Hallow House - Part Two (19 page)

"He stole my key, the sneaky little bastard, always was a sneak."

The hair on Samara's nape rose when she realized that he was confusing Brian with Sergei. "He didn't--" she began, breaking off when Vera laid a finger across her lips and shook her head.

"John, I insist you come downstairs with me," Vera ordered. "I won't move until you do."

He hesitated, looking at Vera for the first time. "You ought to be resting," he said.

"Then come with me."

He stared at the hammer for a long moment and finally dropped it. "Johanna has pneumonia?"

Samara nodded. "Kevin's giving her penicillin."

"Johanna was so upset..." His words trailed off and he let Vera lead him down to the second floor. "I'll just take a peek at her."

"Frances is with her," Vera said. "And Kevin will be back."

But when they opened the door to Johanna's room, Frances was gone and the bed was empty.

Chapter 32

Johanna groped her way along the dimly lit hall where shadow lurked everywhere, shadows that stalked her while she struggled to reach Brian before he was gone forever. Brian would keep the shadows away. Only Brian.

But his room was so far away. She stumbled along the never-ending corridor, bumping into the wall, falling, staggering to her feet. She tried to call his name, but no sound came out, like in a nightmare, only this wasn't a bad dream, this was real.

Besides the shadows, she knew people wanted to keep her from Brian. Her father. Frances. Mother. Kevin. And even Samara, She'd always before trusted Samara. If any of them found her she'd be carried back to bed and watched and Daddy would send Brian away forever.

Finally she reached Brian's door, opened it, fell inside the room and crawled to his bed. She pulled herself up onto it and moaned when she saw the bed was empty. Where was he? She had to find him but she couldn't make herself get off the bed.

"Brian," she whispered and the shadows waiting beyond the door hear. She could sense their greed as they surges toward her, shapes of darkness surrounding her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She tried to scream, but couldn't, tried to struggle away.

Something held her fast. A hand. Somebody's hand.

"Here I am, Johanna," Brian's voice said, "Don't cry."

Johanna clutched at him. "Don't go away, please don't go..."

Other voices. Samara. Her mother. But Daddy's cross words rose above them all. "What are you trying to do, kill her?" he shouted.

Her father's hands tried to lift her away and she struck at them, at his face that swam mistily above her. "Go away," she ordered. "I won't leave Brian. You can't make me." Her terror and anguish turned into a scream that went on and on.

"John, you're frightening her." Her mother's calm, voice stopped the scream so she could speak again.

"Mama, make Daddy keep Brian here," she begged between sobs. "Brian keeps the shadows away. Please, Mama, help me."

"She's delirious with fever," Vera said. "You can't reason with an ill child. I'm going to tell her Brian will stay." Johanna heard the defiance in her mother's voice and grabbed her hand.

"Mama, I need Brian," she whispered.

"Daddy, she's so sick," Samara said. "It's not Brian's fault, it's mine. I took her out in the rain. Please don't upset her any more tonight. Let him stay, don't blame him. I know it's not Brain's fault. Burn Tabitha's journals, tear down the room behind the black door if you want to prevent this kind of thing. You'll harm Johanna if you try to punish Brian for something that wasn't his fault."

Johanna clung to her mother's hand, keeping her hold on Brian's arm, her head dropped against his shoulder. They kept talking, but she could no longer follow what was said. Some one lifted her and she subsided when Samara spoke into her ear, telling her Brian wasn't being sent away.

A long time later, Johanna woke to daylight and Frances' concerned face above her. "Brian?" she croaked feebly. "Where's Brian?"

A few minutes later she looked into his blue eyes and saw the familiar curl of his lip when he smiled at her and said, "I'm here."

She sighed and closed her eyes. She was safe.

When Johanna was well again, she heard the account of the night from others. How France had gone downstairs to put the penicillin in the refrigerator, came back and found her gone. After that, her father ordered a small refrigerator for her room one that she got to keep there even when she was better.

But it wasn't until much later that she was able to piece together all the fragments, to understand why her father had changed his mind and let Brian stay at Hallow House for good. In some way she didn't understand, Daddy had gotten upset about her dead brother Sergei, who she didn't even remember.

"Don't confuse Brian with Sergei," she'd overheard her mother say to Daddy. "Brian is far more like Vincent that he is anyone else. He's not--abnormal."

Of course not. Brian was wonderful.

In 1946, when she turned eleven, Johanna got to be flower girl for Samara and Kevin's wedding. Brian was ring bearer and Johanna told herself when they got old enough, she and Brian would get married. Her twin sisters would be bridesmaids and Daddy would escort her down the aisle like he did Samara. Everyone would smile and cry happily.

By the time she was seventeen, though, Johanna wasn't so sure any of this was likely to happen. Brian said he loved her and, on her birthday in May he'd even given her a gold ring with a small emerald set into it. Choosing to regard it as an engagement ring, she wore it on her left ring finger in defiance of her mother's wishes.

Standing on the front porch of Hallow House one warm July night, Johanna looked down at the ring, caressing the stone with a finger as she recalled the conversation with her mother.

"Brian is so like his father," Vera had said. "I only hope..." She didn't finish.

Johanna pictured Brian--nearly six feet tall, handsome with his dark curls and flashing grin. "Hope what?"

"Vincent didn't apply himself. He drifted through life. Until the war started I don't think he took anything seriously."

"Brian's himself," Johanna insisted. "He's not like his father. Or his mother."

Vera smiled at her. "He's a fine boy But only sixteen, remember. There are so many years ahead for both of you."

"Before Aunt Adele died, she told me Brian and I were fated to marry. She--"

"Dear, I think you spent too much time with Adele there at the end," Vera had said. "She was in her nineties, don't forget, and I'm sure her mind wandered. You were still an impressionable child then, not the young lady you are now, much too old to believe in superstition."

Remembering her mother's words, Johanna compressed her lips. According to Mama, she was both too young to even think about getting married and, at the same time, too old for childish ways.

She sighed and gave herself up to thoughts of Brian and how much she missed him on this beautiful night. Later the mosquitoes might be biting but now the soft dusk lay around Johanna like a caress. The sweet fragrance of the star jasmine vines Vera had planted below the porch reminded her of breathing in that same delicious scent with Brian and tears came to her eyes.

He's been gone two whole weeks now at this camp where he was a counselor. Two long weeks. How could she ever stand an entire two months? What was he doing right this minutes up there in the mountains? Thinking about her? She linked back the tears and shook her head.

More likely he was trying to get his twelve boys settled in their cabin for the night. He's already written about those boys. At least he was as far away from Sue Middleton as he was from her. And Cheryl Ellright, who was almost as bad. The way they fawned over Brian was sickening. She couldn't understand why he didn't seem to mind.

A dog howled in the distance somewhere beyond the orange groves and, as Johanna turned her head toward the sound, she saw a white shape rise above the trees, silent in the gathering darkness. She held her breath until she realized it was an owl. Probably the one that nested in the pines near the house. The men who picked the oranges didn't like the bird. "Maldito," they called it. Accursed, evil.

She shivered in the warm night and decided to go inside. Maybe she'd drive to Porterville tomorrow and see Samara. Since her sister had learned she was expecting a baby, she hardly ever visited Hallow House.

Inside the coolness of the air conditioning chilled her. From the library came the sound of Daddy's radio. He was getting a little deaf, but no one ever told him her had the volume knob turned up to high. The news broadcaster was winding up with the weather report. As is anyone needed it here in the valley where the summers were always hot. Getting to be humid, too, from all the irrigation water, Daddy said.

Today was July 20
^th.
Much of the summer remained. Every day seemed endless without Brian. No one had turned on the lights in the foyer, so Johanna crossed to the wall switch and flicked it on. As the chandelier high above blazed into life, there were tiny flashes as three of the tiny flame-shaped bulbs burned out.

"Old Stan Aarons would call that an ill omen," Marie's husky voice said.

Johanna turned to see her coming down the stairs. "Why?"

Marie shrugged. Looking at her, Johanna wondered, as she often did, how Marie had produced such a good-looking boy as Brian, She was grossly overweight, wore too much makeup and dressed sloppily. It was no secret she drank. Everyone in the house knew, though no one mentioned it.

"Stan always thought the worst was going to happen," Marie said. "Funny thing--he was usually right. Even that last time he was here. You know what he said to me before he left? 'Marie, John laughs at me, but I have the strangest feeling I'll never see any of you again.'"

Johanna had heard the story before--how the plane Stan had taken back to New York had crashed in a thunderstorm, killing all aboard. It'd been in 1947, the same year Aunt Adele died. And Theola had died that Christmas Eve. Would Stan have said deaths go in threes?

Johanna shook her head. Daddy called Marie a "crepe-hanger." She mustn't let such morbidity influence her.

"I suppose all the girls from near and far are missing Brian," Marie said with the sly smile.

"I miss him."

"That little redhead--what's her name, Sue something?--I'll bet she does, too. She's cute as a button, isn't she?"

"I think she's silly," Johanna said, wondering why buttons were thought of as cute.

Marie laughed. "If Brian's got any sense, he'll keep in mind that the butter's right here in this house."

Not understanding, but aware of Marie's underlying maliciousness, Johanna began to edge away.

"Yes, sir, Brian better remember who'll butter the bread and which side is up," Marie went on. "Not like me--I always was a fool." She peered at Johanna through bleary eyes. "Too bad you don't look like your mother. Still, a fat lot of good her beauty brought Delores. Maybe it's best you don't take after her."

"I'm going to my room now," Johanna said, trying, as always, to be polite to Marie because she was Brian's mother. She couldn't make herself like Marie, though, and tried to avoid her whenever possible.

Marie clutched her arm. "You're still wearing Brian's emerald on your left ring finger. What does John say about that?"

"Daddy didn't say anything." Actually she wasn't sure he'd even noticed, she thought as she tried to shift her arm away from Marie.

"Don't let him talk you around. He thinks he knows so much. He doesn't know squat." Marie brought her face so close that the smell of stale liquor made Johanna repress a grimace.

"Ask me." Marie stabbed at her chest with a forefinger. "I'm the only one who really knows. Delores told me everything. She did it out of meanness, wanting to hurt me, but just the same I'm the only one she talked to."

Delores. Her real mother. The person no one ever discussed with her.

"So don't you go believing what your father is afraid of is really so. You come to Old Marie, I'll tell you the truth." She released Johanna's arm. "If he hasn't started in on you already, he soon will. You just wait." Marie laughed. "John never did get the better of Vincent, though."

The laughter changed to tears, which meant Marie would be out of it soon. No one else was around, so it'd be up to Johanna to get her to her room before she collapsed.

"John thought he came out ahead with Delores and again with Vera." Marie's words came out in choking sobs. "But which man has the son now? John can never forget it's Vincent's son under his roof--not his own."

"Let me help you up to your room," Johanna said, putting her arm around the older woman.

Marie leaned against her so heavily Johanna had trouble getting them both up the stairs. The pervasive stench of second-hand liquor nauseated her.