I was nineteen years old.
This was the winter, the exact eve of 1980.
The future was a concept. The past was a theory.
Roman, Eloise, Wren, and I had driven from Iowa to South Dakota in the Range Rover.
We had picked up a skinny teenage girl, hitchhiking.
It was Eloise who made Ro pull over.
When we got to the house, we didn’t know what to do with her. She didn’t have any place to go. She didn’t know anyone. And the house was big and warm. So she stayed with us.
We were spending the winter holiday together.
It was Wren who told the story about the possessed child. And El who pronounced that it gave her the shivers. Roman was restless. He was going to tell us a story. He didn’t want to be outdone by Wren. He paced before the fire. He knew the house and the surrounding woods. He had spent time there when he was a child. He hadn’t been back in years. Still the old house had not gone completely out of favor; it was loaned for cross-country ski weekends, romantic trysts, and once even occupied by a famous horror novelist in search of solitary inspiration.
And nothing mysterious, let alone amiss, had happened.
“What if I were to tell you the story of two children?” Roman said.
“Is it true?” interrupted Wren.
Eloise said, “The point of a ghost story isn’t truth, it’s the scare.”
“Oh, so now there’s a point?” said Wren.
“Don’t start,” said El. “You’ll ruin everything.”
Wren said, “It has to be true. You have to believe in something to be afraid of it.”
Said El, “Isn’t it more awful to be in doubt, to be uncertain?”
Wren said, “Let’s hear it, Ro. Let’s hear the story.”
“Yes, yes,” said El. “Tell us your goddamnnedy story.”
Eloise could never hold her liquor.
Roman turned to the girl.
“What about you?” he asked.
“What do you think of ghost stories?” he said.
She was young.
She was pretty.
“I like stories,” she said.
“Leave her alone,” said Eloise.
“Ro,” said Wren. “Terrify me.”
I was paging through a volume of Poe.
Roman turned his back to us.
I closed the book.
Wren looked at me.
Upstairs—that four-poster bed awaited us.
“Tell the story,” I said.
Wren said that she doubted whether Roman knew any ghost stories—
He couldn’t really give a girl a good scare could he?
Roman said, “It’s the story of a brother and sister.”
A log shifted in the fire.
“What’s so scary about that?” said Wren.
“It’s a true haunting,” Roman said.
“How do you know?” said Wren.
“Because one of them told it to me,” he said.
“The brother or the sister?” asked Wren.
Ro had his back to us.
“Does it matter?” he said.
“Of course it does,” she said. “It matters. It makes a difference; what one person does or another does. Or else how would we know who’s guilty and who’s innocent?”
Roman threw another log on the fire.
In a halo of sparks.
“Innocent?” he said. “That’s a big word.”
The girl laughed.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
She couldn’t stop laughing.
Eloise said she was just now feeling awfully tired.
Too tired for more stories.
Said Wren, “Ro, I want to hear about the haunted children.”
Eloise put her hands, palms flat, out toward the fire.
Roman abruptly left the room.
Eloise rose from the warmth of the hearth and said good-night. Then, after a hesitation in the doorway, she followed Ro.
New Year’s Day was lazy. There was sun that morning, but it soon disappeared into gray. The girls made pancakes for breakfast. They talked about sledding. Roman said that he remembered a cake that his mother had made when he was little, some sort of Swedish New Year’s cake. And Eloise wanted to bake this cake for him. She and Wren were going to drive into town to see if they could find a grocery store. I told her that that was crazy. That nothing would be open. Ro gave them his keys. He said, let them go; let them have an adventure. Eloise decided that we couldn’t have a real celebration without Swedish cake. And oranges. She wanted oranges. Oranges on New Year’s Day in the snowy desolation of South Dakota. El and Wren asked the girl if she wanted to go with them—but she said that she saw ice skates out on the porch—and was it O.K. if she went down to the pond? Ro was drinking coffee with whiskey and cream. What about you, Shelly? Eloise asked. Up for an adventure? I had a headache. It wasn’t a hangover; though the booze didn’t help; the change in the weather was bringing on the first sideways throbs of a migraine. I wasn’t up for an adventure, no. So Eloise and Wren set out in Ro’s car in search of oranges and whatever it was that one needed to make Swedish cake. The girl slipped the ice skates over her shoulder and headed for the pond. Ro tried to get the ancient black-and-white television to pick up a football game, but the screen showed only static. A light snow began to fall. And Ro wanted to collect more firewood. He put on his boots and with an ax he started out that afternoon.
I stayed behind.
And then I was alone in the quiet of the house.
I must have fallen asleep for a while—not long—it couldn’t have been more than half an hour. I woke suddenly with a start. It happens this way with headaches; they wake me from sleep, with a sort of ominous sense of disaster. I sat up, sweating, trembling. I was alone. No one had returned to the house. I went to the window. The snow was coming down. I could barely see Ro’s tracks, going away from the house. I had a terrible feeling. I put on my coat—
It was already too late when I found them, Ro and the girl in the snow.
She was white and naked. And he was covered in her blood.
6.
Zigouiller sat on the bed.
Eloise stood at the window.
He told her that six months ago he had been on the island where they had gone that time, did she remember?
He said that he ran into someone.
He ran into Roman.
“In the hotel bar,” he said.
Eloise drew back the curtain.
“He asked about you,” he said.
“It was too hot to do anything but drink.”
Eloise waited.
“We drank,” said Zigouiller. “Then a girl joined us.”
Eloise turned.
“It got late,” said Zigouiller.
Roman was drunk.
He got up. He got up from the table.
Roman left the bar.
“The girl stayed,” said Zigouiller.
“It was late,” said Zigouiller.
“She wanted to look at the stars,” he said.
“The girl was beautiful,” said Eloise.
“Yes,” said Zigouiller.
“She came to my room,” he said.
“—But you were thinking about Roman,” said Eloise.
“I hated him,” he said.
“So you took it out on the girl?” said Eloise.
“Go on,” she said.
“How does the story end?” she said.
“After,” he said.
“In the morning,” he said.
He said, “I saw Roman in the lobby of the hotel. He asked me if I had seen the girl. He said she hadn’t come back to his room last night. He said that he loved her.”
“Roman asked me,” said Zigouiller. “‘Where is she?’”
“He set you up,” said Eloise.
“You didn’t see it coming,” she said.
Roman asked Zigouiller, “Where’s the girl?”
“So you told h
im?” said Eloise.
“You said that she was in your bed,” Eloise said.
“And then he told you who she was,” said Eloise.
“Yes,” said Zigouiller.
“That she was your daughter,” said Eloise.
“Yes,” he said.
“Eloise,” he said. “El?”
“What have I done?” he said.
7.
I saw Roman. And I saw the girl. She was naked in the snow. She was white. There was blood in the snow. Roman was standing over her. It was snowing. Half of the girl’s face was smashed in. I saw the ice skates, far flung from each other. There was blood on Roman; on his hands, his face; on his coat; on his corduroy trousers. His boots left bloody traces—already being covered by the falling snow—as he paced around the girl’s body.
“We’ll need shovels,” he said.
8.
Eloise stood at the window in her black slip.
“Why are you here?” she said.
“Don’t you know?” he said.
She stood in the moonlight.
“I thought that you would know,” he said.
“You of all people, Eloise,” he said.
“I need you to forgive me,” he said.
9.
The girl was dead.
10.
“What are you thinking?” Zigouiller said.
11.
Roman told me to go back to the house for shovels.
Roman killed the girl.
I was in the woods.
I came through the woods.
I saw the girl.
And the world was so white.
That you could barely see her against the whiteness of it.
The whiteness of the world.
And the dark limbs of trees.
I heard the wind in the dark boughs.
She was small and white.
Roman was holding a rock.
I saw Roman in the snow.
There was blood on the rock.
In the snow.
On the girl.
There was blood everywhere.
He stood.
He stepped back.
He looked at what he had done.
He staggered for a moment.
His breath hung in the air.
He stood.
He dropped the rock.
Snow was falling.
The snow fell and fell.
He pointed toward the house.
At first I couldn’t hear him. Then I heard him. Get the shovels, will you? he told me what to do. And I did it. I went back to the house. I got shovels and kerosene. While Ro waited. Roman was standing at a distance from the girl. He had stripped her naked. Her white legs, bruised. His bare hands were bloody. Roman stood looking at the girl in the snow. We each took a shovel. And we began to dig in the hard frozen ground.
12.
Eloise was thinking about how she met Zigouiller at a movie theater. When she was twenty-one, in Paris. She met Herman Munster. He was an actor. He wanted to be a movie star. She told him that he should change his name to Zigouiller, because the audience would like it. Women would find it romantic. And men always liked a killer. She was right about that. She was right about so many things. She hated to be wrong. They ate double-salted black licorice. And talked about politics and poetry. About time and being. About civilization and its discontents. And truth and beauty. And they laughed and laughed. Then fell silent. In cafés, in bars, in dance clubs, at the movies. He read to her aloud from Kafka: It happens whether you like or no. And what you like is of infinitesimally little help. More than consolation is: You too have weapons. The figurative became the literal. Life was like a movie. They spoke of semiotics. Of signs and signifiers. They spoke in lines stolen from books. He lived in an apartment over a movie theater. There was a faded floral paper on the walls. And heavy furniture: a wooden table, chairs, a bed. The twining flowers on the walls. Candlesticks, licorice, paperback novels. There was a brass clock; wasn’t it odd? It tolled thirteen. He said he found it in a little shop on holiday. He used to say things like that. On holiday. He had learned English from books. Once they went to an ancient island on holiday. They swam in the sea, but she was afraid of the snakes and scorpions. She knew too many stories of girls consumed by jealous gods. Or turned into salt for their sins. How he laughed at her then. The holiday ended. They left the winedark water. They left Paris too. They traded the cinema for the movies. And they went to California. So that Zigouiller could be a star. Zig said that fate happens whether you like it or no. She couldn’t remember the order of things. She couldn’t think of time as a line of events. They had lived in a room over a movie theater. With flowered wallpaper. She was thinking about Turkish cigarettes and marzipan candies in the shape of lemons. They ate chocolate oranges. He ran the film projector. They talked of movies. And the places in the world that there were to see. They would see them all. Wouldn’t they? When they were young—everything smelled of smoke and chocolate. And she couldn’t get the smoke from her hair. Or the salt from her fingers.
13.
Ro said we had to burn everything. We burned her clothes in the woods. The smoke curled up dark to the sky. Ro started the fire with kerosene. The fire burned fast and hot down to ash.
Our tracks, our footsteps, our footprints were everywhere.
The snow did not stop. It was falling thick and white.
Our tracks were already disappearing.
Each step, each imprint, vanished.
Behind us, as we walked.
We went back to the house.
Ro talked.
He was carrying the ax.
Swinging it as he walked.
My head was killing me.
When we got back to the house the girls were still gone. In the bathroom, I bolted the door. I ran the hot water. I bathed in the ancient tub. The ornate spigots bore the faces of grinning devils. The girl’s face rose up before me, pale and hopeless. I closed my eyes. I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. A knock at the door; a hand turning the doorknob; Wren saying my name; Ro and Eloise whispering. I got out of the bath. I took my pills. The headache for a while worsened and then began to recede. In bed I fell into an ugly sleep.
14.
Eloise was thinking about how when she was pregnant she had wanted only licorice.
15.
It was dark when I woke.
16.
Eloise was thinking about how once when Susu was small, they were feeding ducks in the park, by a pond. Just then a white trumpeter swan came out of the water with a horrible cry and scattered the ducks away. Eloise lost hold of Susu. Susu ran to the swan. Eloise caught hold of the girl. She grabbed her daughter’s hand. Susu wasn’t afraid of anything.
17.
I came downstairs to find Ro and Wren and El in the kitchen.
They were drinking.
El’s cheeks were flushed.
She was drunk.
“Look at the snow,” she said to me.
I looked. I saw.
Snow on the fields and woods and pond.
Snow on the body.
Snow on the grave.
Covering our tracks.
“Snow,” said El. “Is general.”
Wren said that they hadn’t found what they were looking for.
“Oh god, Shel,” Eloise said. “We ran out of gas—and we had to walk to this farmhouse—so creepy. Just like in the movies—”
“It was this old lady and her son. And they were so nice to us,” said Wren.
“They were,” said El. “Guess what they gave us?’
She held her hands behind her back.
“This,” she said.
Oranges.
“So we can celebrate,” said Eloise.
“Where’s the girl?” asked Wren.
Wren asked me what happened to the girl.
“She’s gone,” said Ro.
Ro opened a bottle of champagne.
Ro poured out a glass.
He poured out one glass after another.
He handed one to Eloise.
And one to me.
We were watching the snow.
And drinking champagne.
And toasting the New Year.
“Where did she go?” said Eloise.
“She said something about Hollywood,” Ro said.
“Hollywood?” said Wren.
“Maybe we’ll see her in the movies,” said Ro.
He laughed.
He thought it was funny.
So he said it again.
The movies.
Wren didn’t believe him.
She said that the girl was alone out in the storm.
How far could she go?
The snow falling fast.
It was thick and heavy.
Falling white on the pond.
Falling on the woods.
Ro handed Wren a glass.
Wren drank her champagne.
She set the glass on the table.
“You’re drunk,” said Ro.
“I’m not,” Wren said.
“And a little hysterical,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Then maybe I’m drunk,” he said.
Let the Dark Flower Blossom Page 14
