The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (16 page)

choosing the hay wagon, except to say that she is a woman of

uncanny perceptions, an almost magical ability to “see” beyond

where we mere mortals see. She stopped there as if striking an

invisible wall, her head angled on her shoulders in a most

unusual way, her eyes locked intently on the darkness beyond that

door. “Is here, miss,” she whispered, in a nerve-grinding monotone

she elects for only the most dire of discussions. That tone

alone won my full attention.

“Sukeena?”

“I think we look here. This place here.”

“All right.”

I helped her to roll the large door open on its tracks.

Intended to double as breeding stalls, these east stalls are substantially

larger than those on the west end of the Carriage House.

One learns not to question a sister’s instincts, and I had

absolutely no intention of engaging my dear Sukeena in any such

debate. The door opened nearly silently, and we stood facing a

hay wagon that I knew well, for it was of sentimental value to

John, having been in his family many years. I found myself trans-

?xed by the realization that this was also the wagon that had been

driven by Mr. Corbin the day he shot and killed the foreman. It

still carried bloodstains from that gruesome event. I shuddered as

the door ran on its track again, and Sukeena pulled it shut

behind us. Only the small viewing window, barred by wrought

iron, communicated to the stable’s central aisle. I wanted out. I

wanted to run from there. John spoke of this wagon often—it

seemed many a childhood event surrounded the cart, including

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the ?rst few dollars he ever earned, won from a neighbor for

hauling away refuse. ( John entertained dinner guests with the

story of how he’d started out as a garbage collector and ended up

an oil tycoon!)

Sukeena moved closely around the wagon as if it possessed

some power over her. She touched it, closed her eyes, and I saw

the hair on her arms stand on end, as if she’d thrown a window

open to the cold. When her eyes reopened, ?xed now on me

instead, I felt a wave of fear ?ush through me to my toes.

“What?” I gasped.

“We in the right place, Miss Ellen,” was all she said. Moving

around the wagon, she came to the back where one could load or

unload its ?atbed. She laid her wide, black hand down onto the

neatly ?tted planks there and I believe for a moment the entire

wagon trembled beneath her touch. Her face broke out in a shine

as fast as anything I’ve ever seen, as if a fever now possessed her.

Her jaw hung down. From her mouth came the unmistakable

groans of a woman in pain. And I swear this is true: it was not

Sukeena’s voice at all, but that of another woman entirely. I covered

my ears against that cunning agony, for it is nothing a

woman should ever be made to hear. Sukeena—or whoever she

had become—snapped her head so quickly then I feared her

unreal, for it was with the degree of movement an owl might

demonstrate, and it turned straight back behind her.

There, hanging from a stout hook, was a thick horse blanket,

or perhaps a quilted throw used to separate delicate cargo while in

the back of the wagon. A deep forest green, that blanket was

stained darkly. Sukeena moved toward it as if in a trance, grabbing

its bulk in both hands and jerking it away from the wall. As

she did so, the bed of the wagon began to move again behind us

all of its own—up and down, up and down.

There, beneath the blanket, hung a woman’s black skirt.

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With the squeaking of the wagon, we both turned around at

once—and I for one was paralyzed by fear. There, on the wagon’s

wooden ?atbed, vulgarly exposed to us, a spectral image of young

Laura lay, her blouse torn open, her breasts exposed, her arms

held back as if pinned, her legs spread wide, rocking her hips in a

most ungainly and ugly manner that was not to be mistaken. She

was being attacked—forced into this act—though her assailant

remained invisible to us.

Sukeena, God bless her, kept her wits about her. She snatched

the black skirt from the hook on the wall and threw it toward the

wraithlike creature undulating there on the bed of the wagon, a

grotesque expression of pain plastered on the girl’s face. She

threw the skirt as if covering an open ?re. As the skirt landed,

both it and this poor girl vanished and the wagon came to rest. I

swear I saw this with my own eyes! A moment later we heard voices

approaching, male voices, deep and foreboding, and I do believe

that this was when I fainted, the rumbling of a motorcar also

approaching from far off in the distance.

Sukeena shook me awake, having caught me as I fell, one hand

clasped gently over my mouth to keep me from speaking and

revealing us. It immediately became apparent that Daniel and one

of his Carriage House staff had witnessed the approach of John’s

motorcar and had returned to the Carriage House to help secure

the vehicle for the evening and to greet the master of the house,

my husband. All this occurred nearly simultaneously—the boisterous,

lively discussion between the two men who argued over a

dice game, the soft putt-putt and clatter of John’s motorcar

pulling down the long drive and past Rose Red and into the center

hall of the Carriage House, the oily stench of the car’s

exhaust. The sudden silence.

“Hello there, Daniel.”

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“Sir. Earlier than expected.”

“A visit to the docks and a brandy is all. I tell you, Daniel,

there’s nothing as satisfying as seeing those barrels of oil safely

put to bed and on their way to the Paci?c Isles. Money in the

bank for little Adam is what they are. Money in the bank.

Providing she has safe passage.”

“I’m sure she will, sir.”

“Expecting any ‘visitors,’ Daniel? Should I stay?”

“You might ?nd the view from the tack room entertaining,

sir. If I do say so.”

“Who is she?”

“A blonde, sir. A new one. Kitchen hand. As young as a green

apple, sir. But lured to my company by the offer of pure Irish

whiskey. Be along any moment, sir.”

“Very well.”

I overheard the exchange between the two men, and I knew

Daniel had been the one atop Laura in the back of the wagon.

Perhaps my husband had watched—for I know so well how he

enjoys voyeurism. (Sukeena has found two mirrors in the house

that, from hidden spaces, one can use to look in on both the

women’s dormitory and the baths attached to it. Needless to say,

these hidden chambers were not in the house plans that my husband

shared with me over the course of our honeymoon!) How

desperately I clung to the notion that it had been Daniel with

young Laura, not my John. These were Daniel’s stables after all.

Perhaps my husband knew—perhaps he was attempting to protect

one of his most loyal employees.

Sukeena moved us to the rear of the wagon as the voices drew

closer. John and Daniel stopped immediately in front of the door

to our room. In the dim light before us, the ghost of Laura reappeared.

She had redressed herself, though her clothes remained

torn and tattered. She stood at the driver’s bench, pointing in

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the direction of the two men as if accusing them. She could see us!

She wanted our help!

John looked up, sensing something. And I swear he looked

right at me, right into my eyes. Right through that ephemeral

girl. He looked right at me, but not expecting me, did not see

me. Or if he did, convinced himself it was illusion.

I felt hot with anger—this waif of a girl used up, her disappearance

lied about. That awful spectral image from the bed of

the wagon haunted me. Perhaps he had intended to throw her a

few coins for her service. Perhaps he had promised promotion.

No matter. She was gone now. Swallowed by Rose Red, the same

as Mrs. Fauxmanteur. It was then that I understood for the ?rst

time not only what I would come to know for certain but what I

intended to take advantage of for many, many years to come.

Rose Red was on my side.

Rose Red was my friend.

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24 september 1909—rose red

I take comfort in my dear child, Adam, his sweet innocence. So

new is his existence in the world. What a blessing to start with a

clean slate. I ?nd myself thinking about Mrs. Fauxmanteur and

the beguiling Laura almost to the point of torment. Mr. Corbin’s

?irtation with murder and insanity. What kind of place is this?

Rose Red, it would seem, discards men while stealing women.

Sukeena and I talk often of it now, as she worries for me. (I am

troubled to the point of nervosa—my hand shook so badly at supper

to-night that I returned the soup saying I didn’t care for it,

when in truth I couldn’t hold my spoon steady. John catches

none of this; Sukeena sees all.)

We wonder aloud, Sukeena and I, why and how the grand

house makes its choices. Why have Sukeena and I been passed

over in favor of our two sisters? Why not take all the maids of the

house—there are some twenty of them? Why not “accidentally”

kill a gardener or a groomer? Why the construction foreman and

some of the workers? I look for a message in all this while

Sukeena states very de?nitely her own beliefs.

Rose Red, according to Sukeena earlier to-day:

The house is inhabited by the souls of the Indians whose

graves were disturbed during its construction. The foreman and

others were held responsible for this atrocity, but now that the

house is built and here to stay in all its enormity, its inhabitants

shall pay, and pay dearly. It looks kindly upon me and Sukeena

because we are victims of the men who built it as much as Rose

Red herself. The truth of Mrs. Fauxmanteur may not yet be

known, but Sukeena believes Laura was chosen because of her

indiscretion with either Daniel or my husband. Rose Red has

chosen sides in the age-old war of husband and wife. It does not

dare kill John because he is the engine behind its continuing

growth—he is making it bigger and stronger; it will not claim me

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because I am the one demanding this construction of my husband.

Together, John and I represent its only chance at life—that

is, according to Sukeena, its continued expansion. The souls of

the departed Indians have no room for warriors—and men,

according to Sukeena, are all seen as warriors in the eyes of tribal

leaders. Women, on the other hand, represent little threat, and

few would dispute that a tribe’s true history is known only by the

women, for they survive much longer than the warriors. Sukeena

says Rose Red is not only punishing John and his mistresses but

capturing the women to learn from them, to have them as company.

She believes that as long as the construction continues, as

long as John and I live here together, Rose Red will gain strength

and that more men shall die, more women disappear. She advises

me to order my husband to stop the construction and to sell the

home. “No good can come of dis place, Miss Ellen. A woman

should not raise her children here.”

Over the course of the past two years, Sukeena and I have

rarely argued. Our occasional disagreements have instead taken

the form of informal debate, one point following another, with

no raised voices or harsh expressions. But when she put forward

her theory of Rose Red earlier this morning I expressed my

anger in the form of a tantrum (which I now regret!). I told her

she was meddling in African witchcraft, and I left her and the

Drawing Room abruptly, without explanation. Since then, I have

not seen her.

Dear Diary, what a fool I have been! To risk my friendship

with the one person on this earth who understands me, when

deep in my heart I know my resistance comes more from a fear

that she speaks the truth. Each part of her explanation haunts me,

for it makes so much sense. And yet for it to make sense, I must

concede that a house—a structure of brick, stone, wood and

glass—can somehow be possessed of spirit, and this is a leap of

faith that perplexes me, for though the eye does see, the heart will

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not accept. A living house? Even one of this size, even built upon

a hallowed graveyard, can surely not exist in the spiritual realm!

Or does it? I ask, feeling myself haunted and without stability. My

mind wanders. I am unable to hold a single thought for very long.

Is this motherhood, or does Rose Red own me even now, while I

remain unaware?

My temptation is to call upon my dear friend Tina Coleman

and to arrange another consultation with Madame Lu, and to

present this possibility to the Great Lady (in ambiguous terms, of

course) in hopes of establishing her opinions and guidance.

Madame Lu’s connection to “the other side” could, quite possibly,

provide me insight as to the validity of Sukeena’s suggestions.

(Without mentioning Sukeena! The Chinese do not look kindly

upon the Africans, of this there can be little doubt.)