Child of Darkness

by V. C. Andrews

  At dinner they told me more about themselves, how they had met and fallen in love, where they had gotten married, and why they had decided to live in this small community. Brice described the school and how much he enjoyed working in one that was still small enough for him to be the guidance counselor to every student, grades ten through twelve. I helped them with the dishes, even though they both insisted I relax.

  Afterward, we sat in the living room and talked some more. I answered as many questions as I could about my life at the orphanages. While we were talking, the phone rang, and Pru went to answer it. She returned with a smile on her face.

  "That was Mr. Nokleby-Cook," she said. "I made a call to him earlier, and he just returned home and called me back. I told him about you, and he wants to see you first thing tomorrow at the office. You can go in with me. He said since you're here, he has a nice surprise for you. He also agreed to do everything necessary for you to remain here for as long as you wish," she added, nodding at Brice.

  "That's great. I'll get right on the school transfer in the morning as well."

  "Thank you. Thank you both," I said. Pm saw the way my eyelids fluttered shut and then opened.

  "You should go to sleep, Celeste. Let me go up with you and see what you need. I have extra toothbrushes, and whatever else you'll need."

  "Thank you," I said, and stood up.

  "Have a good night's rest," Brice said.

  I gazed around the living room. Although they had changed it in so many ways, the walls still spoke to me.

  "It's been a long time since I slept in this house," I said, more to myself than to them.

  Brice nodded, and then I walked out with Pm right behind. She brought me toiletries and asked if there was anything else she could do.

  "You've done enough," I said. "It doesn't surprise me that you have been comfortable here, that the house has good energy for both of you."

  She liked that. She hugged me, wished me good night again, and left.

  I stood in my old room for a moment, just listening to the house, to the wind making it creak.

  "I've come home, Mama," I whispered. "I've come back to you all."

  When I crawled into bed, I lay there with great expectation, but I heard no voices nor saw any spirits. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier until I was unable to keep them open. My sleep came so quickly and so deeply, it was like anesthesia. The sunlight surprised me; it seemed to follow instantly. I could hear sounds coming from the kitchen below, and so I rose, washed, and dressed quickly to join Pru and Brice, who were just setting out breakfast.

  "I've whipped up some scrambled eggs with a little cheese in it. Brice likes a big breakfast every morning," she explained. "I hope you woke up hungry. You ate very little last night, but I knew you were probably just exhausted from travel and all that had happened to you."

  "Actually, I'm starving," I admitted. The aroma of eggs, coffee, and toast stirred my stomach.

  Everything was delicious. I was eating so quickly, I didn't notice until I looked up and saw them both smiling and laughing at me.

  "I'm not usually this piggy-wiggy," I said.

  "You go right on and oink as much as you want," Brice told me. "Besides, now she might stop making fun of my appetite for a while."

  "I wouldn't bet on it," Pru said. "She has an excuse. You don't."

  I liked the way they teased each other and then lovingly kissed or just touched hands to reinforce their deep affection for each other. Love is in this house, I thought. Why shouldn't it be calm and satisfied? The darkness has been swept out with the dust.

  After breakfast, Brice went off in his pickup truck, again reassuring me that he would handle all the necessary paperwork to get me enrolled in the public school so I could finish up my high school diploma. Pru went up and dressed for work, and then the two of us headed out to Mr. Deward Lee NoklebyCook's office. I knew he had been our family lawyer for some time, and he knew all the details of our lives, especially about my sister Celeste. I wanted to see her as soon as I could, of course, but the thought of it made me very nervous. Surely she would have no idea who I was, and I had no idea what condition she was in after all these years. Perhaps he knew what had happened to Panther as well. I couldn't help but be curious about him.

  Our lawyer's office was a large ten-room three-story eggshell-white house with Wedgwood blue shutters. The house had been converted, the entryway widened to form the lobby and the bedrooms re-designed into offices for paralegal assistants and junior partners. Pm took me right past the receptionist, telling her Mr. Nokleby-Cook was expecting us. We went directly to his office, which had once been the living room.

  Now there were bookcases on the walls, a large dark oak desk,-an entertainment center, and leather furniture. I had no memory of Mr. Nokleby-Cook, and so much time had gone by since I had seen him anyway, I wouldn't have recognized him. He had a full head of gray hair that had once been light brown, a color that still clung to some strands of it. His bushy eyebrows were mostly light brown. His face was robust, with deep-set brown eyes and more orange than red thick lips.

  When he saw us enter, he leaped to his feet and bellowed a welcome with a burst of energy that made me feel as if a gusty wind had swept into the room. He was barrel-chested, maybe just five feet six, and bull-necked.

  "Amazing, amazing," he said, coming around his desk to greet me. "I would have known her anywhere," he told Pru. "She looks like both of them. Come in, come in," he beckoned, guiding us to the leather sofa on his right.

  "So," he said, pulling a chair up to face us. "You've made your way home." He shook his head. "I shouldn't be surprised. I anticipated this day. Your grandmother once told me that the land, that farm, all of it was as much a part of you all as--"

  "My grandmother?"

  I looked at Pru, and she quickly rolled her eyes back to Mr. Nokleby-Cook.

  "Oh, my God," he said, sitting back, "of course. How would you ever have known?"

  "Known what? I don't understand. What are you saying?" I asked with more authority.

  "Well, how do I explain this?" he asked, looking down and thinking aloud.

  "Just tell it to her straight," Pru advised, and then looked at me. "She's a great deal stronger and more mature than you can imagine."

  "I bet. Sure. Well," he continued, leaning forward now with his hands pressed together. "Your sister, or should I say, the one you thought was your brother Noble, had a relationship with the boy next door, Elliot Fletcher. When she became pregnant with you, your grandmother kept her secluded, and when you were born, as you do know, you were kept secluded and hidden away for some time. Your grandmother eventually married Dave Fletcher, and the world . . . the world," he said, smirking, "I mean the local community, came to believe you were Dave Fletcher's child, a child he had with your

  grandmother. She wanted it that way. She wanted your mother to remain your uncle Noble, you see."

  Somewhere, deep in my soul, I could hear a small laugh, like the laugh of an infant. Should I say I always knew? For surely I did. I sensed it, felt it, and in my way, understood it. We were too close, Noble and I, Celeste and I. I was always more than a sister. I saw it in the way she looked at me when she didn't know I was watching her. I heard it in her voice and felt it in her soft touch.

  "I'm sorry you had to learn all this in this manner," Mr. Noldeby-Cook said.

  "Who else would be able to explain it to me?" I asked him pointedly. "I had no family, and my guardians, my foster parents, would surely have fled the very sight of me had they known all that."

  He nodded.

  "Perhaps so."

  "What about Panther?" I asked.

  "Oh, I don't know all that much about him anymore. He was taken in pretty quickly by foster parents who later adopted him. I had some trust money to forward to him, or to them to keep for him, but all that was done about eight, nine years ago.

  "Which brings me to other news for you, good news. There was a man with whom your grandmother had an
ongoing business relationship. His name was Bogart, and he had something of a New Age shop. He sold your mother's special herbal mixes and arranged for them to be sold in a more

  commercial manner. At one time she was producing quite a bit, in fact.

  "Anyway, he had no children of his own, and recently he passed away. His attorney contacted me to tell me he had left the bulk of his estate to you."

  "To me?"

  "Yes, and I might say it's a considerable sum. Makes me want to invest in these New Age shops, with their crystals and stones and herbal magic," he told Pru. "The fact is, Celeste, when you turn eighteen, you will be a rather wealthy young woman."

  "Isn't that wonderful!" Pru cried.

  I shook my head in wonder. All this happening now, now that I had returned. Mrs. Cukor would never know how right she was when she said I had to go home.

  "Anyway, I want you to give a good deal of thought now to what you want to do with yourself. You have more than just an old farm to consider. For now, the funds are well invested in safe entities. I'll have a full accounting for you in a day or so."

  He slapped his own knees and stood up.

  "Brice is getting her enrolled in the school?" he asked Pru.

  "Yes, he is. She can start tomorrow here if she likes," she said.

  He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. "Maybe she needs a day or two first. Get reacquainted with everything and everyone."

  I looked up sharply. I knew whom he was speaking about, and it made my heart pitter-patter.

  "She's reasonably well, you know. I can arrange for you to go see her when you're ready. You'd like that, I'm sure," he added, and raised his eyebrows in anticipation.

  "When I'm ready," I said.

  "Yes." He glanced at Pru. "Well, then, you'll just let me know."

  "I'll run her home and come right back," Pm said.

  "Take your time. Take your time," he said. He looked at me again. "Remarkable. When I look at you, I see a young Sarah Atwell. She was a beautiful woman. Just as you are, and as your mother is," he added.

  I stood and shook his hand.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "My pleasure. I know you're going to be all right, my dear."

  "Yes," I said, my eyes so tight and hard on him, he raised his eyebrows. "I'll be just fine."

  We walked out and got into Pru's car.

  "I'm sorry you had to find it all out like that. It just seems there should have been a different way, little by little or something?'

  I smiled at her.

  "I always knew it, Pru. In my heart of hearts, I always knew it."

  She smiled.

  "When do you want to go see her?" she asked. I didn't answer.

  She didn't ask again.

  It wasn't something I knew myself.

  Epilogue

  Home Again

  .

  I didn't attend school immediately. Mr.

  Nokleby-Cook was right; I needed time to acclimate myself. Although I had never read the novel, my English teacher at the school I attended when I lived at the second orphanage liked to quote Thomas Wolfe and say. "You can't go home again." He meant that so much had changed there and in you that nothing would look or seem the same.

  Nothing sounded more irrelevant to an orphan who had never had a home, of course, but I was so different from most of the others. I had had a home once, and I impressed everyone with my remarkable memory. I could recall such detail from my first six years of life, most of it from the sixth year, but vivid enough to astound anyone who listened to me describe my home, our land, and of course, Noble, my grandmother, and eventually, Celeste, my mother Celeste.

  Pru and Brice were very patient and

  understanding.

  Neither pressured me to do anything or go anywhere. I spent the next two days wandering about the farm, sometimes just sitting and staring out at the thick forest. Eventually, I wandered into it and made my way to the brook. It wasn't as full and powerful as I remembered it to be. The water still polished rocks and bubbled about, but it wasn't as wide and didn't look anywhere near as deep. Once it had an almost religious significance for us. It was here that Noble had died, and now I knew that the boy who drowned here had been my father.

  The land, the water, all of nature, gives birth to so much within us and then absorbs it all, takes it back in one way or another, I thought. It isn't just dust unto dust. Something of our souls, our spirits, surely finds a place in all this, and that was what my grandmother felt and saw, and what she had passed on to my mother and to me. I had lost it along the way, and now I wanted to regain it.

  Would I?

  Could I?

  Only time would tell, but I had faith, not in myself as much as in the land, in every tree and blade of grass, and especially in the brook. I would touch it all and be sure it was all aware I was here again.

  I sat for hours in the old cemetery and thought about the prayer vigils we had held in the darkness, with only a candle sometimes to provide illumination under a fully overcast sky. What are graveyards really, but doorways to memories?

  Brice and Pru saw me wandering about or sitting quietly and staring out at the forest.

  Occasionally, Pru asked if I were okay, and I assured her I was.

  And then, one morning, a Saturday morning, I announced at breakfast that I would like to go to the institution where my mother still lived so I could visit her. Pru immediately volunteered to take me.

  "I'll just take a taxicab," I said.

  "You will not. I'll drive you there, and I'll wait for you in the parking lot," she insisted.

  I agreed finally, and we set out. It was a partly cloudy day, the sort of day when the sun teases us by peering around clouds or piercing through some of the thinner ones. I felt carried along in the wind as we traveled. What I was doing was not something I could fight or resist.

  When I entered the building, I went directly to reception and asked to see Celeste Atwell. It was strange asking to see someone with my exact name, and when I gave my name, the receptionist looked puzzled. She asked me to wait while she went to see someone about it, and a short time thereafter a tall, dark-haired woman with ebony eyes and what I would call a professional smile appeared. She introduced herself as Dr. Morton and told me my mother was under her care.

  "Aside from her attorney, you're the first real visitor she's ever had," she told me.

  I explained as much as I could about myself, as quickly as I could.

  "Yes, I knew you existed and you had been placed in the care of child protection agencies, but that's all I knew."

  "This is my first time back here," I said. "Back home."

  She nodded.

  "Has your attorney or anyone told you anything about her?" she asked.

  I shook my head.

  "Um. Well, the best way I can describe her to you is, she is frozen in time."

  She saw I didn't understand.

  "Her way of dealing with the trauma of what I would call her imposed schizophrenia has been to lock herself back in the age she was before it all began."

  "You mean she has the mind of a child?"

  "She behaves that way, and I suppose for all practical purposes you can say that. It's been very difficult to get her to age in a sense, because when she does, when she crosses over, she has to confront it all again, you see. It's very complicated. Actually, she has been the subject of a number of studies and many different papers published in psychology magazines," she added, as if I should be proud of the fact.

  I just stared coldly at her, and she cleared her throat and stood up.

  "Yes, well, I can take you to see her. She's in the recreational room. She spends most of her time there." "Doing what?"

  "Coloring books, painting with watercolors, reading children's books, playing children's games. The children we have here like her. She's actually a good influence on them."

  "I'm glad you find her situation of some benefit to the clinic," I said sharply.

  She
bit her lower lip and nodded.

  "This way," she said.

  She led me down the corridor to the

  recreational room, a good-sized room filled with tables, games, and two television sets, one at each far corner. Some older people were watching television, and a half dozen children with counselors beside them were playing board games and card games. My mother was near the window, sitting at a desk and painting with watercolors. She had her back to us. Her hair was cut short, and she wore a plain blue dress with sandals.

  "I don't expect she will have any idea who you are," Dr. Morton said. "Don't be upset."

  "I won't," I assured her, and we walked across the room.

  "Good morning, Celeste," Dr. Morton said, and my mother looked up from her painting.

  The painting had no recognizable shape. It looked as if she was simply intrigued by the mixing of colors and the odd shapes she could create. Perhaps it made some sort of sense to her.

  She smiled at Dr. Morton and my mind did flipflops at the power of that smile to resurrect a torrent of memories. It actually brought hot tears to my eyes, tears I kept trapped beneath my lids despite how they burned.

  "I have a guest for you today," Dr. Morton said, and my mother looked at me for the first time in nearly a dozen years. If there was any recognition, she kept it well locked up behind her childish smile. "I'm going to leave her here a while to talk to you, okay?"

  My mother didn't answer. She returned to her painting.

  Dr. Morton looked at me with that all-toofamiliar arrogant doctor's expression of "I told you so."

  I looked away, and she told me she would be nearby if I needed her.

  I waited for her to leave, and then I pulled a chair closer and sat.

  "What are you painting?" I asked.

  She looked up at the window as if the question had come from there.

  "Tomorrow," she said.

  "Tomorrow? You can see tomorrow?"

  "Uh-huh."

  She returned to the painting.

  "Can you tell me what you see? Is there someone there?"

  She lifted the paper so that I could see it better, and she smiled.

  "Yes, I see someone," I said.