Dollenganger 03 If There Be a Thorns (30 page)

In the hard driving rain, in the dark, he turned to clasp me against his chest, his hand pressing my head against his heart. I think I heard him sob. "Jory, you don't know how much I've longed to hear you say you don't hate me or your mother. I always hoped you'd understand when we told you--and we were going to tell you when you were older. We thought, perhaps foolishly, that we needed to wait a few more years, but now that you have found out on your own, and you can still love us, maybe later on you will come to understand."

I drew closer to Dad as we continued on our way to the shadowy mansion. I felt a new bond had developed between us that was stronger than what we'd had before. In a way he was more my father, because he had much of my own kind of blood. Blood of my blood, I thought, my own uncle and Bart's, though I'd always thought he was Bart's uncle, and that had made me a little jealous. Now I could lay claim to him too. But why hadn't they realized I was mature for my age, and I would have understood when they told me Mom had an affair with Bart's father . . . I would have . . . I think.

We reached the steps. Before Dad could bang on the doorknocker, the left side of the double doors swung open and there stood that butler, John Amos Jackson. "I'm packing," he said in way of greeting, scowled up and ugly looking, "and my wife has gone to Hawaii. I have a million things to take care of here without entertaining the neighbors. I plan to join her as soon as I'm done here."

"Your wife?" bellowed Dad, his astonishment so clear it slapped me too.
Something smug came and went in the butler's watery eyes. "Yes, Dr. Christopher Sheffield, Mrs. Winslow is now married to me."
I thought Dad would fall from shock. "I want to see her. And I don't believe you. She'd be out of her mind to marry you."
"I don't lie," said that grim, ugly butler. "And she
is
out of her mind. Some women can't live without a man to run their affairs, and that's what I am-- someone to lean on."
"I don't believe you," stormed my dad. "Where is she? Where is my wife? Have you seen her?"
The butler smiled. "Your wife, sir? I have enough to do keeping up with my own wife without looking out for yours. Yesterday my wife railed about this terrible weather and took off with one of our maids. She told me to join her later, after I'd arranged it) close up this house. And after all the trouble and expense she went to having this place redecorated and refurbished--now she wants to move."
Dad stood staring at John Amos Jackson. I thought we'd leave then, but Dad seemed rooted. "You know who I am, don't you, John? Don't deny it. I see it in your eyes. You are the butler who made love to the maid Livvie while I lay on the floor behind the sofa and heard you tell her about the arsenic on the sugared doughnuts meant to kill the attic mice."
"I don't know what you're talking about," denied the butler, while I looked from him back to Dad. Oh, I should have finished every page of Morn's manuscript. Things were even more complicated than I'd realized.
"John, perhaps you are married to my mother and perhaps you are lying. Regardless, I think you know what has happened to my wife, and now I'm concerned about my mother as well. So, get out of my way. I'm going to search this house from top to bottom."
The butler paled. "You can't come over here and tell me what to do," he muttered indistinctly, "I could call the police . . ."
"But you won't, and if you want to, go ahead, call them. I am going to search now, John. There's nothing you can do to stop me."
The old butler shuffled away, shrugging helplessly. "Go on then, have your way, but you won't find anything."
Together Dad and I searched. I knew the house much better than he did, all the closets, the secret places. Dad kept saying the attic was where they would be. But when we were up there and looking, there was nothing but junk and dusty clutter.
Again we returned to the parlor where the woman he called mother had her hard wooden rocker which I sat in and found quite uncomfortable. Restlessly Dad prowled the room, then paused in the archway that led to the adjacent room, that parlor where the huge oil portrait hung. "If Cathy came over here she would have seen that, and she could have come if Bart told her something."
Rocking back and forth in the chair, I made it "walk" a little closer to the fire that was guttering out. Something crunched beneath one of the rockers. Dad heard the sound and bent to pick up an object. It was a pearl.
He tested it between his teeth and smiled bitterly. "My mother's string of pearls with a butterfly clasp. She always wore them, just as our grandmother always wore her diamond brooch. I don't believe my mother would go anywhere without those pearls."
Another hour of searching the house, and questioning the Mexican maid and cook who did not understand English very well, and both he and I were frustrated. "I'll be back, John Amos Jackson," said Dad as he opened the front door, "and the next time I'll have the police with me."
"Have it your way, Doctor," said the butler with a tight malicious smile.
"Dad, we can't notify the police--can we?"
"We will if we have to. But let's wait at least until tomorrow. He wouldn't dare harm Cathy or my mother, or he'd land up behind bars."
"Dad, I'll bet Bart knows what is going on. He and John Amos are very thick."
I explained then how Bart was always talking to himself whenever he believed he was alone. He talked in his sleep too, and when he stalked around playing pretend games. It seemed the most important part of Bart's life was spent alone, talking to himself.
"All right, Jory, I understand what you're saying. I have an idea I hope works. This may well be the most important, part you've every played, so pay attention. Tomorrow morning you are only to pretend to go to school. I'll let you out as soon as we turn the corner onto the highway. You run back home and make sure Bart doesn't see you. I'll try to find out if my mother really flew to Hawaii, and if she really married that horrible old man."
I told John Amos about my dreams. He nodded his head and told me he used to dream when he was young about girls and how much he could love them, if only they wouldn't see how long his nose was. "I had other attributes I couldn't show them, but they never gave me a chance, never a chance."

Questions, questions, all they did was ask me questions.
Didn't know nothing, nothing. Wasn't guilty, wasn't. Why ask me? Crazy kids didn't give straight answers. "Momma's gone 'cause she always hated me, even when I was a little baby."
That night whores, harlots and strumpets came to dance in my head. Woke up. Heard the rain beating on the roof. Heard the wind blowing at my window.
Fell asleep again and dreamed I was like Aunt Carrie who didn't grow tall enough. Dreamed I prayed and prayed and one day God let me grow so tall my head touched the sky. Looked down and saw all the little people running around like ants, afraid of me. I laughed and stepped in the ocean, making tidal waves rise up and wash over the tall cities. More pipsqueak screams. All the people I didn't squash were drowned. Sat in the ocean then that came to my waist and cried. My tears were so huge they made the ocean rise up again--and all I could see all around me was my reflection, and how handsome I was now. Now that there wasn't a girl or woman left alive to love and admire me, I was handsome, tall and strong.
Next morning Jory left with Daddy. Easy to slip away from Emma and Madame Marisha, for they had to fool around with Cindy so much. But it gave me the chance to steal into the mansion next door. I sneaked around to find John Amos. He was packing all the beautiful lamps, paintings and other valuables in boxes. "The silver should be wrapped in tarnish-proof papers," he said to one of the maids, "and be careful with that china and crystal. When the movers show up, have them put in the best furniture first, for I may be busy elsewhere."
The prettiest maid was young, and she frowned. "Mr. Jackson, why we go? Thought Madame liked it here. She never say we moving."
"Your mistress is a woman of changing moods
-it's that nutty boy next door. That little one who keeps coming over here. He's gotten to be a real nuisance. He killed the dog she gave him I suppose none of you know that?"
I stared in the room and saw the maid's lips part in horror. "No . . . thought the dog went over to boy's home . ."
"The brat is dangerous! That's why Madame has to move--he's threatened her life more than one time. He's under the care of a psychiatrist."
They looked from one to the other and made circles above their heads. Mad! Mad as hell at John Amos, telling lies about me.
Waited until he was alone, sitting at the fancy desk where my grandmother kept her checkbook. He jumped when I came in. "Bart, I wish you wouldn't sneak around like that. Make some noise when you enter, clear your throat, cough. . . do something to announce you are there."
"I heard what you told the maids. I'm not crazy!"
"Of course you're not," he said, his S's hissing as always. "But I do have to tell them something, don't I? Otherwise they might become suspicious. As it is, they think your grandmother has gone on a trip to Hawaii . . ."
I felt sick inside, standing there, toeing in my sneakers, and staring down at them. "John Amos . . . can I give my momma and granny sandwiches to eat today?"
"No. They can't be hungry already."
Knew he would say that.
He forgot me then. He was reading over her bankbooks, her savings accounts, her receipts and giggling to himself. He found a little key and opened a tiny drawer way back behind another door. "Stupid woman, thought I didn't notice where she hid her key . . ."
I left him having his fun with my granny's things, and I stole down to where my caged mice were. Made me feel better to think of them as only mice.
My momma was groaning, half crying from the cold as I peeked inside and saw they had the little stub of candle lit. I'd shoved in the candle along with some matches so I could see what they were doing. Momma looked little and white, and still my granny held her head in her lap, and wiped her face with a rag she must have torn from her slip, for it had lace on one ragged edge.
"Cathy my love, my only daughter left, please listen to me. I have to speak now for I may never have another chance. Yes, I made mistakes. Yes, I allowed my father to torment me until I didn't know right from wrong, or which way to turn. Yes, I put arsenic on your sugared doughnuts thinking each one of you would get only a little sick, then I could slip you out one by one. I didn't want one of you to die. I swear I loved you, all four of you. I carried Cory out to my car where he breathed his last breath just as I laid him on the back seat and covered him with two blankets. I panicked. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go to the police, and I was so ashamed, so guilty."
She shook my mother, while I trembled too.
"Cathy, my daughter, please wake up and listen," she pleaded. Momma had awakened and seemed to be trying to focus her eyes. "Darling, I don't think Bart killed the dog I gave him. He loved Apple. I think John did that hoping Bart would be blamed and considered crazy and dangerous so the police would put the blame on Bart when you and I disappeared. I think John strangled Jory's little pet poodle too, and killed my kitten as well.
"Bart is a very lonely, confused little boy, Cathy, but he's not dangerous. He likes to pretend he is, and in that way he can feel like he's going to be a powerful man. But it's John who is dangerous. He hates me. I didn't know until a few years ago that if I hadn't returned to Foxworth Hall after your father died, John would have inherited all the Foxworth fortune. My father trusted John as he trusted no one else, perhaps because they were so much alike. But when I came back, he forgot John. He wrote John out of his will and put me back in as his sole heir. Cathy, are you listening?"
"Momma, is that you, Momma?" asked my mother in a small voice that sounded like a child in trouble. "Momma, why don't you look at the twins when you come in to see us? Why don't you notice that they don't grow as they should? Are you deliberately
not
seeing?--just ignoring them so you won't feel guilty and ashamed?"
"Oh, Cathy!" cried Grandmother, "if only you knew how much it hurts to hear you say those things after all these years. Did I hurt you so deeply you can never heal, you and Chris too? It's no wonder you and your brother--I'm sorry, so sorry I could die." But in
a
moment or so she pulled herself together and went on with what she called a "desperate urgency."
"Even if you are delirious and can't fully understand now, I must speak, or I may not live to tell you everything. When John Amos was a young man, about twenty-five, he lusted after me, though I was only ten. He'd hide in corners and spy on me, then hurry to
my
father and make the worst of innocent deeds on my part. I couldn't tell my parents that John told lies for they never believed me--they believed him. They refused to recognize a young girl is often preyed upon by older men, even older relatives. John was third cousin to my mother, the only member of her family
my
father could stand. I think my father put it in his head after my older two brothers died, that if ever I fell out of his favor, John would benefit. That was my father's way of extracting the most out of everyone--dangling his sugar plums that would vanish when reached for. John wanted my mother's wealth too. They encouraged him to think he might inherit. They thought him a saint. He wore a pious look all the time, he acted godly, and all the while he was seducing every pretty young maid who ever came into Foxworth Hall. And my parents never suspected. They couldn't see any evil but what their children did. Can you understand now why John hates me? Why he hated my children too? He would have been the beneficiary if I had stayed in Gladstone.
"One day I heard him in the back hall
whispering to Bart, your son, that I used my 'feminine wiles' to cajole my father into disinheriting the only man who was his friend, his best confidant."
Grandmother began to cry then. I shriveled up tight, hurting deep inside from all I was finding out. Malcolm, were you evil too? Who was Ito trust now? Was John Amos just as conniving with his "masculine wiles" as my granny was with her feminine ones? Was everybody just as wicked as my granny and momma? Was God on my side, on her side, or John's?
"Momma, are you still there, Momma?"
"Yes, darling, I'm still here. I'll stay and take care of you as I never took care of you before. This time I'll be the mother I should have been before. This time I'll save you and Chris."
"Who are you?" demanded my mother, bolting up again and shoving my grandmother away. "Oh!" she screamed, "it's you! You weren't satisfied just to kill Cory and Carrie, now you've come back to kill me too. Then you'll have Chris all to yourself, all yours, all yours," she broke then and cried; then she began to scream like she was crazy, shrieking out over and over again how much she hated her mother. "Why don't you die, Corrine Foxworth--why don't you die?"
Went away. Couldn't stand anymore of that. They were both evil.
But why was this hurting so much?