The Fog Maiden

by Jane Toombs

  “You’ve remembered something?”

  “I can’t explain why but all of a sudden I understand Finnish. My father taught me, I can recall him doing so. And Toivi, too, I suppose.” But her voice held doubt.

  “You still don’t remember Toivi?”

  Janella shook her head. “But I know Finnish and I think I’ll be able to see a picture of my mother in my mind now—I couldn’t before.”

  “So Toivi made you count yksi, koksi…”

  “Don’t,” she said, putting her hands to her ears. “I’m afraid.”

  He waved at her and she uncovered her ears. “I won’t count. But nothing will happen to you in a hypnotic trance. Toivi can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, nor can I. No one can. You must understand hypnosis. You agree to go into this altered state of consciousness, you put yourself there. In it you won’t perform any act you don’t want to, don’t agree to. Understand?”

  She nodded. “Toivi told me I’d do what she wanted, and I felt this was all right, I wanted to tell her so.”

  He pulled his eyebrows together, frowning. “She shouldn’t ask for agreement. Don’t say yes.”

  “But you said…”

  “What I told you is true. Nevertheless, I’d prefer you didn’t agree to Toivi’s control.”

  “I don’t want to be like that—in a trance—around her again. She scared me.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “Well—I told you my father came. I was cold inside and he was julma—you know, terrible. He made me call Toivi a hiisi—demon. I—I guess I thought she really was and I ran out of the house in a panic.” She grimaced. “I don’t like things like that inside my mind.”

  “What do you mean, your father came?”

  “Into my mind. It got icy cold and he was just there.”

  “Haven’t you read anything on hypnosis, Janella?”

  She shook her head again, feeling inadequate.

  “What’s in your mind, what you ‘see’ in your head during self-hypnosis is a remembering, a reliving of something that did really occur once. Your father only appears to you as he did some other time when you were a child. That’s the only way he can get into your mind. All you did was unearth a childhood memory and relive the scene. I’ll admit it sounds an unlikely memory, but I never met Arnold. He was dead long before I even met Toivi.”

  She stared at Lucien, trying to assimilate all these strange facts.

  “You apparently had quite a traumatic childhood, to have blocked portions out as you have. I wonder…” He paused, and she saw his face change, harden.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I had the thought you may well have been hypnotized often while you were young—children make very good subjects.”

  Janella felt chilly and crossed her arms in front of her body for warmth. She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to think about it.”

  “If you wanted me to, I might try to lead you back and see whether…”

  “No! Can’t you let me be? I don’t want to know.” The feeling rising in her was more than an aversion to reliving the past. Another person stood in her head saying, “No, no, you cannot, you must not.” “No,” she repeated, her voice becoming shrill. “I don’t want to see demons.”

  “I’m sorry to upset you. But I’ve told you—any demons you invoke are your own. We won’t discuss hypnosis any further at present, Janella.” Lucien rose from his chair and she got up, too. “Why don’t you rest until supper?” he asked. “I’m afraid this has been a bad day for you. I had hoped…” He shrugged and opened the door for her. “Won’t you try to know Toivi a little better before you make up your mind about her? I’ll talk to her; I’m sure she hasn’t realized how frightening this has been for you.”

  Janella didn’t speak, and he touched her arm. “Won’t you stay with us for a week, at least?” There was no smile with his words, and she thought he looked haunted. Lucifer in the Doré illustration, brooding on the rock, exiled to earth.

  She smiled, hoping to evoke a response. “I’ll try,” she assured him. But walking down the hall by herself she was depressed. Had she been wrong in promising to stay? Would she be of any use to her aunt or was she remaining here only because Lucien wanted her to?

  He’d told her to rest, but her bedroom lacked appeal. Maybe she could find something to read in the living room, words to stave off thinking until supper. Janella started to enter the living room but hesitated. Someone was there. Toivi? She didn’t want to see her aunt just yet. But the figure was not dressed in white. Small, hunched over, it moved slowly toward her as she stared.

  Black. All black, even the head shawl, the huivi. The dress—robe?—fell in folds to the floor, and the woman cradled something in her arms, the object covered by the ends of the shawl. Akki. Janella searched her mind for the Finnish word that meant hello, but Akki spoke first, stopping directly in front of her. The old woman gazed into her eyes. “Noita,” she muttered, bowed her head and began a chant.

  Janella stood transfixed as the words swarmed about her like hostile insects. She knew some, could translate enough to catch the tenor of the invocation. No, she thought, not an invocation at all—an exorcism, a sending away.

  “…go evil, there is no place

  no place here for you, strange monster

  …if you need a place

  set out along the road of the wind

  the cold spring wind, the chill air

  …go to your home in demon’s wood

  evil of the earth, be gone…”

  The black figure sidled past her, eyes averted, and made for the stairs. Janella watched her disappear, then clasped her arms to herself. Me, old Akki means me, she thought, shocked. She believes I’m an evil monster, a noita. What was noita exactly? A wizard, Toivi said. Most of them were men in the stories Daddy told. They could do all sorts of tricks, supernatural stunts. Sometimes funny. Not evil, the noitas she knew from Daddy. But old Louhi wasn’t funny. She was a witch, witch woman of the North. Were female noitas witches? Did Akki really think she, Janella, was a witch?

  Involuntarily she gave a snort of laughter, and a moment later was laughing helplessly, then crying, sobbing, until she staggered to the nearest chair and slumped onto it. Finally, exhausted, she fumbled in the pocket of her tunic top and found Lucien’s handkerchief. I’m being hysterical, she told herself. Silly to let an old woman psych me out. But it wasn’t just Akki. There was Lucien with his illicit kiss and Aunt Toivi making her afraid, and now Akki trying to exorcise her as though she were a demon.

  Janella sat up and took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. I’ve wandered into a strange story, she told herself, one I don’t understand. Maybe I don’t belong in this story, but I’m in it and have to either get out or try to find where I fit into the plot. But her mind was fuzzy, projecting blurred images of the day, and she got up slowly. Best to go to her bedroom, she was tired, so tired…

  The last thought in her mind as she fell across her bed was that the fireplace in the living room had been empty, the bundle of chips gone.

  She was a chip herself, tossed back and forth in a turbulent river, no way to control the wild ride. Now on top, now under the dark, choking water, shaken… Janella opened her eyes and stared into Ruth’s face.

  “Oh,” she gasped, struggling to pull away from the older woman’s hand on her shoulder.

  Ruth stood back. “I’m sorry to wake you up. I had to shake you, you were sleeping so hard. Listen—someone wants to talk to you on the phone. I answered it in the kitchen—you’ll have to come down there.”

  “Is there only one phone?” Janella asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  “He’s got one in his bedroom. Mr. DuBois. But I reckon you’d rather talk in the kitchen.” She gave Janella a sly look.

  Janella got up hurriedly. “Yes, of course,” she said, determined to show no reaction to Ruth’s insinuation. Had Lucien made love to the other young women? Did Ruth now believe Janella was
the newest in his series?

  “Who’s on the phone?” she asked.

  “That’s what I meant,” Ruth said. “It’s a man on the phone for you.”

  “Hey—I want to talk to you,” the voice said in her ear after she murmured hello into the mouthpiece.

  “What?” she asked, confused. “Who is this?”

  “Hey, baby, you know.”

  And she did. Red. “Look,” she told him, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “You’d better,” he said. “There’s a few things you ought to know and there isn’t anyone in that house who’s about to tell you. I’ll be out by the road tonight around eight. See you.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ruth Barnes’s eyes were full of curiosity when Janella put the phone down. “That your boyfriend?” she asked.

  Janella shook her head. She felt stale and logy from her unaccustomed afternoon nap. The lights were on in the kitchen, the window looked out on semi-darkness. “Do I have time for a shower before supper?” she inquired.

  Ruth turned back to the stove. “A quick one, I guess—sure.”

  “Thanks for your trouble.”

  “You’re welcome,” Ruth said without turning, and Janella left the kitchen thinking there was no cause for Ruth to be huffy—everyone had private matters they didn’t care to discuss. The phone call was none of Ruth’s business.

  After showering, Janella eyed her discarded clothes with disfavor. She took a long dress from the closet, an unbleached muslin with fantastic embroidery she’d bought in Tijuana last year when she’d gone down on the bus. The dress had never been worn—there hadn’t been an occasion to fit—but now she felt like wearing it. The fuchsias and corals of the embroidered flowers seemed to hold the hot Mexican sun.

  She left her room hoping Aunt Toivi was already downstairs, but at the same time she knew she must knock at her aunt’s door and see if her help was needed. Reluctantly she crossed the hall. No answer. She waited a moment then shrugged and went downstairs.

  It was an anticlimax being the only one at the table. “Where is everyone?” she asked Ruth.

  “Mrs. takes a tray up in her room most nights—the old one comes for the food. And he—well, he knows it’s time to eat.”

  “Should I wait?” Janella wondered.

  “Sometimes he don’t come at all, sometimes later. I always leave the food on the table till it gets cold, just in case. If I were you I’d go ahead and eat.”

  Ruth was a good cook. A shame this has to be wasted, Janella thought, cutting a tender lamb chop. After she had finished she felt wasted, too, in her new Mexican dress. She picked up her dirty dishes and brought them out to the kitchen.

  “No call to do that,” Ruth scolded. “I get paid for it.” She examined Janella critically. “All dressed up—going somewhere?”

  Janella shook her head but Ruth persisted. “The other, that Chris, liked to dress up, too.”

  “The last girl who was here?”

  “Yeah—before she disappeared.”

  Janella’s eyes widened. “What do you mean—disappeared?”

  Ruth turned her back, busying her hands among the pans on the sink counter. “Well, she’s gone anyway. I expect you’ll hear about her from him. I got to get these dishes done so I can leave.” She bent over the sink, clearly through with the conversation.

  But Ruth brought the girl into the conversation to begin with, Janella mused as she wandered into the living room. What was she trying to convey—was there some mystery about Chris?

  The living room was empty. Janella picked up a book of poetry laying on an end table. Sylvia Plath. A dead poet. Sitting down, she opened the slim volume, but the scream of desperation in the lines repelled her even as she felt the fascination of the imagery. No, tonight was not the time for this poetry. There had been enough strangeness in the day without Sylvia Plath.

  Janella got up and peeked into the dining room. Food still sat on the table, but Lucien hadn’t appeared. Standing irresolutely in the entry, she heard the music begin again—the same mournful wisps of sound drifting down the stairs. Again she couldn’t identify the instrument. She didn’t want to climb up into the sadness, have it pursue her into her bedroom. On impulse she turned to the closet and took out her coat. She’d walk a little in the fresh air and then maybe be ready to sleep.

  The voice caught her before she had quite descended the outside stairs. “You’re late.”

  She made a small noise in her throat, an aborted scream.

  He stepped closer and she could see his beard in the dim lighting. “I got tired of waiting by the road and walked up. Figured I could see him before he saw me, if necessary.”

  “But I…” she began. He reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Come on. My bike’s down there by the road. We can quit this scene right now.”

  She tried to pull away. “Look, Red, I didn’t plan to meet you. I just…”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? Come on.” He pulled her down the drive toward the road.

  This is ridiculous, she thought, finally freeing herself from his grip.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t even know who you are. I’m not going anyplace with you.”

  “I figured we could talk better away from here.”

  They were standing in darkness, so she could only sense him looming over her. “Why doesn’t Mr. DuBois want you around?”

  “I knew Chris.” His voice sounded odd as he spoke, and she wished she could see his face.

  “She was my aunt’s companion before I came?”

  There was a pause. “You might say that.”

  Janella tightened her lips. She was sick and tired of insinuations. “Just what do you mean?” she demanded.

  “Look, baby, to you Lucien DuBois may be king of the hill, but you’d better know you’re not the first chick he’s gotten up here to make out with.”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “Correction—his wife is your aunt.”

  Janella was furious with Red. “I’m not a chick, and I don’t know what Uncle Lucien had in the way of relationships with any other young women, but I’m here to look after Aunt Toivi.”

  “Oh, come off it.”

  What was she doing here in the dark listening to a stranger? “I’m going in,” she said coldly.

  He caught at her arm and she stiffened. “Look, no way do I want to make you mad.”

  “Then let me go, please.”

  Instead, he pulled her closer and she felt his beard against her face. His lips were warm and hard on hers. “I’ll come by every night,” he said as he released her. “Come out if you need me.”

  Then he was gone. Janella stood still for a moment before she whirled and hurried back to the house. Need him? she thought in anger. Never. Who did he think he was?

  But as she shed her coat in the entry she was beginning to remember the rest of his words. What had happened to Chris anyway, this mysterious other girl? Why did they all find it necessary to hint about Chris and Lucien? Was what they said true? Color rose in Janella’s face as she thought of Lucien’s lips brushing hers.

  Suddenly there was a hand on her arm. She jerked away.

  “Oh!”

  “I didn’t mean to give you a fright—you’ve had enough of that today.”

  Lucien.

  “I—I’ve been out for a walk,” she told him, feeling absurdly guilty as she said the words. “I was just going to bed. Do you—does Aunt Toivi need me?”

  “No, she’s resting. I was going to ask if you’d do something for me, but if you’re tired…”

  She hesitated, one foot on the stairs. She wasn’t tired, not at all. But perhaps it would be wise to avoid being alone with Lucien. She looked around at him, saw the disappointment in his face and was lost.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Come into the living room.” He held out his hand but she pretended not to see it. He turned away, walking ahead of
her, and she followed. “Sit here.” He indicated a round chair near the piano. “I’m sure Mrs. Grant’s dress wasn’t used to upholster this.”

  She smiled and sat down. Lucien went to the piano.

  “Watch as I play. Watch and tell me if you see shadows.”

  The music began before she could protest, the melody she had first heard in the Tower of Villa Montezuma. Again she listened to the plaintive notes and could almost see the rain slanting down against the twelve Tower windows. She’d been thinking then that she was someone who belonged to no one, had no place of her own.

  And it was true. She was here, a guest again in somebody else’s home. Toivi was her father’s sister, but she wasn’t going to be a friend, and Lucien, who could be a friend, belonged to Toivi.

  Janella looked at him, seeing his profile from where she sat. He was playing with his eyes closed, his fingers seeming to caress the piano keys. But there were no shadows here on the hill. The lights of the city gleamed below, each small glow separate from the others. Lonely, the lights said, too. Everyone is alone.

  The melancholy music filled her mind with sadness. She thought of Arnie and wondered if he had enough awareness to feel trapped in the prison of his deformities. No, she told herself, he doesn’t know, he’s never felt pain or loneliness or love. But neither had she felt love…

  Love, the music insisted. Love me, lonely one, come to me. Janella stared at Lucien’s profile. I can’t, she said silently. It’s wrong. But her lips parted and she leaned forward, drawn against her will. Then the notes faltered and she saw Lucien drop his hands from the keys. He sat with his head down for a few moments, then turned the piano stool so he faced her.

  “It wasn’t any good, I could tell. I don’t even have to ask if you saw the shadows that gather in the Shephard house. I can’t evoke them here. We’ll have to go there.”

  Janella shook her head in bewilderment. Hadn’t he been calling to her with the music, asking her for love?

  “You welcome with me when I go?”

  “Go?”

  “To Jesse Shephard’s house. I need you there, to watch, to help.” He gestured at the piano. “I’ve asked Toivi but she doesn’t have the feeling for music I once thought she had.”