Iron House

by John Hart

  “Take it easy,” he said.

  But she scrambled up on all fours, ready to sprint. Michael put a hand on her back and kept her down as he engaged the safety on the gun and pushed into his belt. “I just want to talk to you.” She fought, strong, and Michael said, “Come on, now.”

  “Get off me!”

  She tried to push herself up. Michael pressed a forearm across her shoulder blades.

  “I said, get off, motherfucker!” She pushed harder. “Damn it! Get the fuck off!”

  “Relax, first. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  He eased off the pressure enough to show he was serious, and beneath his arm, she went limp. Michael saw that she was barefoot, and that her skin was bug-bitten and dirty. She wore frayed shorts and a once-white tank top now stained gray. Her hair was dirty blond, full of twigs, and she was young enough for Michael to feel bad about the way he’d brought her down.

  She was just a kid.

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t realize…” Michael ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Are you finished?”

  Her voice was as light and girlish as the rest of her.

  “Yeah. You bet.” Michael lifted his arm, but she stayed still and limp, a small, dirty girl brought down harder than she should have been. “Listen…”

  Michael leaned forward, and she moved, rolling fast onto her back as one hand came up from beneath her right hip. Michael saw a whisk of silver; then she was scrambling away as pain flashed and a bright red line opened on his chest. He touched it once and his palm came away bloodied. When he looked at the girl, she was crouched five feet away, a straight razor in her hand. “Nobody touches me, ’less I say.”

  Michael started to rise, and then caught the look on her face, the wide, frightened eyes, and the cherry lips open over bright teeth. She weighed all of ninety pounds, a smooth-limbed girl with a pretty face and blue eyes so wild and bright they almost hurt; but that’s not what took the fight out of Michael. It was deeper than that, and familiar. He settled back onto the dirt as she folded the razor and pushed it into the tight crevasse of her pocket.

  “Next time,” she said, “I cut your pretty-boy face.”

  Then she spit on the ground and ran, her blue eyes flashing once, her feet as bare and brown as summer dirt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  There’s humiliation and humbleness, and then there’s stupidity. Michael was feeling all three. “She was just a girl. Eighteen, maybe nineteen.”

  “Hold still.” Michael sat on the hood of the Land Rover, his shirt a bloody mess on the dirt beneath him. Abigail stood between his knees, a first-aid kit open on the hood beside her. “This is going to hurt.”

  The cut was shallow but long, a ten-inch diagonal slice that ran from the sixth rib on his right side to a spot just above his heart. Abigail cleaned it with alcohol, then pressed gauze against it and told Michael to hold it there while she unpackaged a dozen butterfly bandages.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Beautiful but dirty.” He closed his eyes to picture her. “Five-two, maybe, and all of ninety pounds. She had tangled hair, shoulder length and kind of blond. Small jaw. Large eyes.”

  “Blue?”

  “Like some kind of stone.” Michael lifted the gauze, frowned at the cut then put pressure back on. “She had a mouth like a sailor.”

  “Let me guess the rest.” Abigail kept her eyes on the work she was doing. “Half-naked and wild as a cat in heat.”

  “You sound like you know her.”

  “Victorine Gautreaux. I know her mother.”

  “What’s she doing here?” Abigail looked up, lips pursed, and Michael said, “Julian?”

  She shrugged. “I’d call it a suspicion, but I’m pretty sure.”

  “Why was she in the guest house?”

  “I think she ran away from home. Maybe she was looking for Julian. Hang on. Give me that.”

  He handed her more bandages. She pressed on the wound, then switched out gauze and applied more pressure.

  “Did she run away for a reason?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t much care to speculate about the workings of that family, but I do know social services took her away a few times when she was younger—once when she was about seven, then a couple more times when she was twelve or thirteen.”

  “Why?”

  “Various types of abuse and neglect. No medical history, basically illiterate. The kid barely went to school, and when she did she was fighting all the time, wild and unmanageable. She bit some students, and hurt a few pretty seriously. It went to court, but those idiots in county government never had the courage to take her away. Probably scared of her mother.” Abigail lifted the gauze, studied the wound, then pushed harder. “Kid never had a chance.”

  “And you think she’s with Julian?”

  “You saw how she looks. I doubt Julian had a chance.”

  “She’s pretty, yes. But how would they have met?”

  “Walking in the woods. Hell, I don’t know.”

  When the bleeding stopped, she held the lips of the wound together and worked from right to left, sealing it shut with butterfly bandages. Afterward, she put fresh gauze over the wound and taped it in place. “You can get it stitched if you want, but that’ll hold it. It won’t be a pretty scar, but looking at the rest of you, I don’t think that’s an issue.” She gathered up the bloody shirt, the bandages. “Let’s go inside.”

  Michael put on a fresh shirt, and they checked the house from front to back. Beyond the broken window, nothing looked disturbed. Michael tried one window frame and then the other. “Painted shut.”

  “That explains the broken glass.” Abigail fingered raw wood where shards had been knocked out. “But not why she was here in the first place. Has to be a reason.”

  They found it on the second pass-through.

  “Abigail.” Michael called from the back bedroom. When she came in, she found him in the door of the closet. “Check it out.” He pointed up, and she slipped in next to him. The closet was basically empty—just a rod and a few wire hangers—but a trapdoor was visible in the corner of the ceiling. Around it, white paint was smeared with fingerprints and grime.

  “The house has an attic. I don’t think there’s anything up there.” She looked around. “We need something to stand on.”

  “I know where to find a stool.”

  They retrieved the stool from the ferns outside, and put it down in the closet. “Those look like footprints to you?” Michael pointed at the stool, which was scuffed and muddy.

  “Could be. Maybe.”

  “Well, let’s take a look.”

  “After you.”

  Michael said, “I don’t suppose you have a flashlight?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Can’t have it all, I guess.” He mounted the stool, which wobbled but held his weight. The trapdoor opened, hinged at the back seam. “There’s a ladder. Step back.” Michael opened the trap all the way and pulled the ladder down as he descended from the stool. The ladder was hinged as well, and when it touched the floor, its angle was almost vertical. “That’s better.”

  He climbed slowly, a vague, black emptiness above him. When his head broke the plane of the attic, he gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust. Enough light penetrated through ventilation cutouts in the eaves for Michael to get a sense of the space, which was low, but floored. The ceiling was sloped and close enough to touch, the air dry and hot.

  “See anything?”

  “I see a candle.” It was just a few feet away, a thick shaft of wax melted onto a saucer. “Hang on.” There were matches, too, and he lit one, flame surging, then burning low. He touched the flame to the candlewick and watched light ripple over the floor. He picked up the saucer, and held it high.

  “What do you see?”

  Michael lifted the candle higher. “You should probably come up here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Hang
on. I’ll make room.”

  * * *

  The pentagram was eight feet wide and looked to have been scratched on the floor with charcoal or the end of a burned stick. It was well drawn, but black and flaky, darker in some places than in others. Around it, another dozen candles were jammed into bottles or melted onto the floor. A giant circle enclosed the pentagram, and in the center of it all lay a pillow and a tangle of rough blankets.

  Michael lit more candles, so that light wavered and spread. Outside the circle was a pair of flip-flops, a jug of water and another pair of cutoff jeans. He also saw a bowl, a toothbrush and small tube of lip balm. “Looks like she’s been sleeping here.” Michael toed the blankets. “Hard to say how long.”

  “But…” Abigail turned a slow circle. “What is all this?”

  “Something weird. Pentagrams. I don’t know.”

  “There’re plenty of people around here who’d be willing to swear her mother’s a witch.”

  “I’m sorry. You said a witch?”

  “From a lengthy line of them. It’s a long story.” Abigail lifted a candle and made her way toward the far corner of the attic. She had to stoop, but it was not far. She peered into dark places where the rafters came down, then turned and looked the length of the room. “What the hell was she doing up here?”

  “I have some idea.” Michael nudged the blanket again. He bent and came up with a long, rolled strip of foil wrappers. He let the strip unfold from his fingers. “Condoms.”

  “Great.”

  He toed the blanket a final time, froze. “And this.”

  Abigail came closer, and Michael stood. A revolver rested heavily in his palm, blued steel that showed rust on the barrel and a shine on the trigger. “Colt .357.” He cracked the cylinder and checked the loads. “One round fired.”

  * * *

  Outside, they stood on the porch and gazed down to boats on far water. Michael spread his hands on the railing, and watched for a long time. Both of them shared the same, terrible thoughts. “Big lake,” he finally said.

  “We built it just after we married.” Some memory softened her face. “It was my husband’s idea, a great jewel in the middle of the estate. It was supposed to be a sign of change, and of permanence, a metaphor for our new life together.”

  Lines flew out. Another diver dropped.

  “I wish he’d made it bigger,” Michael said.

  “They’ll find it, won’t they?”

  “Is the lake deep?”

  Abigail looked forlorn. “Not deep enough.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Victorine went to ground like an animal. She’d found the cave years ago. It was old, with stone worn smooth in the entrance, and the bones of small mammals scattered in its deepest parts. She guessed it had been a panther’s den, back when panthers still moved in this part of the state; but that was a hundred years ago, at least. Maybe even more.

  So, the bones were old.

  The cave was old.

  She’d found it as a girl, exploring barefoot when her mother took her shoes as punishment for some laxness or crime of omission. Mother was like that, when it came to Victorine—sharp-tongued and cruel enough to punish in meaningful ways. And she used to take it, too, until Julian told her how life could be better. Until he showed her.

  She dropped to her belly and slid into the cave. Inside, the ceiling rose up to where a crack in the granite let light filter in. The crack gave ventilation for fires, but it let rain in, too, otherwise she’d sleep there. But sleeping there was no good. She’d done it once for a week—first time she’d run away—and the pneumonia almost killed her. Mother said it was God’s punishment for sins delivered to the good woman who’d raised her, but Victorine figured it was the damp and cold and mushroom spores. And that was a lesson she learned, that some were warm at night, and some were cold.

  Victorine planned on being warm, but not in her mother’s house. Not ever again. For a second her mind turned on images of the man she’d cut. He had to be Julian’s brother. His face was close enough to make no difference, but the rest of him was nothing like the same. He was going to follow her, even after she’d cut him. She’d seen it in his eyes, one fast tick of determination that simply faded away. She still had no idea why he didn’t come. He was fast enough, strong enough, too, and the cut wasn’t that deep. She puzzled on it, and then let it go.

  In the back of the cave she drew out an old crate that held a ratty blanket and a few stubs of candle. She made a bed, then lit the candles. The light glinted on protective markings she’d carved long ago in the rock. Her mother proffered herself as a witch, and in nineteen years, Victorine had seen no reason to doubt her word on that. She was mean enough, and she sure had a power over men. So, maybe she was a witch and maybe she wasn’t, but Victorine played it safe where her mother was concerned. There was too much history there, too much bad blood.

  She stretched out in the cave, the blanket on a sandy spot that took her shape and held it as she looked down the road at what the next day might bring. At the moment, she was warm, but figured on being warmer. So, that’s what she did, there among the dark and bones of the old cat’s den. She thought of what she wanted, and of Julian Vane. She thought about how he said her life should be, then of the gifts that God had given her, a body straight from heaven and an artist’s eye, a mind as sharp and bright as the middle tine on Satan’s big, red fork.

  She had a plan, but no money. Had a friend, but he was gone.

  Where the hell are you, Julian?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “The Gautreaux women have a way with men.” Abigail was driving, nothing in sight but dirt track and deep woods as they pushed into the back of the estate. “Something in the way they move, in their looks, the way they smell. I can’t explain it. You’d have to see it to understand.” She shook her head. “It’s not natural.”

  “It sounds personal, the way you talk about it.”

  Abigail wiped the back of her hand across her cheek. “Caravel Gautreaux had a thing with my husband. It was a long time ago, but it lasted a while. He’d say he was going hunting, but come back empty-handed. It was early in the marriage. A fling, he said. First of many, as it turned out.”

  She said it without shame, but Michael felt the hurt and understood. It was dangerous business, trusting a person. “Tell me about her.”

  Abigail gestured broadly: the trees, the forest. “The Gautreaux clan came over from France in the late 1830s, a mother with two grown sons and a daughter no more than thirteen. They originally settled on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, but were run out of Louisiana eight years later, eventually finding their way to the Carolina coast, then upriver and inland to Chatham County. The daughter, by that time, was twenty-one and pregnant by one of her brothers, though nobody was ever sure which. They made their living as slave traders and thieves; sold liquor to Indians, guns to anybody that could afford them.”

  “Opportunists.”

  “They stole when they could, killed when it paid, and the women were known to be worse—not just the mother, but the daughter and the twin girls she bore to whichever brother got her pregnant. They were prostitutes, all of them, healers and spell-casters known to give a man syphilis one day, then charge three dollars the next to cure him. They grew more isolated and dangerous as the county filled up around them. During the Civil War, they took in deserters with the promise of warm food and a dry bed, only to cut their throats, then strip the bodies bare.” Abigail favored Michael with a glance. “An old man in town still swears that, as a boy trespassing, he found a shed on their land with more than a hundred muskets stacked inside.”

  Michael did not have a vivid imagination, but driving on that tongue of black-earth road, he saw how it could have been: a starving man hidden and fed, then nightfall and a hushed approach, the sheen of sweat and firelight as one of the daughters rode his hips on an animal skin bed, her body dirt-smeared and bare, eyes wide as her mother lifted the man’s chin from behind and p
ut a blade in the cords of his throat.

  “The story had a few different versions,” Abigail said, “but I’ve never doubted its inherent truth. After a century and a half on the same ground, they’re a family of snakes born of snakes, a foul brood grown hard on violence, pride and avarice.” Abigail made an unpleasant face. “You found Victorine beautiful?”

  “Exceptionally.”

  “Her mother was, too, once upon a time, pretty and earthy and raw. I’d think screwing her would be a lot like screwing a mountain lion. Some men favor that.”

  “You’re too close to this,” Michael said. “I should go alone.”

  “The girl is involved with Julian. I’m going.”

  “You’re making this personal.”

  “The mother is evil. The girl will be evil, too.”

  Michael replayed the moment he’d been cut, the few short seconds after surprise and regret turned to feelings that were more complex. She’d been cruel and fast and ready to fight; but she’d been scared, too, and determined not to show it. He could have taken her down, blade or no blade, but in looking at her face, at the narrowed eyes and purpose, he’d seen so much of his own hard years. “That’s not what I saw,” he finally said.

  “What, then?”

  “I saw a survivor.”

  Abigail thought about what he said. “Survivor, killer, slut.” She downshifted as the track dropped away and she worked the Land Rover into the stream at the bottom. “We should have burned these people out years ago.”

  * * *

  Michael sensed the change when they crossed onto land owned by Caravel Gautreaux. Smooth earth broke where granite shoulders humped up through the soil. Hardwoods disappeared, and pine rose up. Needles made a blanket on the ground. The forest darkened.