A ray of sun glanced out, bronzed the brooding facade of the house, and vanished. Hilary’s pencil produced an appropriately Gothic picture of Osborne and thunderheads, a streak of lightning pointing to it like an accusing finger. She finally abandoned the sketch as the sky grew darker and darker, the clouds compacting themselves into a solid, inky ceiling, and a rain-scented wind made the paper flap on its board.
At five o’clock the “students” went away. Not too far, though; Zapata directed them to lurk in the adjoining yards and keep their radios on. Preston and Leslie promised to stay close by, offered helpful admonitions, and generally acted both reluctant and eager to leave.
Cold raindrops were hitting the ground like shrapnel as Mark, Hilary, Jenny, Yeager, and Zapata hurried into the kitchen. The room seemed stuffy and warm after the chill wind. The house creaked gently, but was otherwise cloaked in its usual silence.
Zapata picked up the wooden box and settled her shoulder bag at her side. “We’ll go on up to the study. Some tea would be nice, if you don’t mind. We might have a long wait.” Yeager looked as though he were seriously considering a new career as an accountant, perhaps. Their footsteps died away in the front of the house. Outside the wind moaned and sobbed.
Without a word Jenny put on the teakettle. Mark fed the cat, who ate and retreated to the kitchen cabinet. Hilary laid out the cups and wiped off a tray. It was too late to back out now. Maybe Dolores, with or without Kenneth, wouldn’t come in this storm. Maybe they’d see the storm as cover.
A crash from outside made Hilary jump. Mark peered out the streaming glass of the window. “Limb blew off a tree.”
Hilary spared a thought for her leased Caprice sitting outside her condo. Jenny poured boiling water into the teapot and picked up the tray. Her hands were perfectly steady; not one bit of crockery rattled. Leaving the lights on and closing the connecting door, so that all would appear normal, they plunged into the darkness of the main house. The beam of Mark’s flashlight picked a path among the furniture.
The study windows and the glass-fronted cabinets reflected the glare of the flashlight. Yeager and Zapata’s eyes shone like badgers surprised in their dens. They had left the box enticingly in the middle of the floor. In the shadow of Arthur’s now empty desk were several metallic gleams that Hilary felt sure were not all flashlights and radios.
Jenny set down the tray. Zapata stared at the cups and made an “uh-oh” face—a true Texan, she’d asked for tea without bothering to add “iced”. She sipped politely at her cup; Yeager gulped down the steaming brew as though it were a medicinal tonic. Hilary took one drink, which turned to feathers in her throat. Her heart was no longer beating fast. It lurched unexpectedly every few moments, like shoes thrown on the floor by upstairs neighbors.
Mark turned off his flashlight and sat down in a corner beside Hilary. It was so dark, she couldn’t see her own hand holding the teacup, let alone him beside her. But she could feel him, trembling slightly, making odd movements…. Oh. He was fingering an air guitar. She tried another sip of the tea. It was cold. She didn’t dare put it down in the dark because she’d probably spill it.
The house creaked. Strange thuds echoed from outside. The rain stopped, but the wind’s fury increased. The windows rattled. Hilary strained her ears, trying to filter out the noises of the storm, trying to hear the front door opening and footsteps on the stairs. She went over plots and counterplots until her mind throbbed. At last she retreated to a day in Provence when the sunlight had been as intoxicating as sparkling wine, and the sky had been vast and blue. She and a girlfriend had sat beneath a Roman aqueduct and sung of church bells, Orleans, Beaugency, Notre Dame de Clery, Vendome. If only Mark had been there with her.
Either her eyes were adjusting or the room had lightened. Maybe the night was over, it was dawn, and no one had come.
The luminous hands of her watch pointed to seven o’clock. Mark’s hands moved in the shadows, playing something intricate. Orleans, Beaugency… The wind was dying down. …Notre Dame de Clery, Vendome….
A slender shape stood in the study door. Hilary’s mind convulsed. Arthur. But no, this was a real person, wearing not white but black, almost invisible against the shadows of the hallway beyond. “Jenny?” called a voice barely above a breath. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”
Mark’s body spasmed and then froze. From the desk came a quick metallic snap—a tape recorder, Hilary realized. She pressed her hand across her mouth, keeping her terror from spilling into a scream. The rich scent of Chanel No. 5 mingled with the musty reek of the house.
“I know you’re here, Jenny. Bring me the Cross.” The voice was gentle, insistent. But it was not Dolores’s voice.
The light in the room was taking on an odd greenish tint. The westering sun shining through the green curtains, Hilary thought. But the curtains were pulled back. The eerie light emanated from the seething cauldron of cloud that was the sky.
Lightning flared. No, it was a flashlight, so bright and sudden Hilary flinched. But the light was focused on the wooden box. The black shape moved, and the light moved, and on the far side of the room, by the turret stairs, something else moved and then evaporated into the chill air.
Jenny stood by the wooden box, chin up, shoulders back, like a tigress guarding a cub. “You want it, Kenneth? You come and get it.”
“Don’t make me hurt you, too.” His words were calm, cold, scoured of human emotion.
“You killed Nathan, didn’t you? You tried to kill Mark and Hilary. You attacked Vasarian.”
“They threatened my family,” Kenneth explained. “They tried to hurt us. Blood is thicker than water, isn’t it?”
“Not really, no.”
“What would you know about it, bastard? It’s all your fault.”
Something else gleamed beside the flashlight. Hilary had never seen a knife so big and so shiny. She knew it was razor-sharp. It had to be razor-sharp. A knife like that would repel dullness.
Zapata spat a four-letter word that was both reverent and triumphant. The beam of light jumped toward her. Yeager countered with his own flashlight. The rays crossed like sword blades, illuminating Kenneth’s pale face. He was wearing Dolores’s Cleopatra wig.
“Hold it.” Yeager’s flashlight was not the only thing he was aiming; his gun was small but no doubt efficient.
In the harsh mixture of light and shadow, the human figures jerked like actors in an old horror movie. Kenneth threw down his flashlight, lunged across the box, and grabbed Jenny’s arm. Zapata swore again, this time with infinite annoyance.
The knife hung in mid-air, its point at Jenny’s throat. The flashlight smashed and went out. Hilary hauled herself up the back of a chair, the cup of tea sloshing cold onto her hand. Mark leaped up, his eyes bright and feverish. “All these years,” he hissed.
Jenny grimaced. Her hands clenched in the air before her, but she didn’t move. Yeager circled to the left, Zapata to the right. Kenneth’s dark eyes glittered beneath the fringe of the wig.
Mark stepped forward. “All these years I’ve been afraid of you, but you don’t scare me now. You’ve always sneaked up on your victims. You don’t have the guts to face someone in a fair fight. Coward.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see the Cross?” Jenny asked quietly. “It’s in the box. I’ll open it.”
Mark took another step. Hilary envisioned his body sliced open like a rib roast. “No!” she shouted, but the word tangled in her larynx. She bounded forward, throwing the cup like an athlete a javelin. The cold tea splashed Jenny and her captor as well.
The cup splintered against the wall. Jenny wrenched free. Mark grasped Kenneth’s black-shirted arm, the knife gleaming inches from his equally gleaming eyes. Yeager and Zapata danced back and forth, guns waving, shouting, “Get out of the goddam way!”
Something exploded. The wallpaper above Arthur’s desk punctured and bled plaster. Hilary’s brain ricocheted inside her skull. Every instinct ordered her to curl into a
ball and hide, but her body refused to move.
Yeager’s flashlight went out. The detectives dived for cover. Jenny yanked Mark by his T-shirt away from the flashing knife. The uncanny light of the storm swirled and steadied and revealed someone else standing in the doorway. She was elegant and slender, ash-blond hair gleaming, red lips parted in exultation. The gun Dolores held was a miniature cannon. She’d shot for effect, Hilary realized. If she’d meant to kill, she would have.
Her voice was as cool and sweet as rock candy. “Kenneth, you poor sorry child, I knew you were on the extension when Bradshaw called. Couldn’t you see it was a trap?”
Kenneth was goggling at Dolores just like everyone else, the knife dangling at his side. “Mother, how did you know it was me?”
“I have ESP, darling. It’s part of my maternal job description. I’ve known about Arthur’s pathetic little room since before you were born. I’ve known you killed Nathan since the night you did it. Admirable sentiments, dearest, but not very well planned.”
Kenneth’s lip quivered petulantly. “But Mother, the Cross really is here. Look.”
Dolores looked but registered only mild interest.
“You bitch,” Jenny spat. Mark set a warning hand on her arm.
“Dolores,” said Zapata, “you’re in it too far already. Both of you are. Put down the gun and call one of your fancy lawyers.”
Dolores’s beautiful lips suggested to Zapata just where she could put the gun. Kenneth handed his flashlight to Dolores and picked up the crate. He turned to scan the room, the knife erect again, probing before him. His face was stark, features molded out of madness.
Outside, a sudden gust of wind wailed like a banshee. The house trembled in the blast. Thuds echoed from downstairs. Dolores glanced over her shoulder. “Come on, darling. The car’s outside. Everything’s packed.”
With one last flourish of his knife, Kenneth turned. His voice was soft, wheedling, “Mother….” Hilary’s mind stammered the rest of the sentence, Can’t I kill just one of them?
Dolores seized his arm and pulled him away. Both Yeager and Zapata fired, the two shots zinging harmlessly through the door. Light flickered in the hall and went out. Static crackled from a radio as Zapata tried frantically to call her troops. Yeager and Jenny collided in the doorway, but a random shot up the stairway made them duck back into the room. Mark and Hilary clutched at each other. “Are you all right?” they gabbled at once.
“I daresay,” said Jenny, her voice grated across her teeth, “that Kenneth was considerably more surprised to see Dolores than we were.”
Her words were swallowed by a wind so loud that Osborne House might well have been square on the track of an approaching express train. Mark blanched and spun toward the window. The clouds were swirling. Tree limbs, shingles, and bits of debris corkscrewed upward. Darkness twisted downward, consuming the debris, searching for more. “Jesus Christ,” he shouted, “get into the basement, quick!”
Zapata was clutching both her tape recorder and her radio. “Can’t raise anyone, static’s too bad….” Yeager dragged her across the floor.
“What is it?” asked Jenny.
Mark took Hilary’s hand and Jenny’s as well, and pulled them bodily toward the door. “Tornado! Get the hell downstairs!”
The windows shattered, spraying the room with glass. In a knot they stumbled down the stairwell. The pressure of the wind crushed the breath from Hilary’s chest. Through the front door a surreal and hellish scene played out, an entire oak tree tumbling end over end, boards and battens writhing in mid air, the sky itself sucking greedily at the earth.
Still Hilary couldn’t breathe, the air was so thick with dust. The wind batted at her like Graymalkin at a rat. Graymalkin! she thought. Too late. A tremendous grinding noise was only a mutter against the roar of the funnel cloud. The house jerked with one shock, then another.
Yeager kicked open the door to the cellar. Zapata grasped Jenny’s free hand. Whether they ran or fell down the stairs Hilary couldn’t tell; she found herself lying beneath Arthur’s workbench, grit digging into her cheek and breasts, Mark lying half on top of her. Another body sprawled next to her—whose, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. Her lungs were burning, her heart thudding as loud as the storm in her ears. With a crescendo of rending and shattering, the very stones of the floor quivered.
Minutes passed. Days passed. That rending crack, Hilary thought, was the crack of doom. Next they’d hear the trumpets of Judgment Day.
The thunderous roar of the wind dropped off. The gloom of the cellar was streaked with murky light. At last Hilary forced her eyes open and peered upward. Past the edge of the workbench she saw a fallen beam and the blackish-green sky. She thought, Osborne really has fallen down.
In the distance a siren wailed. “Great,” said Zapata’s choked voice. “Now they sound the warning.”
“It’s almost over,” Mark croaked into Hilary’s ear.
She lay limply between him and the floor and waited for the end.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Five bodies were tangled like pick-up sticks below the workbench. Slowly Mark subtracted his own limbs, rolled clear of the sheltering wood, and sat up. The first and second floors of Osborne House were gone. Between two fallen beams he could see the sky clotted with black cloud. The greenish tint to the light faded to gray. Sirens wailed in the distance. A sudden shower of rain fell, drenching Mark’s upturned face as though poured from a bucket.
Sputtering, he turned back to the workbench and took a hand he recognized as Hilary’s. “You all right?”
She was dirty and disheveled, and her face seemed too small for her eyes, emotionally exfoliated. Her voice cracked. “I think so.”
The other bodies sorted themselves out. Jenny stood, bracing herself against the bench. “Steady on,” she said to no one in particular.
“I let them get away,” mourned Zapata, still clinging to her tape recorder.
Yeager looked around. “Jesus.”
The ferocious winds of the tornado had scooped the house off the cellar rather than collapsing it into it. The stone walls, buried in the earth, still stood. Pieces of board pasted with wallpaper, mangled bits of furniture, bricks, and torn tree limbs littered the floor. The staircase upward sagged drunkenly.
“Look!” exclaimed Jenny.
The kitchen wing of the house was virtually untouched. It was knocked askew and bled splintered beams into the cellar below, but the kitchen table still sat below a lamp swinging in the wind, and the teakettle reposed on the stove, splendidly unconcerned. Through a gaping cabinet door stepped Graymalkin. Picking her way through the leaves and dirt, she walked to the edge of the floor, looked down into the cellar, and meowed indignantly.
“Oh my, Toto,” Hilary translated, “we’re not in Kansas any more.”
Everyone’s laughter verged on hysteria. Mark wasn’t sure whether his eyes were wet from laughing, from terror, from dirt, or from rain. He snugged his arm around Hilary’s shoulders. “It’s too much to hope, I guess, that this house landed on the wicked witch like Dorothy’s did.”
“Dolores and Kenneth are miles from here,” said Zapata. “I let them get away, dammit. I don’t even have my radio to put out an APB.”
The rain slackened. Shouts drifted down the wind. Two “students”, Leslie, and Preston appeared at the edge of the cellar pit. They managed to ease first Hilary and Jenny, then Mark, Zapata, and Yeager, up the rickety steps to ground level. Not that the ground was especially firm. Mark felt as though he’d been poured out of a Jell-O mold. He wanted to find a bed and pull the covers over his head and Hilary’s as well.
“Y’all look like characters from Night of the Living Dead,” Leslie told them.
“The tornado just added insult to injury,” returned Jenny.
Zapata’s smudged face and red eyes gave her a diabolical air; Yeager was so pale it looked as though his features had been partially erased. She detailed what had happened in the study. He se
nt the officers running to send out a bulletin on the Coburgs. Preston and Leslie exchanged a look part astonishment, part I-told-you-so.
To Mark and Jenny, Zapata said, “Don’t you ever confront a killer like that again.”
“I have no intention of ever confronting a killer again,” Mark told her. “That was either the bravest or the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t ever want to cap it.”
“Right,” said Jenny. She picked up Graymalkin and walked through the kitchen into her apparently intact bedroom. Hilary snugged her arm around Mark’s waist. Rain ran in rivulets from the torn edge of the roof. Every now and then a brick from the destroyed chimney thudded to the ground.
Through the curtain of rain Mark considered the devastation. Of the live oak trees surrounding Osborne, only two still stood, and they looked like rejects from a matchstick factory. The concrete-block garage, though battered, was intact. His van was still sitting beside it. The grounds around the house and the excavation resembled the debris-covered earth beyond, bits of fabric waving in the wind like exotic plants. Hilary emitted an “Oh!” of amazement and pointed. The grandfather clock stood upright on the lawn.
An ambulance and a fire truck, lights flashing, sped past on York Boulevard. The clouds changed from dark to light gray, and a ray of sun glanced through, flickered, and retreated. A police car came up the driveway.
“How bad is it?” Zapata shouted to the emerging officers.
“The twister only touched down here, along the river, and among some warehouses on Seventh Street,” one of them replied. “Tree limbs and power lines down, a roof or two torn off. Traffic snafus, and a bad accident over on I-35.”
“No word on the Coburgs?”
“Not yet. It’s a little hard to get mobilized, you know, when not all the streets are passable.”
Zapata snorted, not accepting excuses, and zigzagged from the kitchen to the patrol car. Yeager stopped to open a garbage bag plastered against a tree. “Hey,” he called, “are these the books from the attic?”
Garden of Thorns Page 40
