by V. J. Banis
She put a hand to her forehead. The strain was beginning to tell on her, that was all it was. If she had something to eat....
She sat upright, dropping the letter from her hands. The doorknob had turned again. Someone was trying the door.
“Aunt Christine?” she called aloud. The knob stopped turning, but there was no answer. Someone outside in the hall had tried the door and found it locked.
“Aunt Christine?” she called again. Still only silence came back to her.
More puzzled than frightened, she stood and crossed the room to the door, listening. No sounds; nothing to tell her if her visitor had gone or was waiting on the other side of the door; waiting...for what?
Again the knob turned slowly, noisily. Jennifer found herself staring at it as though hypnotized by its circling motion. She knew the door was locked and yet she found herself waiting for it to open, to swing on its hinges and reveal the intruder to her.
“Who’s there?” she called aloud, forcing herself from her immobility. She would not stand there like a frightened ninny and let just anyone intrude upon her privacy. Someone must give her an explanation, or she would go mad.
She turned the key, despite trembling fingers, unlocking the door. For a moment she hesitated. Then, seizing the knob herself, she threw the door open—to find herself facing an empty hall.
There was no one there. She stepped out into the hall, peering in both directions. But the hall was truly empty.
It was quite simple, she told herself. Whoever was out here had heard her turn the key in the lock, and had gone into one of the other rooms, behind one of those stupid doors along the hall. Again she looked in both directions, looking for some indication of which room had given refuge. But the doors were all closed, all of them. Nothing was amiss.
She started in the direction of the stairs. Mad or not mad, Aunt Christine simply must provide an explanation for the goings on around this house.
“My nerves just can’t endure any more of this,” she told herself.
Behind her, a door closed. She whirled about, staring down the long hall.
Which door had closed? And why? All of the doors had been closed already when she had come out into the hall. Nothing had been open except...except her own door.
Her door was closed now. She had left it open when she came into the hall, and she had not closed it when she started for the stairs. It had been wide ajar.
It was closed now, just like all the others. She walked slowly back toward her room, coming to a stop outside her door.
Someone was in her room, someone who waited for her to enter—to do whatever it was they had come to do. She thought of the turret, and the near accident there. Had that been deliberate, and not an accident? Did someone really mean to do her harm, to take...she hesitated even to think this...to take her life?
What could she do? Certainly it was pointless for her to go downstairs for help. Whatever was happening in the house, they were all a part of it. She was, in the truest sense of the word, alone.
And perhaps she was imagining all this. She was very jumpy, her nerves were raw, and her imagination was running away with itself. All of the doors in the house close themselves if left open. It is something to do, no doubt with the way the house was built
She turned the knob, pushed, and the door swung lazily open. The room was empty; no one waited to seize her and do horrible things to her. A cool breeze brushed her face, making obvious what must have happened; the breeze from the open window had blown the door shut. It was as simple as that.
“What a baby I am,” she chided herself, closing the door and reentering the room. She sat down on the bed and for a moment laughed silently at her own jumpy nerves.
But the breeze had not turned the knob of her door when she had been inside here, she thought her laughter fading. No, someone had been in the hall earlier and had tried to enter her room. And the breeze....
The breeze! She jumped from the bed and stared at the window. The window had been closed, impossible for her to open. It had been closed a moment before when she had left the room and gone into the hall; and now it was open.
She went to the window, staring out. The lawn was two stories below, with no means of descent from here other than the obvious one of falling. Nor was there any walkway or balcony or ledge outside. No, no one had left the room by this exit. Nor could they have left by the hall door without going by her.
“I am imagining things,” she told herself, speaking very slowly and distinctly. “So much has happened that I am no longer thinking clearly.”
That at least was the truth. She was no longer thinking clearly. Was it the tension, the strangeness of the situation in which she found herself; perhaps the lack of food?
Something was happening to her. She felt light headed and not at all herself. Was this how one felt when one had been drinking? It seemed to match the description; but her experience was limited to a few glasses of wine, so she could not really know.
Again she had the feeling of being apart from herself and from life, as if she were in a dream. None of this seemed quite real, or as if it could really be happening to her.
“I may be losing my mind,” she thought. That would explain everything.
Forcefully she pushed that thought aside. If she once allowed herself to begin contemplating that, she knew the idea would grow and grow in her mind, until she accepted it as the truth.
There was an explanation for everything. “I must have opened that window myself, and I’ve simply forgotten about it.”
“But when?” The question came unbidden into her mind. “When did I open it?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time Aunt Christine arrived to announce dinner, Jennifer was ready to admit defeat. Pride or no pride, she was literally starving to death. Certainly, she assured herself as she came downstairs, they had finished with their preposterous joke and were ready to begin treating her as a guest should be treated. They must see the harm they were doing.
“Oh, there you are,” Aunt Christine greeted her as she entered the dining room. This time Jennifer had come along the hall to the right doorway, and had found the dining room without incident.
“We had begun to worry about you,” Aunt Abbie said.
“I should think you would, you nasty old women,” Jennifer thought; “I have been starved almost to death, nearly killed in a fall, and all but assaulted in my own room.”
Aloud, she said, “Thank you, I’m afraid I haven’t been very good company.”
“Helen prepared this dinner especially for you, because you seemed to be unhappy this morning,” Aunt Christine explained. “I hope you like it.”
“I’m certain I shall,” Jennifer said. She was prepared to like virtually anything that was set before her. She could not remember when she had ever been so hungry. She seated herself quickly, ignoring the empty chair beside her, saved for her mother. She nodded to the others about the table. Aunt Abbie leaned toward her.
“Didn’t your new robe fit either?” she asked, indicating the gray suit Jennifer still wore.
“I’m afraid not,” Jennifer said coldly. That was one point she refused to give in on; but she did not want to provoke a quarrel, not before she had eaten. Later, when she had some food in her, she would clear things up.
“Oh dear,” Aunt Abbie replied, shaking her head sadly. “Then I don’t see how you can take part in the rites.”
“The rites?” For a moment Jennifer did not understand. Then it came back to her, that odd dancing on the lawn that she had witnessed on her arrival. Aunt Abbie had called them the rites. “Oh, yes, the rites,” she said lamely.
“Of course, if Christine thinks it will be all right,” Abbie offered, glancing questioningly toward Aunt Christine at the head of the table.
“Now Abbie,” Aunt Christine said, wagging a finger at her. “You know the rules as well as I do. We shall simply have to find another robe for Jennifer.”
“But she’ll miss the
rites,” Abbie argued. She turned back to Jennifer. “They’re right after dinner, you know. There simply wouldn’t be time to find a robe for you before they began.”
“I think,” Jennifer interrupted the family disagreement, “that perhaps the best solution all around would be to give me my own clothing. If someone would just lead me back to my car, where my luggage is still waiting....”
“Oh, that would never do,” Abbie said, her voice rising to a shocked level. “We will have to find a robe for you, that’s all there is to that. No, I’m afraid your own clothes would never do for the rites. Everyone must wear a robe. It’s always been like that.”
Jennifer sighed aloud. Now how had she gotten herself involved in all this nonsense over the rites, in which she was not at all interested?
“I think we may start dinner now,” Aunt Christine suggested, handing a platter to the woman at her left.
Jennifer was not at all surprised to discover that again the platters and bowls were all empty. They were not yet ready to end their fun. They had probably already eaten their dinner, sometime before she was called, and they were now going through the same elaborate pantomime as at breakfast, pretending to eat from empty dishes.
Marcella had handed Jennifer an empty bowl. Jennifer let it slip through her fingers. It fell to the table with a crash, breaking into several pieces. There was a stunned silence about the table; all eyes were upon her. At any minute she expected them to begin laughing.
“I must have food,” she said aloud. “I demand that you give me something to eat.”
There was a long pause. Jennifer was prepared to stand her ground now. She had never before had to stand up for herself, but necessity gave her the strength to do so now.
Aunt Christine got swiftly up from her seat. “Why certainly, dear,” she said. “I’m so happy that you’re hungry again.”
For a moment Jennifer felt relief. They were going to give in after all, without the necessity of a fight. All it had taken were a few firmly spoken words.
Aunt Christine came hurriedly along the table, to where Jennifer sat. She reached past Jennifer, seizing a large, empty platter.
“Here,” she said, deftly spooning out whatever was supposed to be on the platter onto Jennifer’s plate. “I think you’ll like this, dear, Helen fixed it especially for you.”
Jennifer opened her mouth to speak, anger rising within her. But the words did not come. She was gripped by a sense of frustration, of hopelessness. It was no use, they would not give her the food she wanted. She could feel reason slipping even further from her, and a sense of helpless panic came over her.
Wordlessly she stood and started from the room. Perhaps she thought dizzily, it is I who am mad. Perhaps there really is food on the table and the chairs are not ruining my skirt with filth.
“Jennifer?” Aunt Christine called after her.
Without looking back, Jennifer left the room and ran to her own bedroom. She threw herself across her bed. Impossible though it seemed, she was the victim of some monstrous scheme concocted among them for purposes she could not fathom.
“I will not beg,” she promised herself. “I will sit in my room until they promise to give up this nonsense and serve me some real food.”
“If I haven’t died in the meantime of starvation,” she added. She truly did not feel well. She was weak and frightfully tired. That was the lack of food, undoubtedly, and her nerves too. Her tranquilizers were in a case in her luggage, where they were doing not the slightest good.
She lay for a moment staring at the ceiling. They were all mad? Or—and this was a chilling alternative—or she was. It was difficult to believe that this was only a joke. The entire family seemed so earnest in their belief that there was food on the table. They saw it, and she did not. Either they were crazy, or she was.
How did one tell?
She closed her eyes, feeling fatigue washing over her like the waves of the sea. She knew one thing. She had had no delusions before she came here. And there was no mistake about the fact that they were trying to keep her from leaving. Every mention of her car and her clothing was shrugged off.
They could not keep her a prisoner here, though. She would leave. “In the morning,” she promised herself as she drifted off to sleep, “I will leave on my own. I will start through those woods and I will not stop until I have found the road again, and my car.”
* * * *
The cold air from the window was blowing over her, chilling her although she still wore her suit. She sat up, intending to close the window. She paused, listening; shook her head and listened again. No, it wasn’t just the wind, and she hadn’t dreamed it. Someone had called her name.
“Who’s there?” she called into the darkness. Why hadn’t she remembered to turn on the light before she fell asleep? My God, she thought, I didn’t even lock the door.
As if in answer to her thoughts, someone tapped at the door, a steady, monotonous tapping sound that grew steadily in volume.
“Who is it?” she asked, frightened now. The door was unlocked. If whoever was there tried the door, he would find it open. The tapping continued, growing to a loud knocking that rattled the mirror over the dresser.
“Go away,” Jennifer called aloud. Still the knocking continued, louder and louder until the whole room reverberated with it.
“I’m dreaming this,” she told herself, clenching her hands into tight fists, and biting into her lip. She felt as if she wanted to scream, to run—only there was no place to run.
“Please, go away,” she shouted, her voice almost lost in the din of the pounding.
Suddenly the knocking stopped, and the room was silent again.
After a long time, during which no sound disturbed the silence, Jennifer rose from her bed and crossed the room slowly, expecting the door to spring open at any minute. But it remained closed, and at last she had reached it and turned the key, locking it. She hadn’t the nerve to open it and see who or what might be outside. She did not care, if only they did not try to come in.
She turned the light on and went back to bed, but she was too frightened to sleep. She sat at the head of the bed, huddled into a little ball, and waited for something more to happen.
Nothing did happen, though, and finally it was morning. She had sat up most of the night, and now the window grew light with the coming of dawn, and in the distance she could make out the gray green of the trees in the woods. The night was ended.
“I can’t go on like this,” she told herself. Her head was throbbing. She had had no food and little sleep. She was no longer certain how much of this was actually happening to her and how much she had simply imagined; or had she simply imagined it all? Perhaps after all she would awaken soon to find herself safely at home, in her own little bed, in her nightgown, suffering from some thoughtless bedtime snack.
No, the morning was real, and this dismal room with the dirty furniture and the faded wallpaper was real. She was at Kelsey House, and she was afraid; afraid of things that she could not understand, things that she seemed helpless to do anything about.
“But I will do something about them,” she said firmly, getting up from the bed. “I am leaving here today, this morning.”
CHAPTER NINE
This time she did not even bother with the silly charade of breakfast. She did not know what it all meant, but she was certain that they had no intention of feeding her at these “meals.”
When Aunt Christine came to tap on her door and tell her breakfast was ready, Jennifer called brightly, “I’ll be right down.”
She waited until she was sure her aunt had gone. Then she let herself out of her room, and took the stairs down to the first floor. In a moment she was outside, on the front porch of Kelsey House.
If the floor plan of Kelsey House was a puzzlement, however, the grounds were no less peculiar. From the diminutive porch one could look out over the sweeping lawn that Jennifer had already seen. Beyond the lawn she could see the woods thick and ominous eve
n from this distance; they formed a solid wall, without a break in them.
And that, she told herself, was peculiar. Never mind the little path that man had led her along, hardly a path even. That, she assumed, had been some shortcut of his own.
But there would have to be a driveway, or at the very least, some sort of walkway, that led to the road. Even if the people here seldom left the house, there was the question of supplies. Notwithstanding the silly business of serving her empty dishes, they themselves had to eat some time or another. Even if they grew their own food on the grounds somewhere—and that was a possibility she might want to explore—there must certainly be other things that they would have to bring from town.
Upon reflection though she could not think of a single thing, try though she might. Nothing in the house was new. Aside from food, what exactly would they need from the outside? Clothes? That was not likely. The simple robes they wore could have been made from anything, curtains even, or fabric purchased in quantity years before. Obviously they did not use cleaning supplies, judging from the condition of the house. What else was there? Perhaps on thinking about it, the occupants of Kelsey House did not really need to make use of the nearby town. It was not a very encouraging conclusion, from her point of view.
At least, however, there was a path; a footpath, to be specific, and although it did not appear to offer any immediate means of reaching the road that lay somewhere beyond the woods, it did lead from the stairs of the porch along the width of the house, disappearing around a corner. Presumably it had to go somewhere; most paths did. On the other hand, Jennifer reminded herself, Kelsey was not like most places she had known.
She decided she would try following the path. It might very well lead her to a garden where the family grew their food; if they did not bring it in, they must raise it here themselves.
