused, uncertain what to do.
And then she knew.
Grasping the handle of the knife that still protruded from Kerry’s chest, she pressed her weight against it, driving its sharp end into the banister at Kerry’s back. Then, leaving the body pinned to the stair rail like an insect on a board, she gathered her skirts around her and hurried down the stairs to the cellar, carrying the hurricane lamp with her.
In a few moments she was back, a long length of clothesline clutched in her free hand. Setting the lamp back on the newel post, she began wrapping the rope around Kerry’s body, tying it tightly against the back of the chair. When she was finally satisfied, she jerked the knife free of the banister and Kerry’s body settled slightly, his shoulders drooping, his right arm falling from his lap so that his fingers almost brushed the bottom stair.
Once again Marguerite pressed the button, and the chair began moving slowly upward, its gears grinding loudly as it bore its grisly cargo aloft.
Marguerite, one hand clutching Kerry’s shoulder for support, mounted the stairs next to the lift, keeping the sedate pace of the chair, oblivious to the small rivulet of crimson blood that ran down Kerry’s arm and dribbled in large droplets onto the carpet that covered the stairs.
They came to the second-floor landing, but instead of stopping the chair there, Marguerite let it continue, jerking around the corner to the second flight, then grinding in protest as it hit the rust that had gathered on the upper set of rails during the years of disuse.
A high, keening wail accompanied the chair on its final ascent, and then it clanked loudly as it came to a stop once more.
Marguerite struggled with the rope, her fingers slipping off the blood-covered knots. But slowly she began working them loose, and at last the rope came free and Kerry’s body tumbled to the floor. Grasping his hands in her own, she began dragging his corpse into the ballroom.
Julie and Jeff stared at each other in horror. They’d listened in silence as the chair lift had ground upward, then felt a moment of relief as it had clanged to a stop. But a few minutes later they’d heard a soft thump above them, as if something had fallen. Their eyes met, and though neither of them said a word, they both knew what had happened. It was Jeff who finally dared to speak, as the wind outside began to scream once more through the pines and a renewed torrent of rain battered at the house.
“She killed him,” he whispered, his voice choking with terrified sobs. “She killed him, and she took him upstairs, and she’s going to kill us too.”
Julie was unable to make any reply at all, for she knew that what her brother had said was true.
And then, after what seemed like an eternity of silence from beyond the nursery door, the machinery suddenly came back to life and they heard the chair lift begin its slow descent once again.
CHAPTER 25
The storm seemed to find new strength, and once more the night was shattered by jagged daggers of lightning and the house shuddered under the force of the thunder that followed each flash. A tall pine only ten yards from the house shrieked in protest as a bolt of lightning struck its top, splitting its trunk to the root. Julie screamed out loud as the thunderclap crashed in her ears, then shrank back, clutching the small coverlet from the broken crib tight around her.
“We’ve got to get away from here!” Jeff shouted over the roar of the storm.
“How?” Julie sobbed. “There isn’t any way out.”
But Jeff was already at the smashed window, squinting into the darkness as he tried to find a means of escape. As another bolt of lightning slashed through the storm, he saw a way. Eight feet away, toward the corner of the house, a thick mass of wisteria climbed the wall. Here on the second floor there was a narrow ledge, no more than six inches wide, which ran the full length of the house. If he could get onto the ledge and cling to the house itself as he inched his way to the vines—
“I can do it!” he yelled. “I know I can!”
His shout of bravado roused Julie. Still clutching the quilt around her shoulders, she moved toward the window.
“Look!” Jeff whispered, his voice quivering with excitement now instead of fear. “There’s some vines there. All I have to do is go along the ledge.”
“But you can’t,” Julie protested. “There’s nothing to hang onto.”
“Yes, I can,” Jeff insisted. “There’s all kinds of cracks in the siding. And if I can get out of the house, maybe I can get across the causeway too.”
The memory of her mother flashed into Julie’s head. “You can’t get across. Not in this—”
“Kerry got across,” Jeff replied, his jaw setting stubbornly. “If he could do it, so can I.”
He climbed up onto the windowsill and swung his legs out, then rolled over so he was on his stomach, his head and shoulders still inside the nursery. He felt with his toes, then found the ledge. A moment later, his weight on the ledge but his balance maintained only by his hands clinging to the sill, he grinned at his sister. “See? It’s easy.”
“Don’t!” Julie wailed. “You’ll fall, Jeff.”
“I won’t either,” Jeff told her. “And even if I do, I bet it won?
??t hurt me. All it is is mud down there, and I’ve jumped off higher stuff than this.”
He began edging his way toward the vines then, moving his feet slowly and carefully, testing the strength of the ledge with every step before trusting his weight to it. In a few seconds he was away from the window, only his right hand still clinging to its broken frame. He winced as he felt a fragment of glass slash his fingers, but let out no cry. Then, with his left hand, he began groping for a finger hold on the wall itself.
His heart sank for a moment as he felt nothing but the smooth surface of the siding, but then, barely within reach, he found a small crack. His fingertips dug in, and with the wind lashing at him, he took a deep breath, let go of the window frame, and began inching his way once more along the ledge.
He froze as the sky lit up around him, then pressed his body to the wall as a rumble of thunder made the house shake beneath his feet. As the thunder died away, he began creeping once more toward the vines.
He was three feet away when his left foot slipped and he felt himself lurch downward, the palms of his hands scraping across the wet siding. Just before his balance completely gave way, his fingers found a crack and he clutched wildly, his heart pounding, his breath frozen in his lungs. Trembling, he found his foothold once again, then moved quickly, scuttling like a crab to the relative safety of the vines.
His clothes were soaking wet, and he huddled in the vines for a moment, waiting for his heart to slow and his breathing to return to normal. At last he gripped the thick trunk of the ancient wisteria and abandoned the ledge.
Instantly he felt the vine tearing away from the wall, its tendrils loosing their grip on the old wood of the siding. Half climbing, half falling, he slithered to the ground. Just as his feet touched the wet earth, the mass of vines fell away from the house, collapsing in a tangled heap on top of him. He thrashed helplessly for a moment, but the vines seemed only to tighten around him, and he felt fingers of panic reaching out to him.
Marguerite emerged from the ballroom, humming softly to herself. She paused at the top of the stairs for a moment, her eyes darting around the small foyer outside the double doors as if she were searching for something that wasn’t there. Then her tuneless melody suddenly stopped and she murmured out loud, her words instantly lost in the moaning of the wind outside.
“My guests—I must attend to my guests.”
Seating herself on the chair lift, the bloodstained rope coiled neatly in her lap and the hurricane lamp held high, she pressed the button on the arm of the chair. The lift jerked once, then began its stately descent to the first floor.
When it came to a stop two minutes later, Marguerite stood up, staggering slightly as her lame hip protested, then caught her balance and went to the cellar door. Opening it, she held the lamp high as she started down the stairs, a soft glow of candlelight filling the dark reaches of the basement, casting eerie shadows on the walls and floor. Coming to the bottom of the stairs, Marguerite moved deliberately toward the small, nearly hidden chamber at the back, then reached into her pocket and fished out the key ring.
A moment later the lock snapped open and she pushed the door wide.
Holding the lamp high once more, she peered vacantly at the carnage within.
“It’s time to go upstairs,” she said softly, a smile playing at her lips. “In a little while the recital will begin.”
She glanced around, and finally set the hurricane lamp on a stack of cartons midway between the little room and the base of the stairs. Bending down, she grasped Kevin’s legs and began pulling him to the stairs. His body was already beginning to stiffen, and with the pain in her hip and leg increasing every moment, the job was almost more than she could accomplish.
But she had to do it, had to get him upstairs, had to get him to the ballroom. She labored on, and dust swirled up from the cellar floor, caking onto the blood that covered her clothes, settling in her hair, making her eyes sting. But at last Kevin’s body lay stretched out on its back, propped against the wall.
Returning to the tiny room, Marguerite began the labor of dragging Jennifer Mayhew’s corpse to the bottom of the stairs, and then Ruby’s. She went back to the room then, and carefully locked the door. Satisfied that it was secure, she moved back to the bottom of the stairs and tried to lift Kevin’s body up onto the stairs themselves.
It was impossible.
Marguerite whimpered in the dim light as frustration and fury welled up in her, making her whole body tremble. She kicked out at the corpse, her right foot stiffly lashing into its side, then winced as a stab of pain shot through her leg. “Damn you,” she whispered. “Damn you, damn you, damn you!” Her mind churned with rage, but as an idea formed in her mind, the anger drained away.
Stepping over Kevin’s body, she stumbled up the stairs and found the coil of rope on the chair lift, just where she’d left it. A few seconds later she was back in the basement.
She twisted Kevin’s body around until his feet rested on the bottom step, then tied one end of the rope around his ankles, twisting it tight and tying it off as best she could. Then, chuckling softly, she went up the stairs once more, playing out the coils of rope as she went. At the top of the stairs she had one more flash of panic: What if the rope wasn’t long enough? Her heart racing, she quickened her uneven step, then sighed in relief as she reached the chair lift.
There were still two feet of rope left. Muttering quietly, she tied the end of the rope to the lift, straightened up and pressed the control button once more.
The chair began to move, and the rope, curving around the newel post, then snaking along the floor to the cellar door, grew taut.
The machinery of the lift ground in protest for a moment, then, from the cellar, there was a sharp thumping noise, then another. As the lift moved up the stairs toward the second floor, Kevin Devereaux’s body moved up from the basement, his head bumping loudly on each step. As the chair reached the second-floor landing, Kevin’s corpse emerged feet first from the cellar door and began dragging across the polished wood of the foyer. When it came to the bottom of the stairs, Marguerite stopped the chair lift and reversed its action. The rope went slack, and by the time the chair reached the foot of the stairs once more, the rope was free from Kevin’s legs.
Grasping him under the arms, Marguerite heaved him onto the chair, then held him in place as she began wrapping coils of rope around him as she’d wrapped them around Kerry Sanders thirty minutes earlier.
At last, her brother’s body tied securely to the chair, she pushed the button once more, and with her hand resting lightly on the corpse’s arm, began accompanying the body on its slow ascent.
“You’re going to be so proud of her,” she said. “I’ve taught her so much while you’ve been gone. She dances like the wind on a meadow, Kevin. Have you ever seen the way the breeze makes the leaves dance on a beautiful fall day? It’s charming, absolutely charming. And that’s how she dances now. I’ve devoted my life to her, you know. My whole life. But it’s been worth it, every minute of it. And you’re going to see. You’re all going to see. And you’ll be so proud. So very, very proud.
“As proud as I am …”
The lift came to the second-floor landing, turned jerkily, then started up the last flight. And all the way Marguerite, her hand still resting on the bloody remains of her brother, kept chatting on, as if entertaining an honored guest.
Stop! Jeff commanded himself, and with an effort of sheer will made himself lie still for a moment. Then, beginning with his right arm, he began working himself free of the clinging snare in which he was entangled. He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there, but it seemed like hours. The rain was still pouring down on him, but the screaming of the wind through the pine trees seemed to have eased slightly, and there was less lightning.
His right arm finally came free of the vines, and then he began stripping the clinging foliage away from his other arm and his legs. When at last he could move freely, he began methodically workin
g his way through the tangle, gently pushing the vines apart until there was a hole through which he could crawl. At last he emerged from the collapsed wisteria, his hand sinking deep into the muddy garden that edged this side of the house.
“Jeff? Jeff!”
He barely heard his name at first, then heard it again and looked up. Above him there was nothing but blackness, but he thought he could make out his sister leaning out the window and staring down at him.
“Are you all right?” he heard.
“I’m okay,” he called back. “I made it.” Then, before Julie could say anything else, he dashed off into the night, using his memory more than his eyes to follow the path down past the garage and into the undergrowth beyond. If his aunt found out he’d gotten away, the first place she’d look for him was on the road. But out here, in the middle of the island, she’d never find him.
He ran as fast as he could, dodging through the clumps of vines and stands of pines, his heart pounding and his breath coming in loud, rasping gasps. Finally, his energy gone, he had to stop.
He slumped to the ground, his whole body aching, and tipped his face up so that the rain sluiced over him, washing away the sweat that had broken out all over his body. At last his panting slowed and he got back to his feet.
He took a step forward, then stopped, frowning uncertainly in the darkness.
Where was he?
There was a flash of lightning in the distance, and in the brief moment of illumination he gazed frantically around, trying to get his bearings. But nothing looked familiar, and as the lightning died and a low rumble of thunder rolled across the island, he realized he was lost.
The tendrils of panic reached out to him again, but once more he fought them down. He’d been out poking around the island every day, and he knew all the paths—every inch of them. How could he be lost?
Then, a few yards away, he thought he heard a sound—the snap of a twig, then an angry hissing—as if something were moving through the brush.