A Field of Darkness

by Cornelia Read

  How there might be a passel of kids, dark-haired and fair, tumbling together on beaches and in canoes, summer after summer . . . all of them falling asleep in the car on the way home, heads slumped on each other’s shoulders . . .

  How we might all be made whole, at long last.

  Ellis touched the jeweled bar in her hand, rocked it to and fro so it flashed in the light.

  “Madwoman,” she said, “I am so terrified that I’m going to screw this up.”

  I reached again for her hand and gently closed her fingers over the pin. “Tell you what,” I said. “Whenever it seems too good to be true, just think of all those holidays you’ll have to spend with Binty . . . Christmas dinners at some long table with too many forks, while she pushes a sliver of goose around her plate, wincing . . .”

  “Easter . . .” she groaned. “Fucking Thanksgiving . . .”

  “Kit carving the turkey, saying ‘Cute story . . . cute story . . .’”

  And then we both cracked up, which made my head pound even worse, but after a couple of minutes Ellis looked all serious again.

  She got up off the bed and walked over to the windows, a tiny row of them above dark cabinets.

  “If it was any other guy,” she said, “someone like him . . . I mean, I’d be nervous . . . excited about the possibility of it working out, because after all he’s beautiful and he’s a pleasure to be with and he even has some money, which is not the first thing but it’s a thing . . .”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Except he’s not any other guy, so this isn’t just about me . . . for me . . . there’s more at stake.”

  She turned her head to glance back at me, then looked again out the windows.

  “That’s the hard part,” she said. “That’s what scares me—why it matters so much that I don’t ruin things with him. Not what it would mean for me, but what it would mean for you.”

  “You can’t worry about—”

  “I can,” she said. “I will.”

  She put the pin down, on top of the dark wood, and dropped her hand. “Because here’s this one little object, so beautifully made, and here we are in this remarkable place, and up until now, all of it was lost to you. . . .”

  “Ellis . . .”

  “And if I don’t fuck this up,” she said, “I’ll make goddamn sure you have it back. Everything.”

  “Ellis, I am incredibly honored, and you’re the personification of all anyone could want in a friend, but there’s something you have to know . . .”

  She turned around. “Tell me.”

  I looked humbly at the floor. “When you say everything . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m not averse to jewelry or money or fast cars or hunting lodges, but if you ever try palming Binty off on me . . .”

  “Never,” she said, “cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Long as we’re clear on that,” I said, standing up.

  A mistake.

  “You okay, Maddie? You look a little . . . pale.”

  “I feel like shit.”

  “You should eat. Lapthorne’s down in the kitchen . . . he said something about pancakes and trout.”

  “Yummy,” I unconvincingly enthused.

  “Exactly what I said,” she confided. “I’ll make you something . . . a milkshake.”

  “Um, could you put some Tylenol in it? Maybe sunglasses and an icepack?”

  We walked very, very slowly down along the covered walkway to the dining room, and back through to the kitchen. Lapthorne helped Ellis locate a blender, and they found a pint of coffee Häagen-Dazs in the third icebox they tried.

  She put two scoops in the Waring’s glass carafe with some milk, and he doped it further with a little maple syrup.

  It did help, she was right. Enough that Lapthorne suggested we do some shooting off the porch.

  “I’ve got an old pump-action .22,” he said, “I’ll run back up for it, and maybe you two can rustle up some bottles.”

  He walked out through the swinging door, and when I stood up to take my glass to the sink, my head started throbbing again.

  “I could still use a little Tylenol,” I said to Ellis.

  “Should have asked him to grab you a couple from the big house.”

  “There’s, like, servants’ rooms up above here,” I said, motioning toward the staircase door. “Might be some rattling around.”

  She nodded and took my empty glass, carrying it and the blender over to the sink.

  I took the stairs slowly. Had to stop in the middle for a second because climbing made my scalp throb more. The idea of shooting was excruciating.

  There were tiny rooms up under the eaves. Through one door, I caught a peek of a clawfoot tub. I slouched inside with my fingers crossed and opened the medicine cabinet.

  Hair spray, toothpaste . . . a bottle of Bayer, thank God. Not as easy on the stomach, but my head was a bigger problem.

  I shook two tablets out and cranked the faucet, water shockingly cold because it was pumped direct from the freezing lake.

  I held my hair back and leaned down, aspirins bitter on my tongue until I swallowed three gulps of water. It tasted so sweet, after the acrid pills.

  I blotted my mouth with a hand towel, then turned back toward the hallway, looking out toward the lake as I passed the doorframe of one tiny room—a lonely cell, painted glossy mint green.

  Inside was a narrow bed, its mattress sagging on an old-fashioned metal frame. There was a pillow with no case by the tall headboard, a striped Hudson Bay blanket folded at the foot.

  Didn’t look as though it had been slept in since before the advent of television, but someone had left a few personal effects: two pictures on the wall, and a battered shelf of books that doubled as a bedside table. I stepped inside, wondering what small comforts the resident had abandoned.

  The pictures were the size of postcards. One was a photograph—Lapthorne and his brothers, very young. The second actually was a postcard . . . stripes of cancellation ink marring an upper corner.

  The image was a typical tourist shot, old enough that the colors had gone greenish. It showed the Little Mermaid statue that sits on a rock at the edge of Copenhagen’s harbor, her legs-melting-into-tail curved along the stone, body twisted at the waist so she looked shyly away from the camera. You can’t tell whether she longs for the land or the sea or both.

  So I knew who had slept here last. Gerdie, from the Jutland—that peninsula shared by Denmark and Germany.

  And then I remembered Egon’s daughter, what had been done to her before she died. The girl’s feet sliced in a hundred places, a knife shoved up her.

  I sat on the bed and wasn’t surprised to find a copy of Hans Christian Andersen in the shelf beside me. I flipped through it until I found “The Little Mermaid,” then read the words of the Sea Witch:

  I will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow.

  I closed the book and put it back, read over the spines of all the rest: Struwwelpeter and the Brothers Grimm and A Child’s Book of Greek Mythology. It had been Lapthorne all along, and I was the stupidest piece of shit who’d ever lived.

  Because of course the vial marked “C.H.” in his toilet case had been chloral hydrate, and if Ellis had taken him to the Homer show on Monday, he hadn’t been in New York the night Sembles was killed, he’d been in Williamstown—three hours from Syracuse, not six.

  I remembered Ellis saying how well she’d slept, when she never makes it through the night. H
ow groggy we were the night she and Lapthorne stayed in our apartment, so he must have doped us for practice.

  I remembered Kenny’s voice from what seemed like years ago: This was not a rookie. You can be the sickest bastard in the world, but the first time you kill somebody, it’s sloppy. This guy knew what he was doing. It had the feel of a pattern to it. . . .

  Of course it did, because he’d killed Egon’s daughter first.

  I heard the door at the bottom of the staircase squeak open, and rising footsteps too heavy to be made by Ellis.

  If he found me in the bathroom, maybe Lapthorne wouldn’t know what I’d seen. I stood up too fast, and the ancient bedsprings creaked and twanged. I froze.

  “Oh, Madeline,” his voice echoed up the stairs, “and here I had my heart set on all of us living happily ever after.”

  Three more steps and he was in the doorway, a pistol in his left hand. I stared at it.

  He looked down at it himself. “Oh, of course,” he said, as though coming to some deeply entertaining realization. “That little trick your friend the bartender pulled with the bottle. I’m ambidextrous, actually. I just make a habit of reserving my mano sinister for the coup de grace. Keeps ’em guessing, don’t you know. Wheels within wheels.”

  I turned away from him.

  He laughed. “Took you an awfully long time to put this together. I’m disappointed.”

  “You’re disappointed?” I looked back at him with effort.

  He shrugged and grinned at me. “Gave you a sporting chance.”

  “So give me another. Old times’ sake.”

  “Sorry. Already far too much on the day’s agenda.”

  “I want to see Ellis.”

  “You will,” he said. “She’s almost ready.”

  “Can’t you just . . . let her go?”

  “I think not,” he said.

  I didn’t want to ask what that meant.

  “You could keep it in the family, Lapthorne,” I said. “Give Ellis a sporting chance of her own.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Just let me see her.” Even if she’s dead.

  “You’ll see her,” he said. “You’ll see everything. Lovely view from here.”

  “Can’t we be . . . together, me and Ellis?”

  “You deserve more style, Madeline. Attention to detail.”

  “Lapthorne?” Thalidomide. Dalkon Shield. How perfectly named he was, after all.

  “Sit down.” Flick of gesture toward the old narrow bed behind me.

  I started to shake. Tremors in my belly, radiating outward. First my legs, then my arms, then even my face—teeth chattering so rapidly I knew he could hear the staccato of bone on bone.

  “I can’t.” I looked at him, wanting to keep my body quiet and still, to keep from crying or begging or falling to the floor.

  He shook his head. “Not a request.”

  “If I try I’m going to . . . just . . .” Cry. Beg. Fall.

  The shaking got worse. Bad enough to hurt, like when you’re so cold your body would just as soon shatter itself to bits for the slightest warmth.

  I reached my hand toward him, open, beseeching. “Lappy, please? I can’t move. Walk. I’m not trying to make you angry. I want to, really . . . anything. Any of this. Going along. Exactly how you tell me.”

  Lapthorne smiled. Took a step closer. “You are sweet, and I’m so very fond of you.”

  He lifted his right hand, slowly and with great delicacy, until it was inches from mine. I watched him uncurl his index finger, narrowing the gap.

  “Sistine Chapel,” he said, amused.

  I knew I couldn’t flinch when he finally touched me, no matter what.

  Only he didn’t. He maintained that exact distance, skin from skin. My fingers trembling, his absolutely still.

  A test. I was supposed to bring my hand to his.

  Or not.

  I had to choose, but what bargain would each option strike? Reprieve or submission. Truth or dare.

  Pass/fail.

  Deep breath and then I made contact: fingertip to fingertip. Scrunched my eyes shut, waiting for the verdict.

  That’s when he nailed me. Cracked the pistol butt so hard against my skull it knocked me backwards, airborne. I twisted in slow motion, forever, until the bedframe jackknifed me headfirst into the wall, one last bright flash of pain.

  So. Wrong answer.

  I was all broken. Lying there crumpled, coughing up sobs that went on so long they choked me when I fought to suck air back in.

  Lapthorne came over. To watch.

  I was so goddamn angry I could have killed him right then, despite the gun, except I was too damaged to move.

  He leaned down and grabbed me by the chin, wrenching my head up off the blanket for inspection.

  “Oh good,” he said. “Would have been a pity to ruin your face.”

  He let go, and falling those slender inches back down to the mattress hurt so much I couldn’t see.

  So I only felt it, him taking off one of my shoes.

  I knew, then. What would happen. How I would die.

  “Now sit up properly,” he said.

  I tried moving my head and wanted to puke.

  “Can’t,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Do it.”

  I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Plus it was stupid. I mean, I was going to die before my time wearing one shoe, for chrissake. I deserved to lie down.

  He cocked the gun.

  I sighed. “What, like you won’t kill me if I have good posture? Fuck you.”

  When he placed the barrel against my temple, however, I discovered I was in fact able to raise myself off the mattress.

  It took me a long time, and I couldn’t hold myself all the way up, so I just slumped against the wall and stared at him.

  There was something uncommonly bright and clear about his face, now that his true hunger glittered on the surface.

  “Too, too perfect,” he said, looking me up and down: my one bare foot, my patched jeans, my ragged sweater.

  “‘She bore it all patiently,’” he recited, “‘and when she had done her work, used to go into the chimney-corner, and sit down among the cinders and ashes, so that they call’d her Cinderella; notwithstanding, she was a hundred times handsomer than her sisters.’”

  Cute story . . . cute story . . .

  “Big fireplace has that lovely old iron pothook,” he said, “anchored deep in the fieldstone. Can’t destroy it . . . survives anything. Rest of the place will burn away, but they’ll find you.”

  “It won’t matter, the shoe. No one will know.”

  “I will. That’s what matters.”

  He looked at the door.

  “And Ellis?” I didn’t want to hear it, but if she was still alive, maybe I could buy her enough time to get away.

  “You’ll find out.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  He smiled. “A pleasing contrast.”

  “Do tell,” I said.

  “Haven’t the time, I’m afraid.”

  He shook his head, turned toward the door.

  “Not going to tie me up?”

  He looked back. “If there were any way out of this room, I would have found it a long time ago. Straight drop to the rocks, out those windows. Door might as well be steel.”

  I wanted to keep him there—tried to point at the Little Mermaid, but my hand just flopped vaguely toward her picture. “Egon’s daughter, she was the first?”

  “If you’d been just a little smarter, Madeline, you’d already know.”

  “Oh, go ahead, gloat. You’ve earned it.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t. Finding out would’ve been your prize, but you had to win the contest.”

  “I’m crushed.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Then he locked me in.

  CHAPTER 50

  Of course the first thing I did was open the windows and check out how damn far the drop was. He’d lied about plenty of other crap, but
not that: two stories plus—straight shot to the boulder on which the building perched. Even with an out-of-the-question running start to launch myself past the mass of granite, I would’ve hit ice. Didn’t matter how thick it was frozen, because the water below was only three feet deep.

  I heard a door open and close, then his footsteps going up toward the big house. I pushed farther out the window, until I was afraid I’d tip, but couldn’t twist around far enough to catch sight of the covered walkway. No way to grab onto the eaves and swing for it, monkey-style. No gutters, no handholds.

  Inside, of course, there wasn’t a trapdoor in the ceiling. Wasn’t even a closet.

  When I couldn’t hear him anymore, I started slamming against the door, but it didn’t so much as quiver and the impact made my head hurt so much I was afraid I’d black out. I slid onto the floor and thought he could have saved time and just cast me as a Rapunzel failure, none of the Cinderella crap.

  I could throw the horsehair mattress out the window and pretend it would magically break my fall. I could smash the window and slice my wrists with a piece of glass. I could just sit there and wait like an idiot. Catch up on a little reading.

  Then I looked at the bed. The tall headboard and footboard, the long metal sidepieces . . . welded? I moved closer. No, slotted together. I pulled the mattress off, braced a shoulder against the floor, and shoved the length of iron up and out. Had a nice flange or whatever at the end. Dean would know the name but who cared, because the walls were beadboard and I could use the thing to jimmy those skinny wooden strips apart—burrow through to the hallway or the bathroom.

  I wiggled the other end free, decided against the bathroom in case there were pipes, and went to work on the corner nearest the door. Once I slammed the metal in hard enough to gain a little purchase, the old wood splintered into matchsticks with barely any effort. I cleared a hole wide enough to slide through, then started on the outer wall. I crept through on my hands and knees and crouched in the hallway, not sure what to do next.

  Which way now? Down the stairs or through the bathroom window and onto the walkway roof? Stairs. Out the back and with any luck across the dirt driveway undetected, on into the trees.

  Totally brilliant plan, except for the part where Lapthorne was waiting for me in the kitchen, laughing his ass off and holding the gun to Ellis’s head.