by Karen White
The asphalt drive was still dry, the storm behind us but approaching quickly. Ginnette lifted her head, sensing the change in direction and pointed to an unpaved road that led to the right off of the main road. “That way. Follow it through the woods until you reach a fork in the road, and go right. If you go left, you’ll end up in the old family cemetery.”
Her voice held a note of panic in it and I glanced at her, only to find her looking past my shoulder, into the darkening woods. I followed her gaze, seeing the fading NO TRESPASSING signs and broken, rusted chains that had once blocked access to the road. “She’s there,” she said quietly.
“Rebecca?”
“Both of them.” Raising her voice, she turned toward the front seat. “Hurry, Jack. You must hurry.”
I listened as the bottom of my car scraped rocks and tree roots, trying not to imagine the repair bills. Within ten minutes of entering the front gates, we emerged into a clearing, the darkness of the woods behind us and the roofless ruins of an old plantation house looming in front of us against the darkening sky. And there, parked under the shelter of a towering oak with a heavy shawl of Spanish moss, was Rebecca’s red Audi convertible.
The distant rumble of thunder reminded us that we needed to hurry. Jack exited the car, then opened the back door. Our eyes met above my mother’s head, and his worried expression mirrored my own thoughts. Gently, he helped her out and as I followed, I sniffed the air.
“Do you smell that?”
Jack and Ginnette turned to me, matching looks of alarm in their eyes.
“It’s smoke. Wood smoke, not burning leaves,” I said.
The three of us turned toward the house. Jack was the first to spring into action. Addressing me and my mother, he said, “Stay here in the car. If I’m not out in ten minutes, use your cell and call 911.”
I wanted to argue with him, and insist that I go in, too, but I was reluctant to leave my mother by herself, knowing that in an emergency she wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough to get out of harm’s way. I nodded my assent, and watched as he jumped over rotting steps to the front porch, then through the gaping hole where a front door had once guarded the entrance. I looked down at my watch, and began to time him.
We resettled ourselves into the backseat of the car, still smelling smoke but not yet seeing any signs of fire. Swallowing heavily, I turned to my mother. “Rose can’t actually hurt anyone, right? I mean, she gave us bruises, but that’s all. Right?”
My mother took my hand and I noticed that she’d removed her gloves. “I need to tell you something, Mellie. Something I probably should have told you long ago.”
I glanced down at my watch. Two minutes.
“About why I left.”
Slowly, I turned my attention to her. I’d waited years for this moment, years of uncertainty, and questions, and hope, and grief, yet now that it was here, I could only feel panic. I’d based my entire life on certain assumptions, and if I suddenly learned that they weren’t true, then where would that leave me?
I couldn’t meet her eyes and instead focused on the trees behind her, and the way the wind tortured the leaves into pulling away from their stems and into the gathering maelstrom.
“Your grandmother, as she lay dying . . .” Her voice broke and she took a moment before continuing. “I was there. She told me . . .”
“That we aren’t as we seem,” I interjected, wanting to interrupt her so she couldn’t tell me what I was afraid she would.
“Yes. But that’s not all.” Gently, she placed her fingertips on my jaw. “Look at me, Mellie, and listen carefully. Your grandmother didn’t trip. She was pushed. By the same spirit that haunts the back stairs today. The spirit that was made stronger when they pulled her remains from the sailboat.”
“Rose,” I whispered.
“Yes.” Her voice was so soft that I had to lean down to hear her over the rising wind. “I was pregnant . . .”
“I don’t want to hear this,” I said, wanting to push her away, to leave the car.
“I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you before. But you need to hear it now. Your fear gets in the way of your strength, Mellie. You need to be strong. We need your strength.”
I closed my eyes, trying the deep calming breaths Sophie had been trying to teach me for years. Then I opened them again, and glanced at my watch. Five minutes.
“Listen to me, Mellie. I had a miscarriage. A baby boy. The trauma of seeing my mother die like that, and Rose’s taunting voice. I—I lost the baby because of her.” She squeezed my hands and made me look at her again. “I didn’t want to lose you, too.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t look away. “But you did. You left.”
“I had to. Don’t you see? You were too young to fight her. She knew that as you grew, you would get stronger. And that if we worked together, we could defeat her. Send her away forever. But she wanted to make us pay for what Meredith did to her, although I didn’t understand her reasons at the time.”
“You could have told me then. I would have understood.” Tears fell on our clasped hands, and I was surprised to see that they were mine.
“You were seven years old, Mellie. You couldn’t have understood. And it would have been cruel for me to make you. We were a beacon for her, the two of us together. Being with you was dangerous—for both of us. But you were more vulnerable.”
“I wasn’t going to stay young forever. I grew up. I grew stronger. You could have come back and we could have fought her together.”
“No.You needed to overcome your fear. We were like a bonfire in the darkness for all spirits. Good and bad. You had your imaginary friends, remember? But there were other spirits in the house you avoided, who made you crawl into bed with me or your grandmother each night. You didn’t recognize that being able to see them and communicate with them gave you power over them. So they took advantage of you, fed on your fear. I couldn’t let that happen with Rose. She killed your grandmother, and my baby. I had to dilute our brightness, until you understood your strength. And I wasn’t going to let her hurt you, no matter how much it hurt me to lose you.” Using her thumbs, she wiped the tears from my cheeks. “I told you that before. Do you remember? That sometimes we have to do the right thing even if it means letting go of the one thing we love most in the world. I wanted you to remember that. Did you?”
I did remember; I remembered lying in my darkened bedroom with my eyes half closed in sleep while she said those words to me. I might even have listened better if I’d known that I wouldn’t see her again for more than three decades. But I closed my eyes and shook my head in denial, trying to cling to everything I’d once known as truth, regardless of how wrong, and stubborn, and irrational I was being. This was the woman I’d taught myself to hate, to forget, to pretend had never been in my life. I’d learned to resist everything I’d ever inherited from her. But she’d just told me that she’d let me go to save my life, and I’d spent that same life hating her, and wanting to be as far away from her as a person could go. Shame settled on me like a bird; I could still function, but every time I’d turn my head I’d see it.
Pulling away, I fumbled for the door latch on the other side of the car and threw myself out onto the gravel and dead leaves. I had to hold on to the door to keep the wind from slamming it shut.The smell of smoke was stronger now, and I could see wisps of smoke coming from the back side of the house. I looked down at my watch one more time. Ten minutes.
I tossed my cell phone onto the backseat, ignoring her look of anguish. “Call 911,” I shouted over the roar of the wind, my words splattering against the car like raindrops. “I’m going in to see if Jack needs me.”
She leaned toward me and I had to struggle to hear her over the din of the approaching storm. “It was your fear when you were a little girl that threatened to be your undoing. You can’t afford that now, do you understand? Don’t listen to her voice, and keep telling yourself that you’re stronger than she is. The second you begin doubting yourself, y
ou let her in.”
I stared at her, wanting to ask her the question teasing my lips, but I stood paralyzed, not yet ready to relinquish the hold I had on the person I thought I was.
“Yes, Mellie. You can do it. But run. Run fast. She’s near.”
Our gazes held for a brief moment before I turned and headed toward the house, jumping over the rotting steps as I’d seen Jack do just as a large roll of thunder shook the ground.
I stepped through the doorway, finding it hard to distinguish the inside from the outside in the roofless foyer. Green vines crept up what remained of the old plaster and rotting wood. Wide-planked oak floors, with termite holes and missing joists, created a sort of minefield to cross to get to the back of the house. I looked down through a hole to the brick pilings of the foundation, seeing if Jack might have missed his footing. A once-majestic staircase rose to emptiness in front of me, the banister and newel posts long since lost to Mother Nature or vandalism. Ragged fabric hung at the open windows where not even a shard of glass interrupted the complete desolation of the house’s facade.
“Jack!” I called, then coughed as I sucked in a lungful of smoke-filled air, wondering if I was imagining the unmistakable sound of crackling fire.
“Mellie, back here. Be careful where you step—but hurry.”
Moving quickly but carefully, I made my way through the front of the house toward the back, calling to Jack twice to reorient myself. The lightning was quickly answered by thunder, a celestial duet announcing the storm’s approach. In the dim light, I stepped through a beamed opening onto a brick floor, and apparently into an older part of the house. Most of this roof was still intact, partly I assumed because it was lower and thus spared the strong hurricane winds that had destroyed most of the house.
I squinted into the darkening light, seeing the huge fireplace I remembered at one end of the room, with two figures huddled on the ground in front of it. “Jack,” I said, stepping forward.
“Be careful. There’re loose bricks everywhere.”
I moved closer, studying the fireplace that had once dominated an entire side of the old farmhouse kitchen. But where the chimney should have disappeared through the roof, the roof was gone, and the fireplace itself disintegrated in a pile on the floor that Jack was leaning over.
“What is it?” I asked, moving closer still until I caught a movement from beneath the rubble. “Oh, my God,” I said, kneeling by Rebecca’s head, the blond hair now matted with blood. Her body from the waist down was covered with a large slate slab, and Jack appeared to be holding it off of her body.
“What happened?”
Rebecca groaned, her face a white mask of pain.
Jack answered, “She said that the mantelpiece just suddenly dislodged itself, slipping from the wall and falling on her along with a lot of the fireplace bricks. I think her leg might be broken.”
Rebecca screamed and I thought at first that something else had begun to fall. We both followed her gaze to see the other half of the room, mostly rotted wood timbers, explode into flame as a flash of heat and light washed over us.
I looked to Jack, knowing he had the training to figure out our next move.
“We’ve got to move fast; the wind’s feeding the fire and we don’t have time to wait for the rain.” He coughed, the smoke thick and heavy. “Rebecca, I’m sorry, sweetie, but this is going to hurt. Hopefully, you’ll faint so you won’t feel anything.”
I didn’t have the heart to look at Rebecca’s face to see how she took the news. I was too busy watching the wall of flame consume the walls.
Jack continued. “On the count of three, I’m going to lift this slab as much as I can so you can slide Rebecca out from under it. Can you lift her?”
I nodded, my eyes tearing from the smoke, then moved my arms under her shoulders. She didn’t say anything and I wondered if she’d already fainted.
With his eyes on me, he counted, “One, two, three!”
Grunting, he managed to lift the slab enough for me to slide Rebecca out until she cleared it, then Jack let the slate crash back to the brick floor. Rebecca screamed, and the sound was nearly buried by another clap of thunder.
The flames licked closer to us and had almost reached the threshold of the hallway from where we’d come—our only exit from the room.
“Hurry,” I yelled at Jack, who was kneeling next to Rebecca and gently lifting her in his arms. Her jeans were bloody but she was still conscious, biting her lip to keep from screaming, and I felt a grudging admiration for her. The backs of my hands stung and when I glanced down at them, I saw them crisscrossed with bloody scratches that I didn’t remember getting.
As Jack began carrying her to the exit, Rebecca struggled in his arms. “Stop!” she yelled, pointing a scraped and bloody finger back toward the fireplace.
I turned and saw a dark wooden cigar box partially buried under a pile of bricks. The words from the puzzle echoed in my head. Within the fireplace bricks our sins hide. I paused, imagining time pausing, too. Before my name had even passed Jack’s lips, I ran to the box, extricated it, then followed Jack across the threshold just as a roaring whoosh of exploding timbers filled our ears and the remaining roof crashed down onto the spot where we’d been just seconds before.
Placing my shirt over my nose to help filter the thick air, I carefully followed in Jack’s footsteps until we emerged onto the porch and into a nearly blackened world as the sky opened up on us and began to pour down sheets of rain.
We paused for a moment as we tried to catch our breaths. Jack turned to me, his eyes lit with fury as the rain slid down his face. “That was really stupid, Mellie.You could have been killed.” He was trembling, and I knew it was more than just anger.
Despite the situation, a glimmer of hope emerged somewhere in my chest. Before he could read my thoughts, I ran past Jack to the car and threw open the back door so he could lay Rebecca down across the backseat. I stood staring into the car as he approached with Rebecca, not quite comprehending that it was empty.
I pulled back to allow Jack room, then began frantically looking for my mother in the vicinity of the house, heedless of the mud and rain. “Mother!” I screamed. I ran to the side of the house that was now a blackened, smoldering shell, feeling the odd mixture of heat and ice on my face at the same time. I ran around to the front of the house, jumping up on the porch and sticking my head inside the opening. “Mother!” I screamed again, feeling a terror I hadn’t felt in a very long time—not since the morning I’d awakened to find her gone.
I jumped back onto the gravel, then jogged around the other side of the house until I’d reached the back. Sour gums and tall, spindly pines huddled together near a muddy path that led to the creek, the rising water already at the top of the cord grass. “Mother!” I shouted, looking frantically for any sign of her.
A strong hand grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me around. I faced Jack, and it wasn’t until he shook me that I realized how very close to losing control I’d come. I still held the box, and felt something shaking inside. I was breathing heavily and it took me a moment to catch my breath. “My mother. She’s gone. She was here when I came into the house. I gave her my phone. . . .” I stopped, realizing how useless it was talking out in the rain.
Jack’s voice was strong and reassuring. “If she went inside the house, we would have seen her. She probably went back to the gatehouse to get help.”
I allowed him to lead me back to the car. He opened the passenger side and put me inside, putting his hand on my head like cops do on television shows. My teeth chattered, from fear or cold I wasn’t sure. Then he stripped off his button-down, leaving him in just a T-shirt, and ripped it into shreds before wrapping two of the strips around Rebecca’s leg to try to stanch some of the bleeding. She didn’t cry out although I could see how much pain she was in from the way her lips drained of color, making her even more doll-like.
After Jack slid behind the steering wheel, I turned back to Rebecca, impressed by he
r stamina. “Are you okay?” I managed to ask.
She nodded and I saw that she was shivering, too. “Hang on.” I leaned over and pulled the trunk lever before flinging open my door. I ran to the trunk and retrieved one of the blankets I always kept there for emergencies, huddling over it to keep it dry, then returned to the car, slamming my door behind me. Leaning over the seat back, I opened the blanket and laid it on her, then used my purse to make a pillow. She smiled her gratitude and closed her eyes.
I turned to Jack. “I told my mother to call 911, but I don’t know if she did.” At the mention of my mother, a large tremor shot through me. Jack put his arms around me and began rubbing brusquely. “Not to alarm you, but I hope she did because my phone is out of range here.”
“We’ve got to find her, Jack. She’s not wearing a coat, and it’s raining pretty hard.” I realized I was babbling, but I was unsure how to express concern for a woman who only months ago I had liked to pretend didn’t even exist.
“We’ll start driving back to the gates, all right? We can’t delay too long, because we need to get help for Rebecca. I have to go slowly in the mud, anyway, and we’ll both be looking, so we can’t miss her.”
I nodded and he started the engine, flipping on the high beams, although they did little more than reflect the rain that seemed to come from the heavy clouds as if being poured out of a pitcher.
He drove slowly, as he’d promised, and we scanned the area on both sides of the car. I tried to tell myself that he was right, that she’d probably gone to the front gate to ask a guard to call an ambulance and a fire truck, although with the deluge of rain I felt confident that the latter no longer mattered.
The front right tire fell into a hole and I listened as Jack gunned the engine, then rocked it into reverse before shooting us forward again.
“Stop,” I said, rubbing the window with my sleeve to clear the fog on the inside. We’d come to the fork in the road that my mother had pointed out to me earlier—the path that led to the old family cemetery. I closed my eyes, blocking out the fear and the cold and the sound of the storm, and tried to listen to the quiet place inside of me that my grandmother had always told me was there if I only took the time to find it. I needed to now, since everything else—my control, my organization, and even my spreadsheets—were completely useless to me.
