The House on Black Lake

by Blackwell, Anastasia

  “Actually, we planned a party on the island the day after tomorrow. We’re taking the children there to celebrate the solstice.” Ruth laces her exuberance with an expert touch of sanguine innocence. “You’re welcome to join us.”

  “I’m going back tomorrow, to my house in the woods. I’m starting the fast on the solstice, the seven day fast, no food and no sleep. That’s when the visions come, when the lady visits me—the beauty in the white slip and the flowing brown hair. Love is a precious thing. I have only touched the face of love once in my life. When it comes to you, you cannot say no,” he says, and draws a finger down the sleeve of my jacket.

  “I must excuse myself,” says one of the men in blue blazers. “I have an early morning tomorrow.” The others follow with similar proclamations and stand to file out of the dining hall.

  Douggie leans forward as if to eye an invisible guest across the table. His bony hands clutch at the wheelchair armrests, fingernails scratching vaguely against smooth steel, as he evocates in a warbling voice: “The prophecy must be fulfilled, the time is upon us, the shift is imminent, the one is among us, the price must be paid,” he chants, thumping his fingers on the table in sets of three beats.

  A trio of maids enters the room to clear empty plates and glasses from the table. A frazzled member of the group, with a tiny run in her silk stocking and a smudged chin, reaches out a hand to remove Luna’s dinner plate.

  “No,” Roger says and grabs her arm. “You are not to take that plate. Stand where you are.”

  The girl’s skin turns the color of stone as she freezes in place.

  “Luna, dear,” he says, while removing a wayward crumb from his mustache, “you must finish everything on your plate. You are not to visit the bathroom afterward, is that clear? We will put an end to this habit tonight.”

  “Roger...” Luna says, and a bloody stain creeps over her cheeks. “We have guests, dear. Let’s discuss this later.”

  “You will eat all of your food. The maid will stand here all night if she must.” He addresses the young girl. “You are not to leave this spot until Luna has finished every morsel on her plate, is that clear?”

  The maid’s starched hat bobs up and down.

  “Once she has finished her food, you will stay with her for the night and make certain she does not go into the toilette. If I find you have not followed my orders, then you know what you will face. Do you hear me? Please look me in the eyes!”

  The maid’s left eye flutters as she obeys his brusque command.

  “It’s time for us to leave,” Ramey says, and stands from his chair. His gray eyes look ominous, the color of clouds in the still moment before a storm. “Alexandra has a son waiting for her at home.”

  “I haven’t finished my dessert,” Ruth says. She casts Luna a look, the first I’ve seen her share, and with it comes a fierce, searing, unmistakable explosion of unbridled disdain and smug self-satisfaction. And Luna, no mere victim, though clearly an object of these assaults, lowers her eyes and gathers herself in the aftermath.

  “Sit back down, Ramey Sandeley. We will smoke our cigars. I brought a rare brand; it has medicinal properties,” Douggie says with a cackle of crude laughter. He reaches inside a leather pouch on the side of his wheelchair and removes a dark cherry-wood box inlaid with jade. He tears open a silver seal on the box with his gnarled finger and lifts the lid with anticipation, as though it holds a secret treasure.

  “It’s the smell of love,” he says, while lowering his nose into the container. He reaches inside and carefully removes a cigar. “These were given to me by a Peruvian king. It has been sealed for twenty-five years,” he says, and offers the sacred box to me. I take it from him and am about to pass it along to Ramey, when I feel Douggie grasp my wrist. “No, dear,” he says, “you will smoke with the rest of us.”

  “You can put either end in your mouth,” Ramey says, as he takes a cigar and offers it to me.

  “Well, in my opinion, if you kill a pig for food, it better not end up in the garbage.” Ruth’s tone barely disguises the pleasure she apparently finds in Luna’s discomfort.

  “No one asked for your opinion, dear,” Ramey say, while taking a match to my cigar. As I inhale, he reaches under the table and slides his hand between my upper thighs, causing me to take a deep gasp of smoke into my lungs. The room spins around me as I struggle to draw in fresh air. I’m burning from the inside out, and my eyes wander around the room, seeking a solid anchor of equilibrium.

  “She’s a virgin, this one,” he says to Douggie Raye. “Take it slow, darling.” He removes his hand and raises a glass of water to my lips.

  The cool fluid eases the spasm in my throat, and a smooth cherry taste lingers on my tongue, nearly numbing. A loud buzzing reverberates in my ears, the colors in the room intensify, and the jousting knights on the frescoes appear to come to life. I see that Seth watches me from behind a pillar in the corner of the room, near the doorway. “It’s very nice, Douggie; it has a smooth taste,” I say, turning to him. But Douggie doesn’t answer, because he has fallen fast asleep. His head is canted sideways against his chair, with the cigar still burning between his lips.

  “It’s time we said good night,” Ramey says, while putting out his cigar. “Come dear, we’re leaving,” he tells Ruth.

  Ruth lounges languidly in her chair and leisurely raises her wine glass to her lips.

  “I said we’re leaving, did you hear me?”

  “It would be rude to leave before Luna finishes her food,” she says and ups the ante with a coy smile hiding a cloak dagger glare, then flips her hair back and takes a long drink of wine.

  I stand boldly and walk as best I can to where Roger and Luna sit at the head of the table. “Thank you,” I say, nodding my head politely to Roger, who is spread out in his chair, a satiated satyr, gloating in inexorably presumptive arrogance. Evading his hungry eyes, I focus my intent on his wife. “I appreciate your hospitality.” Luna is silent as she lightly squeezes my offered hand, but when she looks up I’m caught off-guard by the ferocity of her gaze.

  The French maid steps up from behind Luna’s chair to peer over her shoulder into the full plate and casts an eschewing glance in my direction.

  Roger stands, takes my hand from her, and raises it to his lips. I shudder as he turns it to reveal my open palm. As his coarse mustache scrapes against the tender skin, I am seized by a contraction in my throat and unable to breathe or swallow. A horrific panic rises up as I struggle against the strangulation.

  “We look forward to seeing you again on the eve of the solstice,” he says, then releases me to return to his throne-style chair, where he resumes smoking the last of his cigar.

  “Ruth... I’ll be waiting for you in the entry,” I croak, and turn to stride from the dining hall.

  Seth opens the doors for me, and I break from the room and run through the corridor of slumbering knights and coffins filled with ancient treasures, run from the sound, the echo, behind me, the thud of thick-soled shoes hammering against the slate floor.

  “Let me help you,” Seth says, coming from behind to hoist the door’s steel latch.

  I tumble out into the crisp night air and release a wail like the plaintive cry of a wounded animal. The release of my frozen vocal chords causes a spasm of coughs, mixed with horrid bleats. My sounds join those of the crickets and the frogs who have made homes in rocks and on the lily pads floating in the water deep inside the moat that surrounds the castle.

  “Straight down,” says Seth, who now, as by magic, holds a cordial glass filled with an amber liquid. I take the vial from his gloved hand and drink the warm liquid in one hearty swallow.

  “That helped. I feel much better.” I look up into the eyes of a child lost inside the body of a hapless giant. “Thank you Seth,” I say, and gently touch his arm in gratitude.

  The front door flies open and Ruth rushes madly out the door. Passing us without a word, she races, swerving her body in awkward jerks and fluttering her arms, near
ly taking flight, if that were possible—to where her car is parked. I race to catch up with her, stumbling, nearly falling to my face, as I catch my heel in a crevice between the stones. She has already started the engine when I open the door and scramble onto the passenger seat. The car takes off, with the door wide open and my leg precariously dangling outside, and screeches around the horseshoe driveway, roaring up the road, past the winged guardians.

  A final quick view, a reflection in the rearview mirror, offers a vision of Ramey striding out of the house with an oblong leather satchel hung from his shoulder as he moves to the open door of a waiting sedan.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE STAIRWAY THROUGH THE STARS

  BACK IN MY ROOM, DIZZY AND EXHAUSTED, I WANT NOTHING MORE than to lie down and go to sleep. But I see Sammy lies wedged into a corner of the couch, shivering and weeping, covered in rumpled sheets and clutching the corner of a native blanket that trails from the bed onto the carpet.

  “Darling, what’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

  “The kids were mean,” Sammy says in a quavering voice. “Why did you leave me?”

  “What happened?”

  “They said I was an astronaut and was going to the moon. Lizzie told me my hair was too long to be an astronaut, and Rand said he was the barber,” he says.

  I examine his hair and find pieces have been cut to the scalp. “What else did they do?” I ask, and straighten the tangled sheets and blanket to cover him properly.

  “They put me in a chair with a blindfold and rolled me around in circles until I was sick, because that’s what it’s like in space. And then they locked me in a closet and told me I’d fallen into a wormhole and would never come out.”

  “Where were the au pairs, Samuel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They promised to watch you at all times.”

  “Some boys came to the door and they were in the bathroom a long time.”

  The boys were in the bathroom with the au pairs?”

  “Only Amanda. Gabbie was sleeping while she watched television.”

  “I will make certain the children are never mean to you again, I promise. Did you have dinner?”

  Sam shakes his head. “I wasn’t hungry.”

  “I’ll go upstairs and make you a snack. Let me change my clothes first.” I undress and pack away my evening clothes, then change into a tank and shorts, and walk upstairs to the kitchen.

  Inside the refrigerator I find a platter of cold cuts and a fresh loaf of bread, and begin to make Sammy a sandwich. But I am unable to finish. My head spins. Images flash, like little dreams. I move in and out of consciousness. I’m disoriented and nauseous, and feel all at once like I am going to be sick. I rush from the kitchen, slipping along the slick hardwood floors, to the hallway bathroom.

  A naked Ramey walks out the door and turns toward the master bedroom. He moves like a sculpture of a Greek God come to life, a series of tattooed symbols gracing the high arch of his perfectly formed backside. I turn quickly, but have only taken a few steps, when he grabs me from behind and shoves me against the wall, using the length of his powerful frame to keep me firmly trapped, as he hoists my arms overhead and pins my wrists.

  “Where are you going, Alexandra?” he whispers in my ear.

  “Downstairs.”

  “Is that so?”

  He frees a hand to gather up my hair and coils it up into a knot.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing,”

  His hot breath saturates the air with the sweet stench of booze and cigar smoke, and the stubble around his lips, like fine sandpaper, scrapes my skin as his mouth moves down to make a necklace of kisses at the nape of my neck.

  “Don’t, Ramey.”

  “Tell me you like it.”

  “No. I don’t like it. Let me go.”

  He releases my knotted hair and trails his fingers down the length of my spine.

  “Your body tells me a different story—your skin is on fire.”

  “Where is Ruth?”

  “Passed out. She won’t wake up.”

  He rides his hand up the back of my T-shirt.

  “I told you... I don’t want you.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t believe it. It’s not what I see in your eyes when you look at me, and it’s not what I feel when you move close. So, let’s check to make sure,” he says, and slides his hand beneath the waistband of my shorts.

  I tense, arch backward and buck against him.

  “You’re not getting away from me.” He roughly covers my mouth and firmly pins me to the wall.

  “Stop playing games with me, Alexandra. It’s what you want. You’ve been sending me signals since you arrived—and don’t deny it. I won’t take you against your will, so you’re going to have to ask me for it.”

  Baring my teeth, I gouge into the flesh of his palm.

  He tightens his grasp on my mouth.

  “Now that feels better, doesn’t it?”

  I gasp for air and my muscles tense in wild anticipation.

  “Settle down and relax. I’ll do all the work.”

  My hair and skin are dripping wet, soaked with the salty glue of our combined sweat.

  “It’s your choice. I won’t take you against your will. Tell me you want me. Say it, Baby.”

  The playfulness lacing his crude seduction infuriates me.

  “Open up, spread your wings and fly with me.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Say, ‘I want you to take me’.”

  “Release me.”

  Radiance enfolds me.

  “We’ll be one forever.”

  “Free me.”

  I rise out of my body, soaring...

  “Say, ‘I want to be one with you.’”

  The voice is deep and melodic, it beckons, a figure, in the blue haze, shimmering in a crystalline glow. I’m losing myself, disappearing into the void. Lost. Like nothing I have ever experienced. Out of control, spinning at the edge, wanting, but not wanting, careening wildly.

  “I want you to....”

  “Mommy, where are you? Where are you, Mommy?” Sammy turns the corner and appears at the end of the hall as Ramey disappears into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE SACRIFICE

  “ILLUMINATE YOUR POSSIBILITIES, MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE,” says the handsome captain as he leads me down the steel tarmac. My skintight white vinyl spacesuit makes squeaking sounds and towering boots echo through the tubular passageway. He motions for me to enter the hatch and guides me to a reclining chair centered in the spaceship, then buckles leather restraints around my wrists and ankles. “I am going to take you to a place no one has ever been, a new world that will be yours to discover.” There is a thunderous blast and the craft takes off, shaking madly as it gains altitude, working against the force of gravity to break free and soar into the abyss.

  “Even if I die on the flight,” I cry out, “it will be worth the sacrifice, if only to experience this feeling once in a lifetime.” I laugh with the captain as he floats up and away, drifting in a pool of ecstasy to the edge of a dark, starless night, an empty void, to a glimpse of a sparkling oasis, a glorious new frontier!

  A fierce explosion shatters the blessed quest, as the spacecraft blows apart and I am thrust into the oblivion.

  I open my eyes to bare green walls. My arms are cinched in a straight-jacket, legs restrained to a hospital bed’s foot rail and am covered to the chin with a starched white sheet. My parents loom over me. “Oh, my dear God,” my mother says to my father. “Look, she’s finally awakened from her coma.”

  “Alexandra, wake up,” Ruth says. “Sorry to get you up so early, but Matt is on the phone. I’m driving into Montreal with a few of the local women. You can use my car if you’d like to go into St. Agathe. Be sure to try Labat’s for lunch. Also, your attorney wants you to call him back as soon as possible. There is a phone on the desk.”


  I nod in acknowledgement and Ruth retreats upstairs.

  “Fucking irresponsible bitch,” Matt shouts. “Why haven’t you called as you were instructed?”

  “The telephones weren’t working until today and there is no cell reception.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Let me talk to Jonathan.”

  “So you remember you have another son. He got tired of waiting for your call and left with his friends. Put Sammy on the line.”

  I awaken Sam and tell him to take the call, then move to the bathroom to search for the headache medicine packed in my cosmetics bag.

  “Daddy cussed, so I hung up on him, Mom,” Sammy says from outside the door. “The phone rang again and now it’s some man named Mel that needs to talk to you.”

  “Tell him to hold a minute,” I say, and swallow the medication with a glass of water. “Go upstairs and get some breakfast. This might take me a while.” Outside the bathroom, I take a moment to watch him climb the stairs before I pick up the receiver.

  “What is it, Mel?”

  “I have the order. I felt you needed to know the results as soon as possible.”

  “What’s the verdict?”

  “It’s not what we asked for...”

  “How bad?”

  “The judge gave Matt full custody. She feels he has a more stable job and living situation. You have been awarded every other weekend and one weeknight dinner. You must sell the family home immediately; it’s to be put on the market as soon as you return from your trip. Since there’s no equity Matt’s made an offer to take over the payments on the house and move in with his wife. Also, your support has been terminated. I checked with the supervisor of a low-income housing project near your former home, and he says they have a studio you can rent, since you now qualify. But, it’s too small to keep your sons overnight. Once you find a suitable job, the court might be willing to increase your time with your children, or at least allow you to pick them up from school occasionally.”