by Dean Koontz
"Just the wind," Harold told her. He pointed past the edge of the umbrella at the eaves of the mansion. "If the wind comes too fast from the south, it whistles in the eaves. It can keep you awake nights. Fortunately, the wind hardly ever blows this way."
The explanation should have quieted her nerves, but it did not. That cry seemed too filled with emotion to be made by something inanimate. Suddenly, she remembered things that she should have asked Richard. Why had he been late? Why did Catherine, the waitress, fear him so? What was this curse that Aunt Cora talked about and which he called a "psychiatric problem"?
Lightning threw the front of the house into strange shadows; thunder shook the many windows.
Again, the wind moaned horribly in the eaves.
That uncontrollable fear of the unknown and the unexpected rose in Jenny. She thought of her mother and father, of Grandmother Brighton. She wished, oh so very much, that she had found something else to occupy her summer. But she realized there was no backing out now.
She went with Harold into that bleak and foreboding house...
* * *
2
If the exterior of the house had been foreboding, the interior made up for that. It was warm and comfortable with an air of well-being that could very nearly be touched. The walls of the entry foyer were richly papered in a gold and white antique print. The closet doors were heavy, dark oak. The few pieces of furniture were all heavy pine styled in a rustic, colonial mode that bespoke usefulness and sensibility. In such a house, one could feel protected, shielded, away from the cares of the rest of the world. The moan of the wind in the eaves was distant and unfrightening.
Yet, even as she gave less thought to the fears that had bothered her only moments ago, Jenny wondered if this were not a false sense of security that prevailed in the house. At times, you had to be careful, cautious. Just when you turned your back on some danger, smug in your certainty of safety, it might spring up anew and attack you when you least expected it.
A car on a rain-slicked highway...
A burst blood vessel in an old woman's brain...
She shivered.
"Cold?" Harold asked as he took her coat and hung it in the closet.
"A little."
"A touch of brandy should clear that up," he said. "Would you like a drop or two in your coffee?"
Under normal circumstances, Jenny did not approve of liquor. She felt that it was a crutch against the burdens of the world. But at this moment, she could see little harm in giving in to Harold's suggestion. She really was quite cold and nervous. She nodded her consent.
"Good," Harold said, slipping his own coat into the closet. "Your aunt should be in the drawing room. Straight down this corridor, on your left through the curtained arch. If you will excuse me, I'll take the back hall to the kitchen and get the coffee ready. You look positively chilled to the bone!"
He left her standing there, alone in the house for the first time. Abruptly, the front door opened behind her, admitting the throbbing moan of the wind in the eaves and the hiss of rain drumming the driveway. Richard fought inside with the umbrella and the suitcase, set the bag down.
"One more," he said.
"I should have helped you with those!"
"I've got my bumbershoot," he said.
"And it isn't doing you a bit of good."
"You hurry along to Cora. She'll be waiting for vou"
He plunged back into the downpour. The rain slashed under the rim of his umbrella and soaked his clothes.
She supposed there was nothing she could do for him. She turned and followed the corridor, fascinated by the rich oil paintings hung against the polished mahogany paneling. The frames alone were more expensive than the framed lithographs she had been used to in her own home as a child.
Cora's family had warned her against the marriage. They had been as opposed to her marrying to a higher station in life as many families might have been against a girl marrying beneath herself. The Brightons had a fierce pride and a stubborn insistence that a Brighton should earn his way and not marry or inherit wealth. Fortunately, Aunt Cora had followed the dictates of her own heart and had ignored them all.
The marriage had been happy. Alex and Cora Brucker behaved like newlyweds throughout the years, right up until his death two years before. Money was never a problem. Neither was his business, for he had inherited it when it was running smoothly and needed to spend only one or two days a week attending to the larger details. Richard presented no source of conflict for his step-mother. Though not of Cora's blood, he was always polite to her, obedient, free with his love. He remained their only child, and the years passed un-marred.
Engaged in such thoughts, she came to the archway into the drawing room before she realized it. Aunt Cora was placing a silver tray of sandwiches and chips upon a low cocktail table, engrossed in making the decorative garnish as well-placed as possible. Behind her, on a deep green sofa, two blonde-haired and blue-eyed children sat. Though one was a boy and one a girl, they were quite obviously twins. They saw her in the doorway and stared at her. They did not smile or speak, but watched her cautiously.
Like shy children, she told herself.
Yet she couldn't stop wondering if their silence and their inspection of her were more than that.
But what?
Neither Freya nor Frank looked like a child who was supposedly under the sinister influence of some mysterious family curse-nor like a child with deep psychological problems. They were healthy, tending toward chubbiness, with eyes that were quick and alert and almost too blue to be real. She smiled at them to show her own desire to make friends.
Neither child returned her smile.
In that instant, Cora caught sight of her and stood abruptly erect, startled. She was a lovely woman who looked a decade younger than her fifty-one years. Her dark hair was tinted with gray that she chose not to conceal with some artificial rinse. There were no wrinkles in her face, no weariness of age in her eyes. She took three quick steps from the table and embraced her niece.
For the first time in months, Jenny felt as if she were safe. Here were arms to encircle her and someone to love and be loved by. Since Grandmother Brighton's death, the world had seemed more and more inhospitable as time went by. She had the silly, impossible wish never to have to leave the Brucker Estate again.
Richard joined them when he had changed to dry clothes, and they had a delightful mid-afternoon tea with cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, wedges of cheese, crackers and potato chips. Frank and Freya, the twins, seemed to come out of their cocoons somewhat, offered a few words of response to questions she asked them. They even smiled once or twice. She decided that their original coolness was more the result of their training in manners and behavior than it was any conscious effort to make her feel ill at ease.
At last, shortly after four o'clock, Cora said, "But we're being very rude to you, dear. You've had a long bus ride. You'll want a bath and a few hours of rest before supper. Harold serves us at seven-thirty in the small family room just a few steps further down the corridor." She turned to Richard. "Have you put her bags upstairs?"
"In the blue room, Cora," he said, finishing his tea.
"Come along then, Jenny," Cora said. "I'll show you where you'll be spending these summer nights."
As they walked up the long, central staircase from the entrance foyer, Jenny began to notice, for the first time, the barely checked case of bad nerves in her aunt. Cora played with her long, dark hair as she walked, winding strands of it in her fingers, releasing those strands, winding others. She spoke too quickly, with a nervous, forced gaiety that could no longer be attributed to her seeing her niece for the first time since Grandmother Brighton's funeral.
Too, for the first time since she had entered the house, Jenny was aware of the storm again. It banged on the slate roof. It pattered rain against the windows. Flickers of lightning played through the glass and danced on the dark steps for brief, unpleasant moments.
&nbs
p; "We'll do some riding this summer," Cora said as they topped the stairs and left them for the second floor corridor. "Do you like horses?"
"I've ridden them once or twice," Jenny said. "But you'll make me look like a city slicker in the saddle."
"Richard is marvelous with horses," Cora said. "He can teach you what you don't know. He handles the family business, but it leaves him a great deal of spare time."
At the end of the corridor, Cora opened a heavy, dark-stained pecan door which had been hand-carved with the forms of dragons and elves. It might once have been destined to be a child's room. It was large, airy, with two windows curtained with umber velvet. The bed was large, spread over with a white satin quilt. There were two dressers, a full-length mirror, a night-stand and two bookcases half filled with various kinds of books, from classic to modern fiction.
Her bags waited on a bellboy stand, their tops open, their contents on display. Perhaps it had only been polite of Richard to open the cases so that they could air while waiting for her attention. Just the same, she did not like the idea of his taking such a liberty.
Cora did not seem to notice.
Am I being too stuffy? Jenny wondered. Why am I acting as if I have something to fear from my own loved ones?
She vowed, to herself, to try to be a little less suspicious of people who only wished to help her.
"You have a private bath there, through that door," Cora said. She was winding a coil of dark hair around her index finger, smiling but not smiling.
"It's all so wonderful!" Jenny said, meaning it. She was unaccustomed to such luxury.
Cora stopped fiddling with her hair and took both of Jenny's hands. The woman's grasp was dry and warm. "I'm so very happy that you came here, Jenny," she said.
"So am I, Aunt Cora."
"No, no, you don't understand," Cora said, her voice very earnest now. She lead the young girl to the bed, and they both sat on the edge of the thick mattress, not letting go of each other's hands. "I'm not just making pleasant conversation," Cora said. "I really am glad you came. Richard and Harold and Anna, that's Harold's wife, are good company. I do a lot of charity work in town. I take vacations. But Alex has only been dead two years. There is still a lot of tune to fill in a day."
She stopped speaking, stared for a moment, as if looking beyond the veil of this reality into the spirit world where she might find some way to touch her dead husband.
Jenny waited.
At last, she said, "You really loved him, didn't you?"
Cora seemed reluctant to leave her trance, but she said, "Yes. I know the family was always doubtful about the marriage. But it was perfect." She came fully alive then. "I hope you are as lucky one day, Jenny. I hope you meet someone like Alex." She squeezed her niece's hands, let go of them. "But let's not get maudlin, huh?"
Jenny laughed. "I was prepared for anything. A waitress at the bus terminal warned me about the curse."
Cora stopped smiling altogether. Jenny fancied that the woman's face abruptly became an ashen gray, though such a rapid change in color could only be imaginary.
"You've heard, then. You know it all."
Jenny felt cold again. The effect of the brandy had worn off. "Not all, Aunt Cora. Just bits and pieces. Richard was starting to explain the situation to me on the way up, but he didn't get to finish it."
Cora rose from the bed and walked to the south window of the room, watched the rain sheeting across the green lawn, misting among the trees like tangled webs of hair. Her fingers played on the glass, drawing senseless patterns and leaving trails of quickly evaporating dampness. For a brief moment, it was as if she were a prisoner in her own home, longing for the freedom of the world beyond.
She turned back to Jenny. "Whatever Richard told you, it was colored by his optimism."
"It was?"
Cora nodded. "He told you the problem was a psychiatric one, didn't he? He told you that Freya needed psychiatric care?"
Jenny nodded. "And he said you disagree with him. You think it's some family curse."
"I don't think so. I know that it is."
Jenny said nothing. She could remember the dream on the bus, and she could hear voices, deep inside her, telling her to run, to escape that rambling, dark house for the lights of town.
A particularly vicious clap of thunder slammed against the house as if the mansion could be lifted from its foundation by the sheer volume of the storm.
Cora was silhouetted by the lightning, a yellow halo bursting from her hair, her face momentarily lost in the contrasting purple shadows. In her long, green lounging robe, standing there with the dominant blue color scheme of the room about her, she reminded Jenny of some dead-but-risen heroine in an Edgar Allan Poe story.
Then the lightning was gone, the booming thunder muted and the eerie effect lost. Aunt Cora was merely Aunt Cora and nothing more.
"I read a great deal," Cora said. She seemed to be talking to herself as much as to Jenny. "There were many books in the mansion when I came, and I devoured them, reading what classics I had never before had time for when I was a single, working girl. I read the non-fiction as well. Somewhere in the previous generations of Bruckers who lived in this house, someone had more than a passing interest in witchcraft and demonology. There are many books on the subject, distributed on shelves throughout the house. Surely there are a few of them right there, in your own bookcase."
Jenny turned to look at the shelves.
Two blood-red bindings stood out. Embossed on each spine was the title of the two-volume set: BLACK MAGIC IN AMERICA.
"In my readings, I came across two volumes published locally in the middle of the last century. Publishing was a much different proposition then, and the economic situation made it feasible for regional publishers to sell and prosper on titles of little interest to anyone beyond a few hundred miles from their home plant. Both these volumes had been published hi Philadelphia. One was entitled Warlocks and Witches of Pennsylvania; the other was Cursed Be the Wealthy"
She paused, and Jenny did not feel that it was her duty to urge the older woman on. Rain on the windows, thunder on the roof, lightning against the glass all filled the silent moments until Cora continued her story.
"According to those books, Sarah Maryanna Brucker, Alex's great-great-great-aunt, left home in 1849, at the age of seventeen, to travel with a band of gypsies who earned their living performing in a circus of moderate size. Her family did everything they could to trace her, to no avail. She was lost to them. Until 1860, eleven years later, when she returned home with a child. She wished to be taken back into the family, to give her baby the Brucker name. It was a swarthy, dark-eyed, sharp-featured child of four, obviously part European in its heritage. Sarah's mother had died in her absence. Her father, embittered by his daughter's foolishness eleven years before, blaming his wife's death on a broken heart caused by the daughter, refused to allow her in the house."
Thunder. Rain. The blood-red bindings of the books on the shelf directly across from the foot of the bed. The creak of floorboards.
Cora continued:
"That night, Sarah Brucker returned to the mansion, this house, and built a fire on the grounds. At that time, there were a few tenant-farming Negroes living in lesser houses among the trees. When Sarah began chanting gypsy phrases into the fire, her eyes never leaving the house, her father ordered the blacks to remove her. None of them dared. At last, as she finished her curse in English, her father could no longer tolerate the display. He physically removed her from his property, along with the frightened child that was his grandson."
"He sounds like a cruel man," Jenny said. "She made a mistake, of course. But she was still his daughter."
"The books say that he was eccentric and that neighbors considered him perhaps a little mad. He had always been a cold, aloof man. When his daughter ran away and his wife died shortly after, he became even colder, harsher, more withdrawn. His servants ran all his messages and did all his errands. He rarely left the house. W
hen Sarah returned, toting a child born of a gypsy father, it was the ultimate disgrace, the ultimate tragedy, the straw that broke his back. He seems the sort of man who never learned much forgiveness, and he was not about to change his personality at that point."
"And what exactly was the curse?" Jenny asked. She felt as if she wanted to get in the bed she sat on, pull the covers over her head and make herself a warm nest. Her hands were so cold that they looked like white porcelain.
"Sarah pledged that every generation of the Brucker family would contain a child haunted, a child possessed, a demon child as she called it. This child would seek the wolfbane, would howl at the full moon and find a craving for blood."
"A werewolf? Why, that's silly!" But she did not feel much like laughing at her aunt.
"That night, after Sarah was permanently dispatched from Brucker land, her father died."
The air in the blue room seemed terribly stuffy. Jenny wanted to open one of the windows. But she knew that would only let the rain and the thunder in, and they were worse than stale air.
"How-how did he die?" Jenny asked.
"In those days, medicine was not as good as now. It is simply recorded that he could not get his breath. That he fell to the floor, gasping as if he could not fill his lungs. He grabbed at his own neck, as if seeking invisible hands that were slowly strangling him, and he clawed his own flesh until he drew blood. But none of it helped him. His face mottled. His eyes bulged. And then he died."
Voices drifted up from downstairs. It was the sound of the twins engaged in some game or other. They were laughing brightly.
"It could have been a heart attack," Jenny said, "or a stroke." She remembered Grandmother Brighton.
"Perhaps."
"But you don't think so?"
"The doctor who examined the corpse described the dead man's neck by saying that it looked as if he had been attacked by some animal, though none of the wounds were deep enough to cause death."
"He clawed himself, you said."
"Perhaps he did."
