The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt!

by Andrews, V. C.

  It was easy to pick up Mom and run with her to a safe place and lay her down, but not so easy to drag Dad by his shoulders to lie beside her under a tree—still I managed. The house now smoked from several windows. My brother was in there—and my grandmother, too.

  John Amos Jackson had recovered and he too rushed inside the burning house. In the kitchen I saw John Amos struggling with my grandmother. He was battering her face with slaps. I ran to rescue her though the smoke was in my eyes. “You’ll never get away with this, John!” she yelled as he tried to choke her. I fell over a chair that had been turned over, and jumped to my feet just in time to see her bring down a heavy Venetian glass ashtray so it struck him on his temple. He slumped to the floor like a bird shot down from a rifle.

  That’s when I saw Bart. He was in the parlor trying to lug that huge portrait to safety. “Momma,” he was sobbing, “gotta save Momma. Momma, I’m gonna get you out of here, don’t you fear, ’cause I’m just as brave as Jory, just as brave . . . can’t let you burn. John Amos was lying, he doesn’t know what God wants, doesn’t know . . .”

  “Bart,” crooned my grandmother. Her voice was so like my Mom’s. “I’m here. You can save me—not just the portrait.” She stepped forward, limping badly, and I guessed she’d tripped and sprained her ankle, for at each step she grimaced. “Please, darling, you and I have to leave the house.”

  He shook his head. “Gotta save Momma! You’re not my momma!”

  “But I am,” said another voice in another doorway. My eyes widened to see my mother standing there, clinging weakly to the doorframe as she pleaded with Bart. “Darling, let go of the portrait and all of us will leave this house.” Bart looked from her to his grandmother, still clinging to the huge heavy portrait that he could never have the strength to drag from the house. “Gonna save my momma, even if she hates me,” muttered Bart to himself as he tugged at the huge heavy portrait. “Don’t care no more if she loves Jory and Cindy better. Gotta do one good thing and then everybody will know I’m not bad, and not crazy.”

  Mom ran to him and covered his small dirty face with kisses, as all around us the room filled with smoke.

  “Jory!” called my grandmother, “call the fire department! Take Bart out of here, and I’ll lead your mother out.”

  But Mom didn’t want to go; she seemed oblivious of the danger of staying in a smoke-filled house, with fire underneath. Even as I dialed O for the operator and told her what was going on, then gave her the address, Mom was down on her knees hugging Bart close. “Bart, my sweetheart, if you can’t accept Cindy as your sister and live happily with her, I’ll send her away.”

  His grip loosened on the portrait as his eyes grew wider. “No you won’t . . .”

  “Yes, I swear I will. You are my son, born from my love for your father . . .”

  “You loved my real daddy?” he asked unbelievably. “You really did love him, even if you seduced and killed him?”

  I groaned, then ran to seize hold of Bart. “Come on, let’s get out of here while we have the chance.”

  “Bart, you go with Jory,” called my grandmother, “and I’ll take care of my daughter.”

  There was the side door Bart used to sneak inside the house, and I dragged him toward that, looking back to see Mom was being pulled along by her mother. Mom seemed on the verge of fainting, so my grandmother almost had to carry her.

  As I ran from the house, forcing Bart to join Dad under the tree where I’d left him, I saw Mom had sagged in her mother’s arms. When she did, both women tumbled over backward, and for a moment the smoke obscured them.

  “Oh, my God, is Cathy still in that house?” asked Dad, still wiping at the blood which wouldn’t stop flowing from the deep gash on the side of his head.

  “Momma’s gonna die, I know it!” cried Bart, racing toward the house and forcing me to run after him. I hurled myself forward and brought him down with a tackle. He fought me like a madman. “Momma, gotta save Momma! Jory, let me, please let me!”

  “You don’t have to. Her mother is going to save her,” I said, looking over my shoulder as I held him down and prevented him from entering that house of fire again.

  Suddenly Emma and Madame Marisha were in the yard, holding on to me, to Bart, hurrying us both toward Dad, who had managed to stand. Blindly, with his hands groping before him he was headed toward the house, crying out, “Cathy, where are you? Come out of that house! Cathy, I’m coming!”

  That’s when Momma was shoved violently through one of the French doors that opened onto the patio.

  I ran forward to lift her up and carry her to Dad. “Neither one of you has to die,” I said with a sob in my throat. “Your mother has saved at least one of her children.”

  But cries and screams were in the air. My grandmother’s black clothes were on fire! I saw her as one sees a nightmare, trying to beat out the flames.

  “Fall down and roll on the ground!” roared Dad, releasing my mom so quickly she fell. He ran toward his mother, seized her up and rolled her on the ground. She was gasping and choking as he slapped out the fire. One long wild look of terror she gave him before some kind of peace came over her face—and stayed there. Why did that expression just stay there? Dad cried out, then leaned to put his ear to her chest. “Momma,” he sobbed, “please don’t be dead before I’ve had the chance to say what I must . . . Momma, don’t be dead . . .”

  But she was dead. Even I could tell that from the glazed way her eyes kept staring up at a starry winter night sky.

  “Her heart,” said Dad with a dazed look. “Just like her father had . . . it seemed her heart was about to jump from her chest as I rolled her about. And now she’s dead. But she died saving her daughter.”

  Jory

  All the shadows that clouded my youthful days, all the questions and the doubts I’d been afraid to speak about, all have been cleared away now, like cobwebs from the corners.

  I thought when we came back from the funeral of our grandmother that life would go on as usual and nothing much would be changed.

  Some things have changed. Some weight lifted from Bart’s shoulders and he became again the quiet, meek, little boy who couldn’t really like himself very much. His psychiatrist said he would grow out of that gradually, with enough love given him, and enough friends his own age to play with.

  Even as I write this I can look through the open window and see Bart playing with the Shetland pony our parents gave him for Christmas. At last he had his “heart’s desire.”

  I watch him often, the way he looks at the pony, the way he stares at the St. Bernard puppy my daddy gave him too. Then he turns his head and stares over at the ruins of the mansion. He never speaks of her, the grandmother of our lost summer. We never speak the name of John Amos Jackson, nor mention Apple or Clover. We can’t risk the health and happiness of one unstable little boy trying to find his way in a world that isn’t always like a fairy tale.

  We passed a true Arab woman on the street the other day. Bart turned around to stare after her, wistful longing in his dark-dark eyes. I know now that whatever else she was, Bart loved her—so she couldn’t have been as awful as I think when I read Mom’s book. She made Bart love her, even as John Amos took a vulnerable child and warped him.

  And so John Amos got what he deserved, and, like my grandmother, he too lies dead in his grave, way back in Virginia, the home of his ancestors who settled in what history books call “The Lost Colony.” All his plotting and scheming was for nothing. If, wherever he is, he can think, I wonder what he thinks and feels knowing what was in the will my grandmother left. Did he turn over in his grave when the lawyer told us that our grandmother had left the entire Foxworth estate to Jory Janus Marquet, Bartholomew Scott Winslow Sheffield, and surprisingly enough, Cynthia Jane Nickols too would get her share. And none of us were legally her blood kin—legally. All that money held in trust for us, until we reach the age of twenty-five. All held in trust, my father and mother the administrators.

  We
could live in splendor if we chose, or if my parents chose, but we live on in the same redwood house with the marble statues out back, and every year the garden grows more lush.

  Bart keeps himself exceptionally clean now. He will not lie down to sleep at night until his room is in complete order, everything precisely placed. My parents look at each other when he insists on doing this, and I see fear in their eyes, making me wonder if Malcolm Neal Foxworth was exceptionally clean and neat.

  Bart laid down the law to my mother and father one morning soon after Christmas had come and gone, and he had his pony: “If you are to keep Cindy then you can no longer live together as man and wife and contaminate my life with your sinning. You have to sleep in my room, Daddy, and Momma has to sleep alone for the rest of her life.”

  Neither one of my parents said anything, they just looked at him until he flushed and turned away, murmuring, “I’m sorry . . . I’m not Malcolm, am I? I’m just me, nobody much.”

  * * *

  Bart is a true Foxworth over and over, for he will rule again, so he says, in the new Foxworth Hall that he will build. “And you can dance your head off until you are forty,” he yelled at me when he was angry because I petted his new pony, “but you won’t be as rich as I’ll be! At forty, I’ll be able to buy and sell you ten times over, for dancing legs won’t matter when you grow old, and brains count more, a million times more!”

  “I’ll be the greatest actor the world had ever known!” he stated arrogantly, turning from meek to aggressive just because he was holding that red journal book in his hands. “And when I’m done with the stage and screen, I’ll turn my talent to the business world, and everybody who didn’t respect me as an actor will stand up and applaud my genius for making money.”

  Acting, that’s all he was doing again, for he was only a little boy who seldom spoke except to himself. And yet, sometimes when I lie awake at night, thinking about all that happened before he and I were born, there must be some reason for all that went before. Out of the ruins should come the roses, right? I worry about all the women Bart would step on to get his way. Would he be as ruthless as our great-grandfather just to obtain an even greater fortune? And how many would suffer because of one eventful summer, fall, and winter in the year I was fourteen?

  I’ll take him by the hand tomorrow, and lead him out into the garden, and together we’ll stand before the copy of Rodin’s “The Kiss” and maybe then he’ll realize that God planned for men and women to love in a physical way, and it’s not sinful, only natural.

  I pray that someday Bart will see life my way—that love—no matter what its form, or how it comes wrapped, is worth the price, no matter how high.

  Between the choice of love or money I’ll take love. But first comes dancing. And when Bart is old and gray and he sits in Foxworth Hall counting his billions, I’ll sit with my wife and family content with the happy memories of how it used to be when I was young, graceful, handsome, on stage with the foots in my eyes, the sound of applause in my ears, and I’ll know I fulfilled my destiny.

  I, Jory Janus Marquet, will carry on the family tradition.

  Bart

  They don’t know or understand me any more than they did before. Jory looks at me with pity, like I’m different from the rest of the human race. He feels sorry that I don’t like his kind of music, or any kind of music, and colors don’t paint pictures in my brain or make music in the air. He thinks I will never find joy in anything. But I’ll find a way to enjoy. I’ll know the future that is right for me, for that was the true reason God sent my grandmother and John Amos and Malcolm to me, like the fates come to lead the way. They came to show me how to save my parents from the everlasting fires of hell.

  I watch my momma and daddy night and day, and sneak into their room at night, fearing to catch them doing something wicked. But they only sleep in each other’s arms, and to my relief her eyes don’t move rapidly behind her closed lids. She doesn’t have nightmares anymore. I see my daddy’s eyes at the breakfast table, looking bluer than ever for he has let go of his stranglehold on his sister.

  I have saved them.

  So, Jory pities me. But one day when we’re both older, wiser, and I have found the right words, I’ll tell him something Malcolm wrote in his book—there has to be darkness if there is to be light.

  Epilogue

  I remember so much of what went on before we flew to Greenglenna to bury my mother beside her second husband. It was Bart who insisted that his grandmother had to lie in eternal sleep beside his father, his real father, Bartholomew Winslow. We cried, all of us, even Emma and Madame Marisha, and I never hoped to see the day when Madame would cry for a member of my family.

  When the first clod of damp earth struck her coffin in its grave, it took me back to when I was twelve years old and Daddy was in his grave, and Momma was holding fast to my hand, and to Chris’s, and each twin held on to an older brother or sister. And only when I heard the dirt hit her mahogany casket did I cry out something I’d withheld for so long—too long. It came from the depths of me, tearing away the years and making me a child again, and needing, so needing to hold on to my parents. “Momma, I forgive you! I forgive you! I still love you! Can you hear me now where you are? God, please let her know I forgive her.” I sobbed then and fell into my brother’s arms. I would have said more to her on her burial day, but Bart was there, glaring his dark eyes at me, commanding me to be strong, to let go of the man I loved. But how could I, when to do so would destroy him?

  * * *

  We still live in the house next to the ruins of the mansion where my mother died in her efforts to save my life, but it’s not like it used to be before she came with her evil butler who filled Bart’s head with his crazy beliefs and gave Bart that journal of Malcolm Foxworth. I love Bart, God knows I love him, but when I see those dark merciless eyes in the shadows, I cringe and wonder why I needed revenge so much when I had Chris to save me.

  Last night Jory and Melodie danced an astonishingly beautiful performance of “Romeo and Juliet.” I trembled to see Bart cynically smiling, as if he’d lived a century or more and he’d seen all this happen before, and it would be him who got everything he wanted in the end, as Bart has always found a way to make himself the center of attention.

  He steals into our bedroom at night, having taught himself how to pick locks, and stares down at Chris and me, while I feign sleep, holding still, breathless, until he is gone, so terribly afraid that the evil that lived in Malcolm will live again in my youngest son. And sooner or later history will repeat itself.

  “Today the mail brought a letter from my literary agent,” I whispered to Madame M. while Jory and Melodie changed from costumes to street clothes. “She’s found a publisher who’s made me an offer on my book, the first one. It’s not a fortune, but I’m going to accept.”

  Madame gave me another of those long speculative looks that had once made me feel very uneasy and vulnerable, as if she could see through me. “Yes, Catherine, you will do what you must regardless of the consequences or the protests I make, or anyone makes.”

  I knew who she meant, for he glared at me, telling me I should keep my secrets to myself and not let the whole world know. But Bart cannot rule my every action.

  “You will be rich and famous in a different way than I expected when you were fifteen,” continued Madame, who was now my dearest confidant, “for everything can come to those who have the desire, the drive, the dedication, and the determination.”

  I smiled uneasily, afraid to look at Bart again, but fixed my eyes on my eldest son who was the star of the evening. I knew for a certainty that when my books were published, and all the skeletons were out of the Foxworth closets, I’d lay the shade and thwart the ghost of Malcolm Neal Foxworth, and never, never would he rise up to rule over me again.

  Nervously my hands fluttered up to my throat to feel for those invisible pearls that used to adorn my mother’s throat, but never mine, never mine. I said again to myself that it w
ouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Evil did thrive in the dark shadows of lies. Evil could not possible survive in the full bright light of unstinting truth, as incredible as it may seem to some who won’t believe.

  Shivering, I moved a bit farther from Bart, nearer to Chris who put his arm about my shoulders, as my arm encircled his waist, and I was safe, safe. Now I could look at Bart and smile; now I could reach for Cindy’s hand, and try to reach for Bart’s . . .

  But he drew away, refusing to join the chain I would form of our family, one for all, and all for one.

  I’d like to conclude by saying I don’t cry anymore at night, that I don’t have nightmares in which I see my grandmother climbing the stairs to try and witness evil deeds we didn’t do. I want to write that I can only be grateful that from all the thorny stems the attic flowers managed to grow and produced at least a few roses, real roses, the kind that blossom in the sun.

  I’d like to conclude with that. But I can’t. Nevertheless, I’ve grown old enough and wise enough to accept what gold coins are offered, and never, never will I turn over anything that glitters to look for the tarnish.

  Seek and you shall find.

  * * *

  For some reason I glanced up then. Bart was sitting in a shadowy corner again, holding in his hands a red volume that appeared to be covered in leather with gold tooling. Silently he read, his lips moving as he mouthed the words of a great-grandfather he’d never seen.

  I shivered. For Malcolm’s journal had burned in the fire. The book Bart held was a cheap imitation of leather and every page was blank.

  Not that it mattered.