Charlotte’s Story (37 page)

Quickly turning over so that it felt as though knives were shooting through my head, I flung the steaming soup bowl at him, and watched with satisfaction as the carrots and potatoes and bits of celery tumbled down his shirtfront.

“I didn’t kill her, and we both know it.”

Press didn’t move, didn’t change expression.

“You’ve shamed yourself, Charlotte. Remember that.”

Chapter 40

A Clever Trick

“Go upstairs, upstairs, Mommy.”

Even with Press’s threats, I couldn’t get Eva’s words out of my head. She meant for me to confront Press in the theater, I was certain. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do, but I decided I would know when I went inside. Above my head, I could hear people walking around. Voices in the hall, bright laughter on the stairs that echoed in the dome and filled Bliss House with an air of celebration. For the first time in years, there were people invited upstairs and into the theater.

“You know almost everyone,” Press had said.

Yes, I would be there.

Aching, and lightheaded from hunger—I hadn’t trusted the soup, but had retrieved the bread from the floor—I went to the wardrobe and found the costume that Press had provided. It was, indeed, a Brunhild costume, complete with a braided gold corset and flowing ivory skirt. Resting on the floor of the wardrobe was a kind of
helmet decorated on either side with eagles’ feathers. A molded half-face mask lay beside it. So like Press. I could imagine how the others looked. Press loved a masquerade, but he was never who he pretended to be.

Pushing the ridiculous costume aside, I found a clean pair of loose wool slacks and took a tunic sweater from the drawer. My progress was slow as I washed and dressed. The anniversary clock on the mantel chimed ten-thirty. I found my coat, dirty and torn (I must have looked quite strange to the Webbs), lying over a chair, and transferred its contents into my sweater pockets. I didn’t know what was going to happen—if I would find Michael with Press, or somewhere in the house. I was acting completely on my faith in a dream, and in my dead daughter.

When I reached the third floor, I started for the closed theater doors. Above me, the dome was alive with bright stars as it was every night. I could hear music, not loud but strange and foreign, coming from the theater. Press had had new chandeliers hung inside, but the light showing beneath the door was as gold and wavering as firelight. Even in the gallery the air was pungent with sharply scented incense that was nothing like what Father Aaron burned at church on high holy days.

I reached for the handle of one of the doors, but I heard light, running footsteps behind me. Unmistakably Eva’s footsteps.

“Eva.” I whispered her name. “Eva, come back.”

The footsteps paused for a moment, then continued up and down the other side of the gallery in front of the ballroom, getting louder and louder, heavier and more frantic. Eva, running until she was exhausted. How many times had I watched her run from the nursery door to the back stairs, or around the gallery on a rainy day? Sinking onto one of the tall armchairs resting along the wall
when she got tired. I sensed that she had stopped at the armchair outside the ballroom, perhaps to rest. But then the running began again, footfalls thundering until I had to cover my ears. Certain that everyone else in the house must be hearing it too, I ran across the gallery to where I thought she was.

“Eva. Stop.”

Finally, as I stood in front of the ballroom doors, they did stop. I could feel Eva—or something—breathing heavily beside me.

Did she want me to go into the ballroom? I put my hand on the inset handle of one of the doors. As I slid it open, it rumbled lazily in its overhead track.

I’ve never been able to explain what I did—or rather didn’t—see that night. It might have been the result of some drug or unconscious hypnosis. What I mean to say is that what I’d seen in the ballroom prior to that day must have been the result of some trick or enchantment.

The room in which I’d played with Michael just a few days before now looked exactly as it had before I’d had it painted. There were the same hundreds—or maybe thousands—of delicate Japanese women and gruff-looking men painted onto the walls. I groped for the button light switch and pressed it. A few of the wall sconces came on, and I saw the glint of light on the metal rings attached to the ceiling.

Shocked, I spun around to look out to the hallway. Nothing there had changed. But when I looked again, I knew I wasn’t deceived. The room had not changed. There was no faint odor of paint, not a single drop cloth or tool on the floor. Something brushed past me and I heard the footsteps again, running, running, running, playful.

I was, I confess, afraid, despite the presence of my daughter. Nothing was right, and my mind raced for an explanation. Stepping into the room, I could no longer hear the music from across the gallery, so deep was the quiet of the windowless ballroom. It was
another trick of this house, which had enchanted me for so many years, hiding its true nature, hiding the true nature of my husband.

Standing in the unchanged room, I suddenly understood that I had been seeing only what I had wanted to see. The house, the strange man I’d “hired” to paint—they had all been just what I wanted. What had Michael seen when he was in the room with me? How had the house affected him?

Looking out the doors, I saw the railing from which Michael Searle had hanged himself. He’d committed suicide rather than live with what his father and Terrance had done to Olivia. Done to him. Surely I hadn’t invented that.

It was what my own mother had chosen, rather than live with me.

What sort of person was I, really?

“Help me. Someone help. Please.”

The voice came from inside the ballroom. I turned around but didn’t see anyone.

But it hadn’t been a ghostly sort of voice, and it was coming from the fireplace. Afraid, but also afraid not to respond, I went to the fireplace and saw that the flowered panel beside it was a few inches out of place.

“Who’s there? Please, help me.”

It was J.C.’s voice. The sound of it was so piteous that any animosity I had for her was completely overwhelmed. I couldn’t ignore her—and hadn’t Eva led me to find her?

Between the two of us, we got the stubborn panel open.

The woman who stumbled out of the hidden passage was nothing like the woman who had swanned into Bliss House the previous week, her clothes perfect, her confidence intimidating and annoying. Now her skirt and blouse were torn and stained brown with—
dear God
, it was blood. One of her eyes squinted shut, a mass of purple and black bruising. The other was blood-red, the cheek below it dramatically swollen as though badly broken.
When I instinctively reached out to steady her, she flinched but didn’t turn away.

“There are rooms down there. He’s an animal.” Her shoulders hunched, her voice was a raw whisper. “It’s not Press anymore. Whatever he is, he’s going to kill me. Do you understand? We have to get away from here. I told you! Didn’t I tell you? And you wouldn’t listen, Charlotte!” She began to weep. Great, heaving sobs.

“Were you hiding? What’s in there?” Later she would describe the strange warren of rooms far beneath the house. I didn’t want to see them, but I eventually did.

Choking on her sobs, J.C. sank to the floor. I was going to have to get her to a hospital, but I couldn’t let Press know that I had seen her.

I had to think of Michael first.

Whatever I did to help her might lead to Press punishing me by keeping Michael from me forever. I knew it was a selfish thought, but I couldn’t help myself.

The sobbing suddenly abated, and she gripped my arm with fingers whose nails were torn and filthy with dirt and blood. “He told me about Eva. It wasn’t you, Charlotte. He thinks he’s going to kill me, so he told me.”

“Told you? What did he tell you?” I knelt beside her on the floor. “Tell me about Eva!” I took her by the shoulders. If her head hadn’t turned a fraction of an inch, looking past me, transfixed, I might have shaken her.

I swung around.

Terrance.

Chapter 41

Roses

“Hello, stranger.”

I heard Rachel’s voice but could only see her in my peripheral vision. Turning my head, slowly, I knew I should be afraid, knew I should be moved to action, but I couldn’t make myself do anything. My breath was short and I had the horrible feeling that I might die at any moment.

Press and Terrance and a man in a rubber clown mask had led us into the theater. I hadn’t seen Rachel at first, but there were several other women, all also wearing bizarre masks: a rabbit, a man’s mustached face (though the body below was decidedly female), a mouse, even a pig. Jack, with his silver-blond hair, was Mercury, silver wings like layered sickle blades protruding from his back. The other men were costumed as well. I was sure that the man in the featureless black gauze mask was Hugh Walters, the sheriff. Press had fitted himself with a dark mustache and tidy oiled beard. It, along with the oxblood Victorian waistcoat, proclaimed
him to be Faust. When he was close enough for me to whisper, I told him he looked like a fool.

Once the doors were closed behind us, I had recklessly announced that they should look at J.C. to see what kind of man had brought them all here.

When everyone stopped to stare at us, I realized how many of them were scantily dressed. Two women, wearing only masks and swathes of pastel tulle on their rather robust bodies, had been interrupted while dancing to the waltz playing on the stereo. A Pulcinella, his blousy pants loosened, his member exposed, had turned away from a shepherdess seated on a lounge in front of one of the room’s tall windows.

The realization of what was happening—what
had been happening
—among these people, under the thin guise of play readings and literary conversation and, now, a funeral memorial, swept over me.

I had been the fool.

Someone laughed and the party resumed. Press held my arm, and Jack grabbed my elbow to hold me still and stuck me with a needle. Within a few agonizing minutes in which I swore at Press, calling him names I didn’t even remember knowing, I was drowsy, but fought sleep as hard as I could.

When I woke, it was to Rachel’s voice.

I lay on a cushioned table or platform of some kind, and my head was raised so that I had a view of the transformed room: the thick carpets and plush velvet curtains. There were modern lamps, standing and on tables, and a number of candelabra filled with lighted candles that smoked faintly in the big room. I smelled burning wax and perfume. Rachel’s
My Sin
, but there were other scents as well. Laughter and murmuring voices came to me from all directions. Above my head were the theater’s new twin chandeliers. All was comfort, richness. The refinished paneled walls had a silken glow. It should have been beautiful. But it was not. It was pure evil.

“I bet you feel a little funny.” Rachel looked far different from how she’d looked when I’d seen her at the hospital. Her hair was swept up and sleek against her head, not full and lush as I was used to seeing it. She didn’t need a mask like the others, because she wore exaggerated, Kabuki-like makeup. It made her look unusually childish, like an expensive doll. Her cheeks were heavily rouged as though to contradict the deathly pale ivory foundation beneath it, her eyes lined to freakish roundness, the lids painted a brighter white than the foundation. But there was something else unfamiliar about her. Her eyes were reddened from some drug or alcohol—in fact, she held a goblet (one of Olivia’s jewel-toned goblets from the butler’s pantry) full of wine—but there was also an edge to her voice. It was clipped and precise as though it pained her to speak.

It all led me to wonder if maybe I wasn’t in a dream after all. The Rachel I knew loved to dress up in costume, but only if it was flattering.

“Not to worry. It’s not permanent.” She gave a little giggle. “At least Jack and Press say it’s not. We trust them, don’t we? You just have to be very still for a while. Jack says you probably won’t even remember.”

I tried to speak, but my tongue felt thick and useless. What if my lungs stopped working and I couldn’t breathe?

“Shhhh. Shhhh.” Seeing panic in my eyes, Rachel patted my arm. I could feel her hand on me, but why couldn’t I push her away?

“Before anything happens, we must have a talk. Just you and me.” She glanced around. Satisfied, she said, “I have a secret to tell you, darling. I’m afraid it’s a secret you’re not going to like very much.”

I couldn’t stop her. God help me, I didn’t want to know any secrets from her. There had been enough secrets. Far too many secrets.

“Listen.” Rachel came even closer and traced a finger over my cheek. “Eva was at my house that day, while you were sleeping off
your indiscretion with the champagne. You know how much she loved the geese.”

Eva! She was talking about Eva. She was going to tell me this thing, and I couldn’t stop her. I could barely move my head.

I tried to say
no
, but it came out as an animal grunt.

She touched my hair.

“I was glad when you cut your hair. You’re not as pretty with short hair, Charlotte. Your jaw is too square. It’s too mannish.” When she glanced away, I knew she was looking at—or for—Press. Always Press. How had I not seen? She turned back to me, her painted lips a small moue of dissatisfaction. “I couldn’t deny her the chance to feed the geese, and she’d asked so nicely. She had such lovely manners for a little girl. That made you happy, didn’t it? Perfect little girl for perfect you.” Now her face was very close to mine, and I could smell the sour wine on her breath. Her lipstick was smeared and her false eyelashes untidy. I imagined her face pressed into one of the enormous pillows that lay strewn about the room, unspeakable things being done to her, her face hot against the silk. I felt as though I might retch.