by Jane Toombs
“Oh, I know what happens when you don’t come back—of course she died. But not to Janny.”
“Janny was—was with Lisa?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Janny thought Daddy would tell her then, teach her all the words, but he just got mad. So she had to go on hiding and listening every time Toivi talked to Daddy. Toivi wanted to learn things from Daddy too, but he told her it was wrong for her, she’d be twisted by knowing. But sometimes Toivi did something to him and he’d tell her, and then Janny would try to remember all she overheard; but Daddy would be sick after and stay in his room.
Sometimes Toivi would go in his bedroom when he was like this, and he would scream at her to get out. “You’re corrupt, you contaminate everything you touch. Oh God, oh God…”
Janny hardly ever saw Daddy but she got to know Aunt Toivi lots better, and Toivi still taught her Finnish. She often didn’t know what the words really meant, in Finn or English either, but she learned them anyway. Janny was driven by the urge to learn all she could. Sometimes she tried to get into the other place with what words she knew, but though once or twice something started to happen, it never really did.
Then the bad time came, when she found the silver chest and played with it until it came open and there was the beautiful shining golden figure of the owl and she held the owl, the kulta pollo, in her hands and looked at the gleam of the metal and all of a sudden the right words were in her mind and she found the way to the other place.
All the paths were dark and she followed one, then another, calling for her mother, but there was no answer, no feeling of Mama, and Janny began to be afraid Mama had died over here, too, because she’d been lost so long. Janny wandered, calling, until she thought maybe she’d be lost forever and started to cry, and then she saw a brightness in the gloom and she went toward it and pushed against the light until she got in.
Janny saw her father. There was Daddy sitting on the big brass bed and drinking out of a glass, the brown stuff with the bad smell. Janny looked around and saw Toivi in the mirror. Toivi’s eyes were wide and frightened, and she realized she was looking out of Toivi’s eyes right along with Toivi. Janny tried to shrink away, get out of Toivi’s head, but she’d forgotten how. She could feel Toivi in there with her. Toivi made the head turn and the voice say words, and Janny had no control at all and scrunched up, shivering. It hurt to be in Toivi’s head. How would she ever get out and back to where she belonged?
After a while she began to listen to the words Toivi was saying.
“Why won’t you show me the silver chest, Arnold? I know Mother gave it to you. I saw her.”
“Sneaking around.” Daddy’s voice was blurry.
“I wanted it more than you. I deserved to get the chest.”
“You couldn’t. You know all about mother to son, father to daughter. Mother had the gift, not Father. The chest, the ability, was mine, not yours. Never yours, Toivi.” Daddy lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. “Never,” he repeated.
Toivi sat on the bed and began stroking Daddy’s head. “Poor Arnold. Poor, tired Arnold. Doesn’t want to tell his own Toivi about the chest.”
Daddy’s eyelids fluttered but his eyes stayed shut. “Tired,” he muttered.
Janny watched in fascination as Toivi started to take off Daddy’s clothes. First his shoes and then his socks and his shirt until he was all naked, and then she undressed herself and lay on the bed with him, and Janny tried not to know what was happening because she didn’t understand and it was scary. But she heard what Daddy said when Toivi asked him the questions, heard the Finnish words and remembered them all. Toivi was learning how to stop blood, Janny would know, too.
“Don’t—it’s not right,” Daddy said now and then in his slurred voice, but Toivi would stroke him with her hands and he would groan and let her, and then Toivi would ask the next question and Daddy would answer.
Janny didn’t like being there despite hearing the Finnish words. She searched for a way back and caught the gleam of gold, what was—oh, the owl, she could see the owl, don’t listen to Toivi, don’t see Daddy, watch the glow, remember how to get back, follow the right path. And then she was all Janny again, in her own room with the chest open in front of her and the golden bird in her hands.
Daddy was sick a long time.
When he came to her room he looked terrible, with red eyes and his face thin and white.
“Janny,” he said.
They looked at each other and Janny had no impulse to run to him as she used to.
“Have you taken the chest?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Get it,” he ordered, and she brought the chest to him.
Then he taught her about the counting. She could already count in Finn, had known how for almost a year, but this counting was different. You looked at the kulta pollo and counted, “Yksi, koksi, kolme, nelja, viisi, kuusi, seitseman…”
And you went into darkness. Not following the paths where Mama got lost, but another kind of dark. Daddy’s voice was there telling Janny to forget, not to remember, and though she practiced remembering the words she had learned, they seemed to get dimmer and dimmer until she couldn’t find them in her head at all. Every time Daddy made her count she forgot more and more until she had difficulty in recalling Mama, and she tried to hide from her father.
Toivi still talked about the Finnish myths and told her the old stories, but Janny had trouble now remembering what the Finn words meant, and Toivi got mad at Daddy again and then one day she was gone.
“Do you have the chest again?” Daddy asked, and when Janny said no he yelled at her, but he never found it again after Aunt Toivi left.
Janny was aware of the voice, not Daddy’s, and she concentrated so she would understand the words.
“What happened then?”
“Well, then we went a long ways away, to another town, and Daddy met Helen. And one time I went into his room at night because I was lonely with Toivi gone and living in a strange place. Helen was there with Daddy, and I said, ‘Is Helen going to take off all your clothes, too, like Aunt Toivi?’ and Daddy took me back to my room and we counted in Finn and he told me I would forget everything, he wouldn’t have me corrupted, I would never remember, and I fell asleep and when I saw Helen at breakfast the next morning I didn’t even know who she was, and Daddy got mad and then afraid, but he didn’t say I could remember, and so I haven’t until you made me.”
“And do you remember Janella as well as Janny?”
The golden light grew stronger and lit up more of the darkness. A fluttering grew within her and she put a hand to her head. Who are you? she asked it, not speaking aloud, but it could only whimper and whine like Arnie.
“I’m Janella,” she said.
“Yes,” said the voice, closer now.
“I’m Janella and someone has put part of Arnie into me, or he has come because there was no other refuge and he was lost.”
“You moved your arm, Janella,” the voice said.
Of course she had. She sat up. “I must bring this part of Arnie back to him,” she said. “It doesn’t belong with me.”
“Janella!” the voice said loudly. “Wake up.”
And she was sitting on Lucien’s bed with his arm around her, supporting her. “You’re all right,” he said positively.
“Toivi did this to Arnie,” she said. “That’s why I couldn’t move. Toivi has the silver chest and she has learned how to use the owl.”
Lucien shook his head. “Toivi—” he began before the terrible shriek from upstairs brought both of them to their feet.
Chapter Twenty-One
Janella and Lucien ran for the stairs together. He shot out ahead of her, and by the time she reached Toivi’s room he was kneeling by his wife, who lay crumpled on the floor, crying and moaning. Janella looked in the crib for Arnie, then searched Toivi’s disordered bed frantically.
“Arnie’s here with her,” Lucien said, and Janella hurried to kneel alongs
ide Lucien.
Arnie didn’t move, and as Janella reached a tentative hand to his chest she felt a last flutter of motion within herself and then the inner grayness was gone. No use to try heroic resuscitation methods, the heartbeat would not return. She knew before she lifted the rigid little body into the crib that Arnie was dead. She smoothed the thin dark hair on his scalp.
“Too late, I’ve always been too late for you, Arnie. I’m sorry, but it’s no good to be sorry, that’s like being too late.” The words tumbled from her. “You knew me there in the dark, knew I was your sister, and came to me, and I failed you as I always have.” She lowered her head.
When she looked up, Lucien had put Toivi on her bed, and they both stared at her. Toivi’s eyes were queer, something was wrong, yes, the pupils had shrunk down to mere dots so the brown iris could be seen.
“What have you remembered?” Toivi whispered. “You’re different, changed.”
Janella nodded. “I know you found the path by using Arnie. And so he’s dead. You must have been aware he’d never find a way back—why couldn’t you let him stay? Why drive him out of his own body?”
“I couldn’t,” Toivi moaned. “I didn’t know how. You wouldn’t let me in and he—I thought he was empty, so what did it matter?”
Janella looked at her aunt, feeling the guilt rise within her own mind. She hadn’t thought of Arnie as a person either—easier to think of him as being empty. Why blame Toivi? Yet her aunt was wrong to use him.
“You shouldn’t have gone in without consent.”
“You did once,” her aunt countered, pulling herself up on the pillows. “I’ve never forgotten.”
“I was a child and you let me stay. You could have driven me out easily.” Janella’s hands clenched into fists and she took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. “You wanted me to be in that room and watch you degrade my father. Just as he said—you have a talent for corruption. You let me stay in your mind and watch.”
“Then you’ve remembered everything, haven’t you?” Toivi demanded, struggling to sit up. “I helped you, now you must share with me. I can teach you yet, and together…”
Janella and Lucien spoke together. “No.”
All at once Toivi collapsed, falling back onto the pillows, eyes closed.
Lucien took his wife’s wrist a moment, then let her hand drop. “She’s all right,” he told Janella. “What happened?”
“Toivi went inside Arnie and made him speak and move. I didn’t know, I thought Arnie was doing the moving. I couldn’t understand and I panicked. Then you found me…” Her mind shied away from the horror of not being able to move. “Toivi was responsible. You can’t go in without consent or terrible things may happen.” Janella thought of her mother and wondered if that was why she died.
Lucien’s face was haggard with fatigue. “My fault. I knew Toivi still wanted power though she’d promised me to stop taking any drugs. After Chris I made her promise.” He gestured at the table full of bottles and vials. “Toivi said they expanded her mind, helped her to go farther, magnified what powers she had. And poor Chris…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I should have known Toivi had no intention of keeping any promise—she never has kept any. And who was I to stop her from trying to increase her power? After all, I—that’s what attracted me to her in the beginning. I was selfish; I wanted to use her.”
Janella thought of Lucien at the piano in the Villa Montezuma, Lucifer invoking his “complicated monsters.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s right, but I know Toivi’s way is wrong.”
“And now your brother is dead. I feel I’m entirely to blame. I thought I was being helpful to both you and Toivi by bringing Arnie here, but I see it was my own selfishness again.” He came to Janella and touched her face with his fingertip. “And you’ll go, so I’ve lost you after all.”
Janella longed to close her eyes and step into his arms, be protected, comforted. But, no, Lucien was another of those who wasn’t to be trusted, the men who wanted something from her. They didn’t really want her, Janella. With Curtis—sex. Red needed information. And Lucien? Didn’t he want to use the part of her that had power, shape the power to his own ends?
She turned away from him to face her dead brother. “How can I ever tell Helen?” she said.
“Is there a doctor we can call?”
“Helen hasn’t taken him to a doctor in over a year,” Janella said. “I know a pediatrician, but he’s never seen Arnie.”
“No good.” Lucien closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh God,” she thought she heard him say.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“Arnie will be a coroner’s case, too,” he said. “I’ll call the coroner’s office.”
“Is—is Toivi all right?”
Lucien sighed. “She’s as well as she’ll ever be.”
“But her eyes—you said drugs…”
“Last night I thought she’d overdosed.” Lucien shrugged. “I should have realized what she was doing. Instead I left you there in my room helpless while I tried to give her stimulants, bring her back to consciousness. And all the time…”
Janella looked at Toivi. Was she lying there now listening, laughing at them, scheming to get her way when she had the chance again?
“Let’s put Arnie on the bed in my room,” she said suddenly, not able to bear the thought of Arnie’s body left alone with Toivi.
The deputy coroner was a heavy man whose eyes looked out at them from under thick brows, giving him the appearance of frowning constantly.
“Was this child expected to die?” he asked Janella.
“No—well, I should say I don’t know. Helen—my stepmother, Mrs. Maki—didn’t take him to doctors anymore. I don’t remember exactly how long it’s been—well over a year. But Arnie’s always been badly retarded.”
“And you say she’s where?”
Janella cast a pleading glance at Lucien. Her mind felt brittle, as though another question would break it into pieces.
“Mrs. Maki is in San Francisco with her dying sister,” Lucien told the heavy man. “I have several phone numbers she gave us. The doctor, the hospital…”
“Then you haven’t attempted to notify her?”
“No,” Lucien said. “We—I called your office first.”
Helen would be lost, Janella thought. She had nothing without Arnie. There was no one but the sister with cancer and Arnie. Dying and dead. “She’ll be terribly upset,” Janella said aloud. “I hate to tell her.”
But when Helen was finally on the phone she reacted far better than Janella had imagined. “There’s no purpose in rushing back,” she said, voice choked with tears. “Mildred needs me, my being here means so much to both of us. My poor baby is beyond need.”
“Oh, Helen, I’m so sorry,” Janella said, crying herself.
“Have your uncle help you with the arrangements for cremation,” Helen went on, and Janella remembered how practical her stepmother had always been. “I’ll see to the interment when I can come back, when Mildred…” her voice broke, and Janella handed the phone to Lucien so he could explain about the coroner.
Afterwards she sat on alone in Lucien’s office, reluctant to go out and perhaps have to see them take Arnie down the stairs, out to the waiting… A phrase she had read somewhere edged into her mind: “black remover’s van.” First for Akki, now for Arnie. Who would be next? No, stop it. Akki was old, and you know how Arnie died. He wouldn’t have died except for his abnormalities, wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t brought him to Toivi.
Doom, Akki had said. Death for us all. The snake and the chips. Had Toivi taken the chips into Akki’s room and played the kantele to the snake? Were the pictures in the gallery, Eve and the snake, Toivi’s choice? Toivi the corrupter? Or had Lucien chosen them, brought Chris, the mysterious Chris, in the room to view the paintings with him? And then what had happened to her? Toivi, jealous, giving her a fatal dose of some drug—heroin, perhaps—so Chris died with her
pupils constricted to dots, dead all this time while Red searched for her?
I don’t want to know, thought Janella. She put her head back against the chair. I won’t think anymore…
A voice was calling her, she knew the voice, must obey…
“Janella, wake up.” Lucien’s hand on her shoulder. She stared at him, dazed.
“I brought some food. Mrs. Barnes is here. Why don’t you have something to eat and then you can go to bed.”
She felt stiff from sleeping in the chair. The coffee smelled good, and she realized she was hungry. “All right,” she said. “But I don’t want to sleep in my room.” She couldn’t be up there with Toivi, didn’t want to see her again. She’d leave when this was over, when she could decently go.
“Use my room,” Lucien told her. “I’ll go to yours.”
Somebody had to check on Toivi, Janella thought. But she was his wife, let him do it. And she’s your aunt, Janella admitted to herself. But I can’t be upstairs near her. I’ll stay down here, with Ruth Barnes next door in the kitchen. She may hate me but she’s not frightening.
Janella curled up on Lucien’s bed. She wouldn’t wonder how Akki died. She wouldn’t think about Lucien. And she’d push away her guilt about Arnie. When she was last on this bed she’d been paralyzed, unable to move… No. Don’t think of that or of Daddy, poor confused Daddy, hanging on to Helen like she had saved his life—maybe she had—but then he left Janny with practical Helen and no memories. He’d never known he fathered a monster. No. No need to think about Arnie like that ever again. Helen called him her poor baby. Poor dead baby. Toivi? A monster of evil. And yet, yet once a young woman, full of fun and laughing. Where had that Toivi gone? What was the lure of this power that distorted people…
Someone was touching her, saying words. Janella awoke with a start and stared blankly into Ruth Barnes’s face. The lights were on in the room—was it evening already?
“Here.” Ruth thrust a paper at her. “Red said to give it to you.”
