The doorknob was frigid, stinging my fingers.
(Over the many years I’ve had to think about that day, I’ve wondered why Olivia—or the house itself—chose that time to reveal such a horror to me. If it was Olivia, then surely she’d known that my need to see it was urgent. But if it was the house, which, I know now, has a kind of mind of its own, then it picked that time because I was vulnerable: my father was badly injured, and Nonie was leaving me. I was losing everything. And if it were true that the house wanted to hurt me, the question of why remains. It had given me such happiness and yet was taking it away with dizzying speed.)
There was no frost as there had been in the morning room, but the air was just as cold, and again smelled nauseatingly of dead roses. A single lamp burned on a bedside table, and though I knew it was quite late in the morning, in this room it was night. The furniture was the same, the fabrics on the bed and the curtains different. There were four other people in the room, completely unaware that I was watching.
Here is revulsion made real. I must show you this so you will know what evil is possible in the world. Sadly, it was only the beginning of my education.
Olivia—looking much the same as she had two nights earlier—lay against her pillows, her blond hair loosened, her face a luminous white so that her scar shone above her brow as though it were a fresh wound. The sheets were pushed to the end of the bed so that she was obscenely exposed, her gown drawn carelessly to her hips, her slender legs parted, but straight and stiff. She did not cover herself, but hugged her arms around her own chest, staring at the man climbing onto the bed with her. There was a look in her eyes that I can only describe as resigned horror, as though she knew what was about to happen, but also knew she couldn’t change it.
The man was not Michael Searle.
This man’s face sagged with age, but more: his face was pitted with scars and purple sores. Sparse white, greasy tufts of hair were scattered over his emaciated head, and even though I could only see his profile, I saw that his eye was filmy with cataracts and suspected he was almost blind. His skeletal, knobbed hands protruded like nocturnal alien creatures from the sleeves of his elaborate dressing gown and fumbled, clumsy, as he felt his way onto the bed.
Until that moment, Press was the only man I’d seen fully naked, and when this man loosened the gown from his body and let it drop to the bed, I almost looked away. But the unreal nature of what I saw had me transfixed. It was an ancient man’s body, a body that had obviously once been robust (witness the folds of skin hanging about his gut and hips and under his arms), but was now wasted. His entire body looked hairless, and it was dotted with more irregularly shaped purple bruises and sores. There was a palpable air of malice in the angle of his body and the hunger in his face, which I’d never sensed from another human. But his malice gave him no physical strength. He wavered in the lamplight, and there was a small movement from one of the other two people who weren’t near the bed, but he righted himself.
No one spoke.
Understanding what he was about to do, I covered my mouth with my hands. Poor Olivia! Why didn’t she scream?
She didn’t reach out for him, but neither did she try to get away. When she closed her eyes, I was glad. But as the man started to lower himself onto her, he collapsed, and Olivia’s cries were muffled as though I were hearing them through deep water. As the man steadied himself, he spoke to her. She shook her head, and I both saw and heard her vehement, frightened No!
Balancing himself carefully on one bony arm, he slapped her face.
There was a gasp from one of the two men watching from the shadows. Michael Searle pressed forward in an attitude of aggression, his face twisted with anguish, but the expressionless man behind him held him fast.
I recognized that bald, narrow head, the taut, mole-dotted skin.
The scene on the bed was over in a very few minutes. I’ve told you enough, and if I described the sounds that came from that hideous creature that had molested the silent, stoic Olivia, you wouldn’t forgive me. I have long tried to forget them.
At a signal from the old man, Terrance disengaged himself from Michael Searle. He helped the old man down from the bed and into his dressing gown and a pair of slippers. Then Terrance did an astonishing thing: he picked the old man up and carried him across the room as though he were bearing a large child. The old man’s head nodded onto his chest, but when they reached Michael Searle, his thin, cracked lips broke into a smile of lascivious satisfaction. Michael Searle looked down at his feet, his body shaking violently. Before the old man and Terrance were out of the room, Michael Searle retched miserably on the floor.
Olivia, who had barely moved during the ordeal, sat up to lean forward. In the room’s paltry light, she looked small among the bank of pillows, even younger than she had sitting between her parents. I would have expected to see hate or disgust in her eyes when she looked at the man who hadn’t been able to protect her. But I only saw pity.
The door shut with a soft click, the way it always did when Terrance left a room.
The scene before me disappeared, and the room looked just as it had the day before.
Except.
In the corner beyond Olivia’s jewelry table, I saw Eva. Her hair dripping, her mouth sad, the pink playsuit clinging to her little body. My heart broke to think she might have witnessed that which I’d just seen.
“Eva, baby.” I held out my hand to her. She didn’t move, but in seconds she was gone again.
With her withdrawal—and the disappearance of all I had seen—I felt a great ebbing of my strength. My legs felt weak, but I did not faint. Where my strength had been, there was only tremendous weariness. I sank onto a delicate bentwood chair beside the door between the two rooms and waited.
Sitting there, I began to doubt what I’d seen. I had no proof that Olivia’s rape had been anything more than a hallucination. Was I so desperate to excuse myself for what had happened to Eva that I was able to imagine the unimaginable? Perhaps what Press seemed to suspect was true: grief and guilt were poisoning my mind.
The sounds of the house eventually returned. Distant footsteps, voices above me and on the outdoor stairs not far from the morning room’s windows. The door from Olivia’s room into the hall was closed now, though it had been open when I was in the gallery with Nonie. Somehow it was a relief. Proof that someone had closed the door—and I was sure that that someone had been Terrance, either in this time or the time I’d seen. It didn’t matter which. It felt to me like time was folding in on itself. Its passage marked nothing on Bliss House.
And if all those things had indeed been real?
Terrance. How could Terrance have participated in such a horror? If confronted, would he use the excuse of war criminals everywhere? I was just doing my job. (I had an idea who the other man, the one who had taken Olivia, was, but it was too terrible to comprehend at that moment.) But to confront Terrance, or even to demand that he be forced from the house, I would have to tell Press what I’d seen and how I’d seen it. Press had already told Rachel that I wasn’t doing well. Who else had he been talking to about me? Tales of visions would only make things worse.
I was beginning to understand why Bliss House was so feared. The things that happened here couldn’t leave. They lasted forever within these walls, repeating, repeating, and repeating themselves forever, with each repetition deepening the torment of the souls trapped here.
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair, resting my head against the wall. I could feel the pulse of the house in my head.
Eva was still here.
If all of those things were true, then Eva would always be here in Bliss House. I could never leave.
I can barely describe how difficult it was to rouse myself from that chair in Olivia’s room and go on with the day. Even as I picked up my smiling, innocent son from his crib, I held him gingerly as though I might defile him with what I had witnessed. Suddenly grateful for his purity, I squeezed him to me and covered h
is head with noisy kisses until he began to struggle. I never wanted to let him go. With a feeling of manic joy, I took him to Nonie’s room and we watched her finish her packing. I wanted to be with the two of them forever, protected from everything ugly and vile by their sweetness. As we said our good-byes in the front drive, Terrance waited, holding open the passenger-side door of the Ford that he and Marlene used. Oh! How hard it was to look at that falsely benign face. To know that he’d been party to Olivia’s rape. Yes! That was the word, for although she hadn’t run, it had been obvious that it was against her will. Rape was a word that was rarely spoken by people I knew. There was Titian’s painting, Rape of Europa, and so many versions of the Rape of the Sabine Women. But the word didn’t mean the same thing: Olivia hadn’t been abducted. She’d been brutally violated. Her injuries weren’t just physical. They were soul-deep.
“You’re not to worry.” Nonie’s face was serious but she was distracted, already thinking of my father and what awaited her in Clareston. “Everything will be fine, Lottie.”
I knew she was speaking of my father, but I prayed that she also meant that things would be fine for us at the house. They didn’t feel fine, and now she wouldn’t be with me. I couldn’t tell her what was happening even if I wanted to. After giving Michael a quick kiss and receiving a wetter one from him, she sat back and Terrance shut her in the car. We waved after her until the car disappeared down the drive, leaving us alone.
Inside, I took Michael into the library to call Press at the office, but his telephone rang and rang. I hung up, thinking. Then I dialed Rachel’s number.
My stomach tightened for no good reason that I could think of when she answered in a breathless voice and told me that yes, Press had dropped by. But I relaxed when she said she would go and get him from the kitchen where he was making a late breakfast for Jack. It was the one meal Press could make for himself, and Rachel hated to cook. I guessed Jack had been at the hospital overnight.
“Will you tell him he needs to come home? Something’s happened.”
Chapter 19
J. C.
J. C. Jacquith was driven down from The Grange in one of the hotel’s private cars, deposited on our doorstep, and entered Bliss House on a pungent wave of Caron Poivre, wearing a slender and stiff-as-meringue dark green cotton dress trimmed in black. Her sunglasses, wide-brimmed hat, and heels were all black as well. I came into the hall in time to see her purse her garnet-red lips to share an enthusiastic kiss with Preston, who held her by the shoulders to—I assume—steady her.
“I always forget what a terrifying drive it is down to this place, Press.” She slumped comically. “That boy driving the car seemed to think it was some kind of rally race. I’m positively dizzy.”
Before Press could respond, she noticed me coming in from the dining room.
“Look, it’s the Precious Bride! Darling, aren’t you just as fresh as a country daisy?” She teetered over to me and kissed the air on either side of my face.
I tensed, but she gave no sign that she noticed.
Terrance came silently in behind us, and J.C. had a bright hello, you old cad for him, as well. “That boy just left my bags on the step like I’m some kind of hobo. Will you be an angel and bring them in for me?”
“Put her in the yellow room, Terrance.” I did my best not to look at him. Though he was some thirty years older, he was the same man who had stood by while Olivia was tortured and humiliated.
I turned to J.C. “The sun won’t wake you in the morning.”
She was our first real guest since Olivia’s funeral and, despite my dislike for her, I’d easily slipped into Olivia’s former role as hostess. Press, who hadn’t yet spoken, lifted an eyebrow. I don’t know why he was surprised. Had he thought taking care of guests would be his job? The western side of the house was still very warm in the afternoons, but there wasn’t anywhere for her on our side of the house, unless I tucked her away in the bedroom beside the ballroom on the third floor. But that would’ve taken more overt rudeness than I could make myself exercise.
“Aren’t you a love! Press must’ve told you I’m like one of those vampire creatures. I’m completely allergic to mornings.” Her tone was one of exaggerated gratitude, like that of an Austen character whose words might be construed either as impossibly obsequious or crudely sarcastic. I hadn’t been around J.C. enough to tease out the difference. As she followed Terrance upstairs, she kept up a running stream of commentary on the paneling, the paintings, the dome, the furniture. Terrance only nodded or shook his head in response. I watched her stop dead in front of Olivia’s room, and Terrance paused to wait. Had she heard something? Sensed something? Press had mentioned once that she fancied herself to have psychic sensitivities. Finally, she restarted her chatter and moved on.
As Terrance put her bags in the yellow room, she leaned out just a bit over the balcony and blew a kiss to the two of us as though she knew we’d been watching. I watched Press’s face. He looked pleased, but I had no idea what he was thinking.
Twenty minutes later, after she’d changed into more casual clothes, she and Press disappeared into the theater to talk to the decorators.
I didn’t see them again until we were all dressed for dinner, except at a distance. After a long conference in the theater, they went out in the army surplus Jeep Olivia had acquired a decade earlier to use on the farm, Press in shirtsleeves and a Panama hat, and J.C. in a studiously country casual outfit of khaki slacks and a bright orange belted safari jacket. One of her beautifully manicured hands held tight to the window frame of the Jeep as they left the rocky driveway; the other secured her own scarf-tied straw hat. I chanced to be in the butler’s pantry, near the window, as the Jeep bounced onto the rutted farm road and passed the springhouse on the way to the orchards. It had been months since I’d been out onto the farm. Even when I dropped by the orchardkeeper’s house with extra food or to visit with his sister, Shelley, who kept house for him, I preferred to leave the farm by the driveway and go around to the paved road that led to the tenant houses. Later, when I became more involved with the orchard operations, I changed my habits.
After Michael went down for his nap, I called the hospital to check on my father, but he was sleeping and I hung up feeling sad and empty. I was tired. Exhausted, really. But I didn’t want to sleep or particularly be alone.
Press had held me for a moment after he rushed home and I told him what had happened, and I felt the wall I’d put up between us shift the slightest bit. But I pulled away when he began to insist that I follow Nonie to Clareston. I almost told him about seeing Eva and Olivia, that I couldn’t possibly leave the house, leave them behind for that long, but I stopped myself. He seemed surprised when I refused, and I knew he was wondering what was wrong.
“Whatever you think best, Charlotte. I just worry that your father will be disappointed.”
Another unkind observation. I was getting used to his small cruelties, and couldn’t help but think again that he simply wished me out of the house while J.C. was there.
Taking my garden basket and some clippers, I went out the mudroom door to the herb garden, thinking I would trim back the oregano and thyme’s fall growth. I stood for a moment with my eyes closed, comforted by the warmth of the sunshine on my face. Just the day before, I’d been driving with Rachel in the Thunderbird and walking the pristine grounds of The Grange, but that seemed like days or even months ago.
We had part-time gardeners who handled the bigger gardens, but tending the herb garden was one of the few activities Olivia and I routinely shared. Marlene had been doing her best to keep up with what I hadn’t been up to doing in those past months, but she had many other jobs to do.
It was a formal hexagonal garden, the herbs separated into individual beds. Each bed had a permanent wood-burned marker, so if I wasn’t sure about something, I could look it up in one of the books in the family library. Marlene wasn’t a very adventurous cook and only used the oregano, thyme, rosemary, seasonal basil,
and occasionally the sage. There was also peppermint for iced tea, and of course the lavender that Olivia put into the sachets that were nested in drawers and linen presses all over the house. I was no seamstress, but I was sure I could refill the hand-stitched sachets with dried lavender when it came time the next summer.
I had trimmed the thyme and had a small pile of pruned lavender stems in the garden cart when I looked up to see a man in paint-stained blue coveralls standing silently on the porch a couple of dozen feet away from where I knelt.
He was older than most of the workmen I’d seen coming and going from the theater, perhaps even older than the foreman, who looked about fifty. (But then, so many people over thirty seemed to be “about fifty” when I was young.) His paint-stained coveralls were old-fashioned, with straps like a farmer’s overalls; and though his shirt was a brilliant, unstained white, there was a smell of turpentine and ash about him. Not woodsmoke but coal, as though he worked around coal fires.
“Yes? Can I help you? The entrance to the theater is on the other side of the house.”
“I was told to ask for the missus. Ain’t you the missus?”
“I’m Mrs. Bliss.”
“You have a job for me?”
“Oh, you must be here about the ballroom.” I was surprised, but suddenly excited. Press had said he would think about it. I wondered if, somehow, J.C. had been involved in his decision to let me go ahead with the playroom. It didn’t matter. I was just glad.
The man nodded. “You tell me what color you want, and I’ll take care of it for you.” When he smiled, he showed only the very front of his teeth as though his mouth wouldn’t open easily. His leathery skin appeared stretched tight over his face and head, like Terrance’s. I wasn’t certain, but he also seemed to be bald beneath his painter’s cap. Perhaps I should forgive myself for being naïve, but I noticed and then promptly ignored the lifeless aspect of his watery blue eyes. I wanted what I wanted, and what I wanted right then was something good to happen.
Charlotte’s Story Page 14
