The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer

by Joyce Reardon

  Another life passes through Rose Red. Another life is claimed. The scriptures have never been more accurate in their promise of Hell for those who sin. Just ask Daniel. Why this pleases me so, I do not know. I feel guilt over the pleasure I take in such matters. Yet whatever force did spirit Mrs. Fauxmanteur and the others away (to points unknown) also left the corpses of four men behind (five, if you count poor Mr. Corbin who will rot in jail!) to pay for their part in whatever activities occupy the long nights at Rose Red.

  She is watching us all. And though John may claim the title, or even pass the mantle to me in his absence, we would all be well to acknowledge that there is only one master of this house. It is a mistress, indeed. It is the house itself. She governs all. No one leaves without her permission.

  4 SEPTEMBER 1914—ROSE RED

  The events of the past several years are too numerous to recall. Concerned that my writing this diary somehow contributed to the disappearances and deaths here at Rose Red, I have abstained from these pages for far too long, especially given that two more women have vanished from our grounds—one a gardener, the second a “gypsy” child whose very presence here is questionable. This second disappearance brought the police once again—this time at John’s urging, since accusations included that John had been seen with the woman in the docklands the night before (thankfully this rumor was put to rest!). John was nowhere near the docklands that night—he and I had attended a hospital dinner, not returning home by motorcar until well after midnight, both of us retiring to our chambers.

  Now, with the war raging in Europe, with John away more than he is home, with Sukeena claiming that several times she has seen all the missing women dancing together in the Grand Ballroom, I find I must pick up my pen and write. You, Dear Diary, were never the cause of any of this, and I was a fool to think so. Once again, I entrust my most private thoughts to your pages, confident that only my eyes shall ever read these words. (Woe be to anyone, anywhere, at any time who violates the privacy of these pages! May a curse be upon you. If you have read any of this, you know these pages are for me, and me alone.)

  They picked a new Pope yesterday in Rome. Benedict XV. I am Protestant, as is John, but I wish the Pope would visit our grand house and explain what or whose spirit it is that possesses it. The Indians? I fear it is them. They have graves to fill—graves that we dug up. Surrogates will do, I suppose. “Please form a line …” Like a ticket box office for a show.

  Sukeena tells me that the staff thinks I am crazy, that I have lost my mind (we chuckle at this together). I do spend a good deal of time in my chambers, for my African fevers reoccur, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. The rest of my time is spent in the gardens or alone with the children—rarely taking dinner with John or showing myself around the house. The children occupy my every well moment, my every well thought—and let the servants think what they think. No person should be made to endure such fevers—and I fear my April, who also suffers horrible ills, shall die of my husband’s vile poison if I don’t seek a solution outside of what medicine can offer.

  For her part, Sukeena is my sister now—having taken the place of your pages these past several years, listening for hours on end to my complaints, my fears and my loves. It has brought us closer than I ever imagined two people could come. She knows my every thought before I think it, anticipates my every need before I voice it. If I did not know better, I should think this dear woman is reading my mind.

  The reason for my taking up my pen, the news that I write of here is this: after nearly three years of waiting, three years of repeated appeals, my wishes have been heard. Madame Stravinski is to hold a séance, in this house, this very evening. I am so excited! We have invited eight guests including the Poseys. John has resigned himself to participation (I believe the curiosity is killing him). Needless to say, of those invited, all women save John and Douglas, some may believe such an endeavor foolish—a necessity, in my opinion, for I wish to judge their reactions. Should Madame Stravinski connect with the other side, I wish to measure my own beliefs against those around me. Sukeena has openly expressed her hostility for the Madame Stravinskis and the Madame Lus of this world. (Sukeena’s powers and abilities in this regard are beyond question.) Partly because of Sukeena’s distrust, I have invited only dear friends whose opinions I can rely upon, whether believers in the supernatural or not. Time will tell how we judge this enterprise. Excitement fills the air. All but four servants have been asked to remain in the dorms or dwellings. (Madame Stravinski does not want any human disturbance inside this house when she attempts to make contact.)

  I await this evening in the way April or Adam awaits what lies beneath the Christmas tree.

  4 SEPTEMBER 1914—ROSE RED, EVENING …

  I had to run back upstairs and jot down this note because I do not want to lose these thoughts to the séance that is scheduled to start momentarily. The event is to take place in the Ladies Library, to the north of the Grand Stair, beyond which lies the Billiard Room (we should have never designed such a feminine space to adjoin any such male haven, even if not connected by a doorway!). Sukeena and I were checking up on Madame Stravinski, a withered old woman dressed in colorful silks and shawls and wearing excessive jewelry about her wrists that clatters with every twitch of the hand, as she had asked to spend time in the room alone “preparing” herself for the séance. (Sukeena suggests she is “preparing” the room as well, the implication of fraud apparent.) As we reentered to check up on her, I did overhear my husband’s shrill complaints to Douglas Posey through the bookshelves and wall that are shared with the Billiard Room. John made it quite clear to Posey that their “interests” were no longer the same, that war presented unparalleled opportunities, and that not to exploit such times out of a fear of being seen as ruthless was to miss the point of war entirely. “War is born of profit and loss,” he thundered, “in varying degrees, whether speaking economically or in terms of human life. Profit and loss! Which side of the equation would you suggest we fall on? Yes, we’re strangling the competition. Yes, we’ve cut deals with the Europeans. But not the Germans, Douglas. We are not turncoats! We are businessmen. Holding down supply, on the one hand, while profiting greatly in the other.”

  “And costing our own military in the process,” Posey complained. “Profiting by denying a free market, profiting from government war money while controlling that market for ourselves. I won’t have it. I won’t be a part of it.”

  “Business! Profit and loss. An oil company is in business to make money.”

  “I want out. I’m going to sell my shares.”

  “No.”

  “I have every right. Read the partnership papers.”

  “You sell your shares now, and people will question the stability of the company. It’s always the case. Now, of all times. No, Douglas. You mustn’t.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “I’ll buy them from you.”

  “What?” Posey’s shock registered.

  “The partnership also provides for that.”

  “With what? We have every cent into that Texas pipeline.”

  “Leave that to me,” my husband said. I confess, I feel John is making a huge mistake. Douglas Posey’s shares have to be worth millions. John will have to go to every banker he knows. He might bankrupt us. “I will pay cash, and though we must report the sale to regulators, we will make nothing of it in the press. Neither you, nor I. You owe me that, Douglas. Where would you be without Omicron?”

  “A good deal happier, I expect,” Posey said. “I owe you nothing.”

  “You owe me your shares,” my husband said in a voice that brought chills even to me, a room, a world away. I expect had it been the Gun Room instead of the Billiard Room, one or both would have laid dead on the floor.

  “And you shall have them,” Douglas Posey said.

  With haste, Sukeena and I made it into the Central Hall East in advance of my husband and his partner leaving the Billiard Room, the click of th
e door opening behind us. We hurried the length of that splendid corridor and ducked into the Grand Ballroom instead of allowing ourselves to be spotted loitering at the base of the Grand Stair. John would not take kindly to even the possibility of eavesdropping—he guarded his business dealings in the cloak of extreme secrecy and attributed his success in part to this.

  Winded, and out of breath, Sukeena and I pressed our backs alongside the great oil paintings that dominate the Grand Ballroom. We could reach the Entry Hall to our right, and the Parlor just beyond, where my guests were waiting the commencement of our séance.

  I have sneaked up just now “to powder my nose” to make note of this encounter in your pages. I shall now return to the Ladies Library to meet our guests and our guest of honor.

  I know not what lies in store, but it has been an eventful evening already—and it hasn’t officially started!

  5 SEPTEMBER 1914—ROSE RED

  I could not wait until the light of morning to put to pen the events of this evening! I shudder with fear and delight at what I have just experienced and shall endeavor to put it down here just as it happened, from start to finish.

  Madame Stravinski is seated when my guests and I are summoned to the Ladies Library. A little giddy, perhaps apprehensive, as it were, we were directed into our seats by the wizened woman and told to remain silent. Only Sukeena stays standing in defiance of the instructions (directly behind our guest of honor). The two exchange furtive glances, Sukeena winning the day, and Madame Stravinski makes no more of it. At this point, not to be outdone, my husband stands from his chair and starts an energetic pacing that continues from this point forward. Madame Stravinski, understanding from whose pocket her hefty fee was to come, proves in no mood to challenge John, and a good thing too, given his obvious agitation and disapproving nature. This leaves Douglas Posey the only man at the table. I sit facing her, at the opposing head of the table. Between us, in the center of the great oval table, rests her crystal sphere, a glass object the size of a human head, which sits upon a jeweled base of gold, or similar metal, and proves to be within the extended reach of the medium.

  She calls for the lighting of candles and the extinguishing of all electric lights in the grand house. Thankfully, she made these instructions earlier, upon her arrival, for it required three of our four staff on hand and nearly forty minutes to render the house in darkness. Alas, it is but a minute or two to secure the various rooms of the ground floor and for our staff to return to light the candles and dim this room’s electric lamp for good. At that time, our medium calls for total silence. Only our breathing and John’s impatient footfalls disturb this peaceful blanket.

  Next, Madame Stravinski calls upon us all to connect by hand. Only Sukeena refuses this instruction. Even John joins in the fun, moving his chair between me and Tina, taking my hand, but interlacing his fingers in hers. (This was my first experience with jealousy where Tina is concerned. What was it I sensed between my husband and my best friend? Dare I think such a thought? Are such suspicions founded, or do I see deceit and deception around every corner now?)

  With all of us holding hands, and only the dim flicker of candlelight shifting shadows on the walls of books, Madame Stravinski closes her eyes, asks us to bow our heads and speaks in a chilling, unvarying tone. “Great house that does surround us, open your doors to a visitor who has come to greet you.” She speaks in Russian or German next, perhaps repeating herself, I cannot be sure. My husband speaks a little of both, perhaps he understood her mumblings.

  I must admit to a certain degree of awe. Whether it was just my own body or an effect divined by Madame Stravinski, I swear to your pages that the temperature of the room did drop substantially. I also swear that the flickering flames of those candles did dance from the wicks as if a door had been thrown quickly open and a gust of wind had entered the room.

  Madame Stravinski is, by now, locked in something of a trance, her head bowed slightly, her eyes closed. I see across the table to my guests, my friends, and observe their astonishment—for clearly they expected a hoax, not the events we have just witnessed.

  The medium’s mutterings gain volume and clarity as she speaks to no one, her words gaining speed to where they pour from her mouth in a waterfall of syllables and half-formed sentences. She is calling upon the house, the “grand house,” and requesting she be allowed through its doors, through its walls. In the midst of this chanting, she opens her eyes at half-mast and reaches out for the glass orb before her on the table. She looks different, not at all herself, younger perhaps, yet frozen in time. Again a great gust of cold fills the room and runs up my legs. That glass orb begins to glow—I swear it!—and tendrils of light, like a goo, climb up out of it and stretch for the ceiling. At once, the candles are extinguished by this wind, the only light from the swirling blue and green tendrils overhead and that glowing specimen of glass held between her withered hands. I think of my daughter, April, and her poor withered right arm, I think back to my prayers so many years ago as I was forming the children’s hospital that I would never know what to do if one of my own children was born deformed. Did I bring this upon April? Or did my husband, by passing me the African curse? Can I save my children? Mustn’t my husband pay for his sins? Question after question is running through my head, as I sit perfectly still while confronted with the agitations of my guests. Only Madame Stravinski, Sukeena and I remain unmoving and unflinching. Even John is visibly upset as he breaks his handhold with me and jumps to his feet.

  As he does, there is great chaos in the room. The shelves rattle and books start slipping to the floor. Only one or two at first, then a score or more. The next score of books take flight, sailing across the room, aiming themselves at John and careening into the opposing wall of letters.

  “Sit down, please.” It is from my throat that my husband receives his instructions, and yet it is not of me. This voice, dark and clouded, jumps from me to Madame Stravinski, and then back to me again. “Sin is where it starts, sin is where it stops. Build me to the heavens, or the next man drops.” First from my mouth, then Madame Stravinski’s. A moment later, everyone at the table is chanting in unison, and my husband shakes in his chair, to which he has returned. Douglas Posey stands to leave the room, and a volley of flying books strike the door and push it shut before he can escape. I tell you, Dear Diary: all that I write is true, as far as it is from any experience on my part.

  The room’s twin electric lamps begin to swing. Slowly at first. Then huge sweeping arcs, back and forth, back and forth. And there’s that wind again.

  “Build me to the heavens or the next man drops.” We are shouting now, loudly, all of us. Even John, whose jaw appears to move independently of him, to move in spite of him.

  Without warning, Madame Stravinski seems to shed a skin of dark shadow, like a snake in season. This darkness rises out of her, and over her, part ghost (like that I saw in the barn, only black not white), part alive. It looms over the table, and we all stop chanting at once, for it seems about to do something, to attempt something, and it’s quite clear that whatever it intends involves those of us surrounding the table. “Come to me …,” says that darkness in a dry, deep voice that raises my hackles.

  Sukeena steps forward and grabs Madame Stravinski’s glass globe, attempting to wrench it from the table. She is consumed in a sudden burst of light, she appears to be nothing but a vague shadow as she strains to remove it.

  In an instant, Sukeena is thrown back off her feet, sailing through the air like the books only moments earlier. Crashing into the closed door, she sinks to the floor, out of breath and dazed. I leap from my chair—ducking from the books I expect to attack me, and am surprised when none flies.

  If this wasn’t enough, it is only as I break from the séance to rescue my dear friend that the wind and the sound of it stops—stops as if a window were shut—and, here’s the impossible part to believe, the candles reignite themselves. Silence settles over us all. That dark shadow that loomed above our
medium is gone. Madame Stravinski is awake. Eyes wide open, she stares directly at John Rimbauer.

  “What?” my husband calls out, dangerously loud, for his ears have not yet lost the singing of that cold wind.

  The medium merely stares at him.

  “What?”

  She does not answer.

  John storms from the room, Douglas Posey immediately on his heels. “Rubbish,” Posey says, though not terribly convincingly. He’s as wide-eyed as the rest of us.

  “My God!” I exclaim, feeling the knot on Sukeena’s skull. “What have you done to her?”

  “Everyone out!” Madame Stravinski declared. “You two stay,” she added, indicating Sukeena and me. “The door,” she said, once the room was cleared (the guests were only too happy to oblige).

  “You’ve hurt her!” I complained.

  “She interfered,” Madame Stravinski explained without remorse. “But I heard the message just the same.”

  “What message?”

  “The message for you, child. The message from Rose Red.”

  I glanced around the room at the devastation. A full half of the books were now on the floor—the wind had driven droplets of wax from the candles, spilled them onto the bookshelves. I shuddered. That spilled wax made the wind very real to me.

  “What message?” I asked, though more weakly this time.

  “It has promised you life. Life forever. Life without fear of death. Life without fear of illness. Your fevers will never return. As long as you keep building, so you shall live. This, I believe, answers a prayer once made by you. Your prayers are answered now. Life without death. Life … without … fear.”