Mark looked at his chocolate. "At the Falls."
Alarmed, John tried to sound calm. "The Falls?"
"Yeah, well, me, Pete, and Corey were messing around, you know, hanging out on the Mezzanine-"
"I warned you about swimming there. You didn't-"
''Well, no, but everybody does it." He rolled his eyes in anticipation of his father's next remark and beat him to it. "And if everybody jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, would you?" he asked, mimicking John.
He couldn't help being amused, but it also bothered him he could never comfortably use the standard ''would you jump off a cliff'' metaphor. "So you were at the Falls thinking about diving in." He spoke lightly.
''Well, yeah, I guess. But Minerva came along. She was spooky, just sorta standing up there on the bridge, looking down at us. Scared the pee out of Corey and Pete." He sat up straighter to brag, ''But not me. They ran off, and I stayed and talked to her." Mark lowered his voice and looked at his cup again. "She told me how your little brother died and all and, well, don't worry, Dad, I'll never swim there again."
John felt a flash of anger at Minerva Payne for talking about Greg. But why? Is his death all yours? Did she invade your territory? Here she'd stopped Mark from doing the one thing he really didn't want him doing. I ought to thank her.
''Dad?"
"What?" he asked after a long pause. "What, Mark?"
''How come you never told me what happened to your brother?"
"Well ... I guess because it's really hard for me to talk about. It hurts."
''Like when Mom ran off with that lawyer from Claremont and never came back?"
That had been a relief for John, but he knew it was horrible for his son. Barbara had never communicated beyond the divorce papers. She'd thrown her own son away. "Yeah, Mark," he finally said. "Kind of like it was for you when your mom took off."
The boy was silent for a long moment, then asked, "But worse, huh?"
John looked at him, saw a reflection of himself in the hazel eyes, straight mouth, brown hair, even in the bone structure and the faint summer freckles across Mark's nose. He'd inherited little from his mother, a drop-dead beautiful lawyer who'd left when she couldn't talk John into going back to law school and bettering himself by wearing a suit and arguing in court and attending the right dinner parties with the right people and the right wine. No uniformed cop for her; not even head cop would do. Still bitter after all these years. He had wanted her to leave, had told her to leave after he'd found out about the affair with the infamous Claremont lawyer, an ambulance chaser who'd hit it big.
''Dad?"
''Mark, losing Greg was really hard for me. I was his big brother and I was supposed to be looking out for him. I was responsible." He said the words with as little emotion as he could, but still there was a catch in his voice.
"You feel guilty," Mark observed in his childish, blunt way.
"I sure do. That's why I don't want you playing around there." If anything happened to you, I couldn't go on.
''I know. Minerva says it's not your fault, though."
"What?" John sat up. "What did she tell you?" Does she know something? Did she see something?
Mark shrugged. "Just that aside from it being dangerous, I shouldn't swim there because you felt like it was your fault your brother died, so it would really upset you if I played there."
The irritation at the old woman's interference was still there, but lessening. ''Mark, this is important. Did she say why it wasn't my fault?"
Mark finished his chocolate, then looked his father in the eye. "No, huh-uh. She just said it wasn't and it was too bad you didn't get that."
"Get that?"
"Y'know, like understand, or something. Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"You get lots of nightmares," Mark said abruptly.
"I do? What makes you think that?"
"You make noises, creepy noises, in your sleep. Sometimes you yell, but not usually as loud as tonight."
Christ. ''Really?"
"Yeah, it's spooky."
"I'm sorry. Some people talk in their sleep."
"You just make scared sounds. Dad?" he repeated.
''What?"
"Do you dream about your little brother?"
John studied his son. "I can't ever remember the dreams when I wake up, but yes, I think I probably do."
"Minerva told me how to remember dreams."
"Wait a minute. Did you tell her about my nightmares?"
''Huh-uh, swear to God. She told me, though."
''What? That's impossible."
"Huh-uh. She knows stuff like that because she's an herb woman. That's like a really old-time doctor. She says most of the herb women were killed off in the witch hunts because they knew more about medicine than the men doctors from Europe and they didn't like that. So they burned them and hanged them and drowned them, and all sorts of gross stuff. But she's one, and she knows. She says you should write down your dreams and you'll start remembering them."
John had had just about all the strange conversation he could take for one night. Exhaustion and irritation were setting in for real now, so he just stood up and took the cups to the sink. Left them there, nice and dirty, for tomorrow. Barbara would never have let him do that. "Mark," he said, finally, "why in the world would I want to remember dreams that scare me so much?"
The boy shrugged once more and walked to the kitchen threshold. "Gee, I dunno, Dad. Maybe if you remember your dreams, you won't feel so bad about your little brother. 'Night."
"'Night." John watched his son slouch down the hall. Out of the mouths of babes. He waited another minute or two, then opened the cupboard and got out an old half-full bottle of Scotch, poured a couple fingers in a juice glass, and downed it. Liquid fire burned his throat. It felt good. Very good. He screwed the lid back on the bottle and put it away, knowing that if he allowed it, he, like Lenore-the lost Lenore, came a whisky-mellowed thought-could become dependent on a drug or two to get him through the night.
Part Three
September, 1996
Fifteen
I must have been nuts to come back to this place.
Sara Hawthorne, a flight bag over her shoulder and a suitcase in her hand, shivered as she walked along the poorly lit stone corridor of the St. Gruesome's dormitory. It was colder here than she remembered, damp and chill, with cobwebs in the ceiling corners and chipped paint on the doors. When she was a girl, perhaps she'd paid less attention to such things, or maybe here on the third floor, where most of the teachers lived -where I'm going to live- upkeep and heating weren't priorities. After all, most of the other teachers were nuns, and didn't they believe in austerity, in self-sacrifice and denial?
The corridor, lit only by dim, fly-specked bulbs and trembling prismatic rainbows cast by the afternoon sun through small stained-glass windows in the left-hand wall, seemed to telescope before her. The windows did not depict religious scenes, but were simple diamond patterns, the dark colors made darker by a layer of grime, completely hiding the view of the garages and outbuildings, and the big stone kitchen, where the nuns made cider and prepared apples and mincemeat for Apple Heaven.
Sara's eyes followed a reddish reflection across the stone floor and up the wall, and almost against her will, she paused to study one of the portraits that studded the corridor. The paintings, all of saints, were hung throughout the halls, and Sara remembered that a nun, Sister Elizabeth-Sister Lizard, that's what we called her back then-was the artist. This was one of the tamer pictures. Labeled "Saint Wolfgang," it depicted a lean, bloodied man, quite naked, shielding his head from a horde of descending demons that reminded Sara of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Sister Elizabeth wasn't so talented, after all. She wondered if the nun was still in residence, still creating her gruesome pictures. Recalling the sister's intense, oddly asymmetrical features, the pursed full lips and grim set of her piggy mouth, she hoped not.
"Somethin' wrong?"
Startled by the high-pit
ched male voice, Sara turned to see a grizzled old man approaching, her garment bag and other suitcase in hand. Scrawny from the top of his bald head to the toes of his surprisingly white Reeboks, he grinned at her with big, tobacco-stained teeth.
"Nothing's wrong," she stammered, thinking he looked vaguely familiar. "I was just ... the doors aren't numbered, and I don't know which room is mine."
''Two doors down," he said, joining her before the painting. He glanced at it and whistled through his teeth. "Sister Liz, she likes to keep her saints naked." Shaking his head, he gazed at Sara with his dark little rodent eyes. "Too bad she don't do more of the women." He cocked his head like a chicken. ''You look kinda familiar."
"I lived here about ten years ago," she told him as they began walking.
He nodded. "Most girls leave here, they never come back." He stopped in front of a yellowed door. "Here 'tis."
Sara hesitated, realizing that the nun who'd greeted her downstairs hadn't given her a key.
Evidently, the old man could read minds. ''No locks on these old doors," he told her, gripping the knob. He turned it and the door creaked open. "Ladies first."
''I think I remember you, too," she said as they entered the room.
"Basil-Bob Boullan," he told her. "Been the caretaker here for almost forty years." He flipped the light switch.
Setting her luggage down, Sara stared around the room, relief flooding her. Though windowless, the room was reasonably sized, light and airy, and freshly painted, the oak floor gleaming around a large braided rug, old and worn, but clean. At one end was a twin bed, neatly made with a light blue quilted bedspread. A simple pine nightstand with a hurricane lamp sat beside it. There was also a very old vanity, dark wood, ornate, but scarred, that cradled a dented copper basin. Sara glanced around, half expecting to see a chamber pot, but the only other furnishings were a small pine table and two matching chairs, a chest of drawers, a faded easy chair with a side table and lamp, and a half-filled bookcase. A narrow door hid a dinky closet.
''There's a fridge in the corner, there." Basil-Bob pointed at a squat white refrigerator behind the table. "And you've got a hot plate and a few dishes there, in the bureau." He glanced behind him. ''And that's a real nice bed. Got a new mattress and everything. Old one got spoilt."
She nodded uncomfortably as Boullan crossed to the bed and placed her luggage beside it. "There's no bathroom?" she asked, glancing around in hopes of seeing a door she'd missed.
Boullan cackled. ''That'll be last door at the end of the hall."
If I were smart, /'d leave right now. Even though she knew the students had communal baths, she'd assumed that the teachers' rooms had private facilities. Wondering if she could afford a room in town, she smiled at the caretaker. "Thank you, Mr. Boullan."
"Basil-Bob'll do." His eyes crawled over her body. "You got yerself any more questions?"
Only about a million of them, but I won't be asking you. "I'm supposed to meet with the Mother Superior in half an hour. I'm sure she'll tell me everything I need to know." She tried to smile, but her discomfort at having this man in her room was growing by the second.
''You want me to show you to her office?"
"Urn, no thanks. Unless it's moved, I know the way."
He showed no signs of leaving, so she went to the door and held it open for him. ''Thanks for your help. I need to freshen up now."
He shambled over to her and stood in the doorway. He looked like he ought to be dirty and malodorous, but his dark green work clothes were as immaculate as his joltingly white running shoes. "You need anything, you come and see me."
''Thanks."
He started out the door, then paused, turning to face her again. "Don't let the funny noises at night bother you none."
"Funny noises?"
"At night. It's just the ghost."
''The ghost? I never heard any ghost stories concerning the dormitory." Despite her immediate skepticism, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled up.
Boullan nodded. ''Got us another lady in white. She wanders all over the place and likes to walk along this here hallway sometimes. Why, the last teacher who had this room, Miss Tynan, she was so afraid to go out to the bathroom at night, she got herself a piss infection, laid her up for a couple weeks."
''Did she leave because of the ghost?" Sara asked, trying not to smile.
Boullan 's expression turned somber. ''Maybe she did. Maybe she just did, now." His beady eyes bored into hers, raising real goosebumps this time. "Killed herself, she did. That means you get to go straight to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars." He leaned in conspiratorially. "Slit her wrists, you know. Did it right here in this room-that's why I had to paint the place and getcha the new mattress. That's where she done it, on the bed. Squirted the walls, yes, rna'am. And the floors and the bed."
He went on, spouting details, but Sara barely heard him. She was thinking about Jenny Blaine, her best friend and roommate when she'd lived here in the mid-eighties. She'd died the same way, and Sara was the one who had found her. "Basil-Bob," she began.
He stopped talking and stared at her. "Yup?"
"I really can't talk any longer right now." She tried to keep her voice steady. "We'll speak later, if you like."
''Sure thing." He turned on his heel and strode silently down the shadowed corridor. She watched him until he reached the stairs, where his Reeboks squeaked as he turned.
Back in her room, Sara pulled the door closed behind her. She decided that after her meeting, she'd go into town and at least buy some sort of lock for her room. The bed where her predecessor had sat to slit her wrists was as pristine as the white walls. She wondered how many coats of paint it had taken to cover the bloodstains. When Jenny had died, she'd scrubbed and painted over the stains herself, five coats, but when the light was just right, she'd thought she could still see them, dim red shadows across the walls.
Jenny Blaine was the reason Sara Hawthorne had returned to St. Gertrude's Home for Girls. Jenny hadn’t killed herself; she was murdered, of that Sara was sure. Her death, along with other foggy memories of other girls' disappearances- runaways, the nuns said-still haunted her. At sixteen, three months after Jenny's death, she'd run away herself, unable to sleep another night in the room where Jenny had died. She'd hitchhiked to San Francisco and had herself legally emancipated, so that she could work and attend school. Her new freedom should have been wonderful, despite the hard work, but she'd taken the horror with her.
Sara's insides felt hot and liquid as she quickly brushed her dark brown hair and reapplied lipstick. Despite the therapists, despite her attempts to write down her memories, they all eluded her, except for the vision of that bloody room, of Jenny. She was haunted, not by ghosts, but by the past, and now it was time to see justice done for Jenny Blaine and to exorcise her own demons, the ones that caused the nightmares and the nervousness with which she met each day.
After she received her teaching degree, she worked in Marin County, California, for a middle-grade school, thinking that now that she had her career, she would finally forget. But it didn't happen. Finally, she sent a resume to St. Gertrude's, hoping that giving herself a chance to solve the mystery of Jenny's death would soothe her nerves. She never really expected to hear back from the home, but a few months later, Mother Superior Lucy Bartholomew- the selfsame nun she'd so feared when she was a student- wrote to her. Shortly after, they interviewed by phone and Sara was offered the position. And here I am, only slightly in shock. What the hell am I doing here? It had all happened so fast she'd barely had time to think about her actions.
Shaking her head, she took her briefcase from her flight bag, glanced in the small, round mirror over the chest of drawers, then squared her shoulders and walked out the door to make her appointment. Coming back here was the hardest thing she'd ever done, but now that she was here, she decided, nothing -nothing-would stop her from finding out what had really happened to Jenny Blaine.
Sixteen
>
Mother Superior Lucy Bartholomew's office was the same dark and depressing chamber it had been when Sara was a girl. Both the office and Mother Lucy appeared to be untouched by time.
The office and outer room, where Mother Lucy had kept her waiting for forty-five minutes before admitting her to the inner sanctum, were also the same. Sara suspected that the nun, whom she remembered as being compulsive about punctuality, had kept her there for the sole purpose of producing feelings of awe and anxiety before the meeting. But all it did was make Sara remember how much she had hated the woman.
Six wooden straight-backed chairs designed to become unbearably uncomfortable within five minutes of use were the only furnishings in the waiting room. There were no tables, no magazines; it was a claustrophobic room meant for frightening young girls who were sent to see the Mother Superior. Some of Sister Elizabeth's most vile saintly effigies adorned the dark paneled walls as further insurance against any future misbehavior.
Each portrait bore a small bronze plaque identifying its saint. During the long wait, drowsy from boredom. Sara had examined all four paintings several times. One depicted a naked St. Pelegia falling from a roof. Another portrayed St. Genevieve, also nude, trying in vain to shield a burning candle as the devil 's fingers reached out to extinguish the flame. The other two were of St. Denis, a headless man unclad except for a cross, carrying his own mitered head on top of a book, and St. Margaret of Cortona, contemplating a rotting corpse that lay at her feet while a dog nipped her thigh. The paintings were of poor to mediocre quality and reminded Sara of the ones from Rod Serling's old Night Gallery series.
Now, in the inner office, sitting on another hard, straight chair facing Mother Lucy at her massive scrolled desk, Sara tried to keep her eyes off the two paintings that framed the Mother Superior. They were the worst of all. The largest, in a gilded frame, was of Lucy's namesake, St. Lucille, and with each furtive glance, Sara became more convinced that the Mother Superior had actually posed for the nude portrait, which showed the martyred St Lucille, gashed throat and dark eye sockets as prominent as her breasts, proffering a platter. On the platter were her own eyes, which seemed to follow you around the room. To Lucy's left was a smaller painting in a matching frame. It depicted St. Gertrude, the school's namesake. Unlike saints in the other paintings, St. Gertrude was dressed; she wore the robes of an abbess. Her face was somber and gaunt, and in her outstretched hand she held a flaming heart. At her feet were a dozen gray rodents that were supposed to be mice, but looked to Sara more like rats, with their long pink tails and protuberant teeth.
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