Authors: Lois Duncan
Down a Dark Hall (14 page)
“Here, sit down.” Kit hurried over to her and, with an arm around her waist, drew her over to the desk chair. “I’ll get a
washcloth. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”
She went quickly into the bathroom and grabbed the cloth from the edge of the sink and ran cold water over it. Then she wrung
it out and carried it back to the bedroom.
“Press this over the spot. No, I will, wait, I can use both hands.”
Sandy stared at her in disbelief. “Why did you do it?”
“Me? You think I did this?” Kit exclaimed, holding the cloth tightly against the injury.
“Well, didn’t you? Somebody broke that pencil and threw it at me. If you didn’t, who did? There’s nobody else—” Her voice
broke and understanding came into her eyes. “I’m sorry, Kit. Of course, you didn’t.
He
was here, wasn’t he? The one with the music?”
“Yes,” Kit said. Her hand was shaking as she pressed it upon the washcloth. She felt sick.
“Why?” Sandy whispered. “What does he have against me?”
“It wasn’t you,” Kit said. “It would have been the same with anybody who had come in just then, who had broken his control.
He had me, Sandy. I was going to write down his music for him. When you called out my name your voice came through to me,
and I got away.”
“Who was it?” Sandy spoke with a choking sob in her voice. “Schubert?”
“I don’t think so. It’s been a long time since it was Schubert. That is, if I can judge by the music. In the beginning it
was lovely, but now it’s different, wilder, more discordant. It doesn’t
feel
like Schubert.”
“It’s the same with me,” Sandy said. “That’s why I came here tonight. I had to tell you. Ellis is gone.”
“Gone?” Kit felt a sudden surge of hope. “You’re free?”
“No. Oh, no. It’s just that Ellis has been replaced. This new one—I don’t see him, like I did with Ellis, but he’s there.
I feel him come into my mind, and it’s like smoke, thick and gray and dirty.”
“Did he tell you who he was?”
“He doesn’t tell me anything. He doesn’t talk to me, he talks
through
me. He speaks some foreign language. I can’t understand him.”
“We should have guessed it,” Kit said. “That there would be others. Ruth told us it was that way with her right from the beginning,
with a whole host of people pouring their thoughts into her. I felt it, too, the night I woke up in the music room. It wasn’t
just one voice then but a lot of them, all bidding for me as though I were some sort of community possession.”
“But why? I mean, why now, when at the start it was just one?”
“Maybe the road’s wide open now, and they can all get through.”
“Then we can expect it to get worse? More and more of them, crowding into our minds, shoving our own thoughts out, until there’s
nothing of ourselves left?”
Sandy was crying now, soft, hopeless crying which had nothing to do with her injured arm. Kit lifted the cloth. The blood
was stilled. Raising her head, she met the misery in her friend’s face with that on her own.
“We’ve got to fight it,” she said. “We can’t give up. We can’t let them take us over.”
“But how can we help it? They’re stronger than we are, especially when there are so many of them. They don’t have to stop
to sleep the way we do, they can keep at us constantly.”
“Then we’ll have to get out. We’ll plan an escape. After all, there are four of us. That’s four against four, if you count
Lucretia, who’s so devoted to Madame she’ll do anything for her. It’s even sides.”
“You’re counting Lynda as one of us. What good will she be? And Ruth—she’s more on their side than ours. She likes what’s
happening.” Sandy shook her head. “You’re dreaming, Kit. There’s no way. We’ll never break out of here. Our only hope is Christmas.
If we hold out till then, we’ll go home for vacation. Our families expect us. There’s no way Madame can hold us here over
the holidays.”
“That’s true,” Kit said. “And Madame knows it, and that’s what scares me worst of all. Because it doesn’t seem to bother her.
How can she accept the fact that we’ll leave here and tell the people who love us and never come back again?”
The answer lay there between them in the stillness of the room, too horrifying to acknowledge.
“Don’t say it,” Sandy said, but Kit spoke the words anyway.
“By Christmas,” she said softly, “it won’t matter any longer. We won’t have to be at Blackwood for them to get through to
us. They’re digging in deeper every day. By Christmas, they’ll be part of us, the spirit people. They’ll have such control
that no matter where we go, no matter what we do for the rest of our lives, we’ll belong to them.”
Dear Tracy,
It’s strange to be writing a letter which I know will never reach you, and even writing it by hand because setting words directly
on paper somehow makes me feel closer to you than using a computer. Having you to talk to is what is keeping me sane. The
days go by. I don’t even bother to keep track of them anymore; they’re all the same. We don’t have classes now—those stopped
soon after that night when I woke up in the music room and forced Madame to tell us the truth about Blackwood. After that,
school became impossible.
How could we keep going to classes, studying and doing regular everyday lessons, knowing that it was just a cover-up for something
else? How could we sit at a desk and listen to Madame or Professor Farley lecturing about history and literature and languages,
as though they were regular teachers, when we know now what they really are?
And Jules! How could I possibly sit at that piano and play rinky-dink beginners’ pieces for Jules, who has heard me playing
music that no one has ever heard before, my fingers moving in patterns that some musical genius has arranged for me? Out of
everything, what I find hardest to accept is Jules, the fact that he is part of this. Imagine him sitting there in the music
room, night after night, making recordings, while I sat on the piano bench in some kind of stupor, being ruled by a ghost!
And I thought he liked me. I really did, Tracy . . . the way he looked at me, and the tone of his voice, and there was something
in his eyes that night when I saw the figure in the mirror and started to scream. He came running up the stairs ahead of the
others, and he put his arms around me and held me, and he cared. I could have sworn it. How stupid I was to think that, when
all I am to him is part of a weird and awful experiment.
Now that the classes are gone, so too is the pretending. Madame Duret and Professor Farley and Jules don’t sit with us in
the dining room anymore. We eat alone—Sandy and Ruth and I—when we eat at all. Most of the time we’re not hungry, and when
we are it’s easier to go out to the kitchen and make a sandwich than to try to choke down the meals that Lucretia prepares.
We spend as much time as we can outside, in the garden and by the pond, but the weather is so bad that the wind and chill
soon drive us in again.
Lynda is lost to us completely. We never see her at all. I know she’s painting, because once in a while Professor Farley goes
into her room and brings out the canvases and carries them down to Madame’s office. What they do with them after that, I don’t
know. I wonder if they’ll sell them like they sold the Vermeer? Is that how Madame managed to finance the purchase of Blackwood?
With a brand-new manuscript by Hemingway, a poem by Kipling, some music that only Chopin could have composed? Is she even
now trying to market the newly discovered pieces by Schubert that Jules has on his tapes?
If only I could get into that office to the phone. I have punched in your number so many times in my imagination that it’s
almost a part of me. I write it with my finger in the dust on the dresser top and I see that I’ve scribbled it several times
in the margin of this letter. I could call you in my sleep, I think, if I could reach the land line. But the office door
is kept locked.
And Lynda’s door too. They keep that locked so that we can’t go in and “distract” her. Madame has the key, and she gives it
to Lucretia to use when she brings up the trays. Sandy and I stand outside the room sometimes and try to talk to her, but
Lynda doesn’t answer. I feel like she might speak to Ruth. If anyone could get through to her, Ruth could—they have been friends
for years—but Ruth won’t call in to her. She says that the work Lynda is producing is too important to be slowed down by silly
conversations.
Sandy and I stay away from Ruth as much as possible. Being with Ruth is almost as bad as being in the room with Madame Duret
herself. Ruth isn’t one of us anymore. She has accepted this thing, and she is riding with it like someone on top of a wave.
Her eyes are shining with excitement, and she carries a notebook with her at all times so that she can write down the things
that “come” to her. I looked into the notebook once, and it is like a strange code with numbers and signs and odd diagrams.
But I won’t accept it! Not as long as I’m alive, I won’t! I will fight it all the way! I am going to get out of here, Tracy,
somehow, some way, I will get out of here!
—Kit
Kit folded the letter, placed it in the pocket of her jeans, and left the room. She did not bother to lock her door, knowing
now how senseless the formality was. She did not look in the mirror at the end of the hall. She didn’t want to know whom she
might see there.
Descending the stairs, she went softly down the hall to Madame’s office and tried the knob. It would not turn.
One time,
she thought,
it will. She cannot keep it locked always. There will come a day when she forgets, and when she does, I will be in there so
quickly that no one can stop me. It’s just a matter of waiting and watching and trying.
Beyond the office the door to the parlor stood open and there was a fire burning in the grate. Lucretia was in the room, dusting.
Kit paused, but she did not enter. There was no use trying to talk with Lucretia. She didn’t know how much Lucretia understood
of the situation at Blackwood, but it didn’t matter, since she would listen to no one but Madame Duret.
Kit continued down the hall until she reached the music room. From behind the closed door, she could hear the sound of the
piano. She listened a moment and then, without knocking, opened the door. Jules was seated on the piano bench, his back toward
her, playing softly to himself. He stopped when the door opened and turned to see who had entered. This time he did not seem
irritated by the intrusion.
He said, “Hi.”
“Hi.” Kit stood staring at him, wondering how she could ever have found him attractive. He looked like his mother, and she
hated them both.
“What are you playing?” she asked him bitterly. “Something from Schubert?”
“Kit, please.” He made a helpless gesture. “I don’t want us to be enemies. I like you a lot. I have right from the beginning.
I wish you’d try to understand my position.”
“What, exactly, is your position?” Kit asked coldly.
“Well, it’s not that of an accomplice in a crime. You’re trying to make me feel guilty, and that’s not fair. My mother has
a gift, a marvelous one. She’s given you a chance to help enrich the world. Why do you find that so upsetting?”
“Why do I find it upsetting?!” Kit regarded him incredulously. “How would you feel if it were you, being used as a kind of
vehicle for dead people? And since the subject’s come up, why is it that you’re not taking an active part in this experience?
Isn’t your mind ‘young and clear and uncluttered’ enough for your mother to want to use it?”
“Evidently not,” Jules said stiffly, “or I’m sure she’d have made me a receiver also. Everybody isn’t tuned for this sort
of thing. You’re one of the lucky ones.”
“Stop saying that,” Kit told him. “There’s nothing lucky about it. Jules, I want to ask you something. The two other schools—the
ones your mother had in England and in France—what happened to those? What happened to the girls who went there? Why did your
mother close those schools and come to the United States?”
“I don’t know,” Jules said. “I’ve never asked her.”
“How can you not know? You were there, weren’t you, when the decision was made?”
“No, I wasn’t,” Jules said. “I was away at the conservatory. I’ve told you that. The only time I spent at my mother’s schools
was during vacations, when they were closed. I didn’t take much interest in her work. I didn’t realize then the extent of
what she was doing.”
“You didn’t know she was a medium?”
“I knew she had talents in that direction,” Jules admitted, “but I didn’t know she was using her students as subjects. And
I had no idea she was doing something as exciting as bringing back the creative geniuses of the world. It wasn’t until she
closed her school in France and made arrangements to come here that she told me about that. She thought that it would make
me want to come with her.”
“And is it the way you thought it would be?” Kit asked him. “Are you happy about this, Jules, honestly? Can you look at what’s
happening to Lynda, to Sandy, to
me
, and think it’s right?”
“Kit, you’ve got to adjust to this,” Jules said. “I agree, you aren’t in good shape. But it’s your own fault. You’re fighting
this so hard that you’ve got yourselves physically and mentally exhausted. I don’t like to see you looking like this, all
white and thin and worn-out, and I do worry about it. But the answer isn’t with me, it’s with you. If you’d just accept the
situation and go along with it, I’m sure you’d be fine.”
“You don’t see! You don’t understand!” Kit cried in frustration. The tears, which she had never used to shed, were welling
in her eyes. “Jules, if you do like me, if you’re really my friend, then help me! Help us all! Get us out of here!”
Jules shook his head. “I can’t. You know that. It would ruin everything.”
“Then if you won’t do that, will you do something else for me? Will you find out what happened to the other girls, the ones
who went to your mother’s European schools? There are files on them in her office. She told me so herself.”
“What would you learn from that?” Jules asked. “They’re probably scattered all over the place by now.”
“You could look and
see
, couldn’t you? What harm would that do?”
Jules shook his head. “I can’t go digging through my mother’s private files. I’ll ask her, though, if you want me to, and
let you know what she says. Or you can ask her yourself.”
“A lot of good that will do!” Kit exploded.
The tears were so near the surface now that she knew if she stayed a moment longer she would not be able to control them.
Turning abruptly, she left the music room, slamming the door behind her, and went out again into the hall. A cold burst of
air met her, fresh and damp from the outdoors, and she saw that the great front door was standing open. A familiar figure
stood beside it, adjusting the collar of her coat.
Kit gave a startled cry and stretched out her hands. “Natalie!”
The figure turned, and Natalie Culler gave her a nod of acknowledgment. She completed buttoning the top of the coat and moved
as though in preparation to step outside.
“Natalie, wait! Don’t go!” Kit hurried over to her. “What are you doing here?”
“Collecting my money,” Natalie said shortly. “When your lady fired me, she owed me two weeks’ back pay. I was so mad at the
time, I just walked out without remembering it, but that money was mine. I earned every penny of it, and I came back today
to get it.”
“How did you get here?” Kit asked excitedly.
“By car. How else? Think I’m going to walk up from the village?”
“And you were able to get in the gate?”
“I called ahead,” Natalie said. “She sent Mr. Jules down to open it. I guess she knew I wasn’t about to be put off.” She paused
to stare at Kit, and the anger on her face faded slightly, to be replaced by concern. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you
look awful, miss. You been sick?”
“Yes,” Kit said. “We’re all sick. The whole place is sick! Natalie, take me with you!”
“With me? You mean to the village?”
“Anywhere! The village would be fine. Just someplace where I can get to a telephone and make a call. Please, Natalie!”
“It’s cold out. You don’t have a coat on.”
“It doesn’t matter! I won’t be cold!”
“The missus would be furious,” Natalie said uncertainly. “She’d likely have me arrested for kidnapping. Why don’t you just
write your folks and have them come for you, miss? That would be the best way to leave here, if that’s what you want to do.”
“I can’t,” Kit told her desperately. “Our letters are all—”
She broke off the sentence as she heard a door open into the hall behind her. There was a moment of silence. Kit did not have
to turn. She could tell from Natalie’s expression whom it was that she would see.
“Natalie!” Madame Duret’s voice was like ice. “Please leave here. I have given you your wages, and I did not invite you to
stay and visit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” There was a flash of pure hatred across Natalie’s face. She turned defiantly to speak to Kit.
“Good-bye, miss. You take care of yourself now. I hope you’re feeling better soon.”
“Wait, please!” Kit struggled to find words, and then, in a final frantic effort, she pulled the letter from her jeans pocket
and thrust it quickly into Natalie’s work-worn hand. “Here,” she whispered hurriedly, “take this and mail it.”
Natalie glanced down at the wadded paper in bewilderment.
“Mail it? To who?”
“Tracy Rosenblum,” Kit said. “She lives at—”
“Kathryn!” Madame spoke from directly behind her. “Come inside away from that open door. You will take a chill.”
Natalie threw her one startled glance and stepped hurriedly out the door, pulling it closed behind her. She had the letter
in her hand, but Kit could feel no thrill of triumph.