Tiptoeing the huge flight of steps leading to the front porch, I felt the stirrings of unease increasing, and a strange sense of foreboding settled over me. I paused for a moment and considered turning back. I shouldn’t feel obligated to someone who waited more than 30 years to pop into my life. I could easily turn around and go home. No one could think badly of me for doing so. But, on the other hand, I had to admit it was silly that this strange feeling of dread had so much power over me—just a spooky house. Should I miss out on what was probably my only chance to see my grandfather alive just because I was afraid? Afraid of what I was not sure, but the feeling was strong enough that I stayed frozen in place for several minutes.
In the end, my curiosity and sense of obligation won out, and I continued. All the while, though, nature seemed to be sending me a strange kind of warning. Everything from the chirp of the crickets to the flash of the last of the summer lightning bugs seemed bizarrely ominous. The majestic oak trees, always so lovely to me during the day, now appeared menacing, like giant arms bursting through the ground to block my path. I felt their shadows closing in on me as the dark clouds obscured the moon. Even the ominous house itself seemed to be glaring at me in silent warning, its eye-like windows suddenly filling me with an unspeakable terror.
As I eyed the clouds above, their shaped transformed—for the briefest of moments—into a very death mask of evil as the moon cast its glow upon them. Before I could turn back and run, the front door was thrown open. I jumped, leaving my heart in the space I’d previously occupied.
Mr. Talbot called out, “Evangeline, you’re right on time! I’m very impressed. Wasn’t sure you were up to it... think most people would’ve thought this sounded too crazy and would’ve changed their mind at the last minute. Not you though! Definitely got your grandfather’s courage, I see.”
I couldn’t speak. Had he known that I was about to leave? Of course that would be impossible... Still, there was something in his tone that suggested otherwise.
“Well, come on in girl. No sense standing around in the dark. Besides, it’s one minute to midnight. Best come on in.”
I looked back at my car. I could certainly outrun this frail old man. Wouldn’t be good manners, though, to just turn around and run. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m well aware that my life experience has caused me to see things in a certain way, to see danger in almost any situation—not exactly rational. Or healthy. And, now that Mr. Talbot was here, this dear, sweet man, my fears seemed all the more ridiculous. I took a deep breath. I needed to let go. I tried my best to let go of my (mostly) irrational fears as I walked up to the house.
He suddenly threw his arms around me as I reached the top of the steps. There was a peculiar twinkling in his eyes. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”
The grand home was resplendent with high ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and gorgeous mahogany wood floors. Mr. Talbot led me to a grand sitting room in which lavishly painted oversized portraits covered the walls.
“I’ve got some tea ready. I know if you’re anything like your grandfather, you love having your tea. Excuse me a moment while I check go check on him.”
As I watched him walk away, I was jolted by the expressions on the larger than life-sized portraits around the room. None of the subjects in the eight portraits seemed to look at me. All were looking sort of past me. But the main thing, the thing that startled me the most, was that the face on each portrait seemed to have the same expression. Each person wore a strangely smug expression, an expression that suggested they knew something—something of extreme importance—that I didn’t. The feelings of paranoia only grew as I sipped my tea. There were seven men among them and only one woman, but all had the same bizarrely penetrating grey eyes. The room was octagonal, almost circular really, so in spinning around to look at them, I grew increasingly dizzy.
After a few minutes, I became so dizzy in fact that my head began to ache, and I had to look away—but how could I? I was completely surrounded by those hideous faces. With one hand on my forehead, I took a long, steadying sip of tea. It was an intoxicatingly warm and aromatic rosemary blend, the finest I had ever tasted. Surely I’d be feeling better in no time. Strangely, though, the exquisite tea failed to help, and I began to feel even more paranoid not looking at the terrible portraits. Were they closing in around me? I felt sure that they were. Self preservation instincts screamed for me to run, leave that place and never look back. For reasons unknown to me I couldn’t seem to move. I sat completely still, save for stealing glances to make sure the ghastly apparitions in the portraits had not actually begun their descent.
After several long minutes of this I couldn’t continue with my skin intact. I tried to stand up, but instead stumbled and fell back into my chair. Something was very wrong. My chest began to tighten, but my hands were oddly steady. I held them up—no shaking. This was not one of my attacks. Something else was happening. I tried my best to focus, but the portrait before me only came in and out of focus, its now twisted and contorted face looking more malevolent than ever. I heard someone talking but it was very far away.
“Hands. Not. Shaking.” Was that my voice?
I tried again to stand up, but stumbled backwards instead, knocking the chair over. Get ahold of yourself, Evangeline, I reminded myself sensibly. Unfortunately, my body was incapable of listening as gravity for some reason was working against me, and I was pulled down sideways, my head and side crashing to the floor painfully. A blood-curdling scream filled my ears. No, not a scream. Laughter. Heart-stopping, mocking laughter. My hands instinctively covered my ears, but the laughter did not abate. That horrific laughter, terrifying beyond all reason, went on for two lifetimes. I could no longer see anything. My heart seemed to be beating in my throat.
Just as my synapses sputtered and threatened to quit firing entirely, the laughter dissipated, drowned out by a strange whirring sound. I was aware of something, or several things, brushing against me as they rushed past.
For several terrifying moments, I could see nothing.
Miraculously, a twinkling blue light appeared. The light gradually grew brighter and brighter; shadows began forming. I held onto the light like a life raft; it seemed to be the only thing staving off the darkness. I was still straining to make sense of the shadows when the real world suddenly came rushing back into focus.
“Evangeline? Can you hear me?” Sir Talbot asked. “Can you sit up?”
I blinked and strained my eyes furiously. “I don’t know,” I finally croaked. My head spun sickeningly.
Talbot helped me into a chair. “Are you hurt? How do you feel?”
“I don’t really know... I just sort of... fell down,” I began, relaying my own confusion. There was a strange taste in my mouth, and my bottom lip throbbed painfully.
“Well, as soon as you feel well enough, I have that paperwork to show you. I had just come down to tell you your grandfather isn’t up for a visit tonight, after all. He hasn’t woken up at all today.”
My focus began to return slowly, but a dull pain in my stomach began to take its place. “Ow,” I grumbled.
“Oh,” Mr. Talbot began cautiously, “Are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t know,” I said, truly uncertain, my hand automatically reaching for my stomach.
Mr. Talbot stared at me uneasily for several uncomfortable moments. I began to feel the pain gradually passing and exhaled a long jagged breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“I think I’m alright,” I said in a low, but steady, voice.
“Brilliant!” Mr. Talbot exclaimed, to my extreme surprise.
Now that my health had returned, the feelings of menace and unease returned to me. Something was wrong. “Come again?”
“You’re a smashing success, of course!” His face was alight with what looked very much like glee.
I rose slowly to my feet.
“At what, exactly?” I demanded, through clenched teeth.
“Oh, righ
t... I was saving this to tell you later... just in case things didn’t go well, and you ended up in hospital... or the like...” he trailed off in response to the glare on my face.
“What did you do?”
“Well, to be precise, I put a spot of something in your tea... in preparation.”
The strange pain in my stomach suddenly made sense. “You poisoned me??”
“Just a little, teensy amount, not enough to kill you....” his head wobbled back and forth in apparent thought, “ Probably.”
I could feel my face settling into a deeply unpleasant expression.
“Had to see how your body would react first...” he explained quickly, “for when you take the full dose.”
“Take more poison? I know I just hit my head, and I think it must be affecting my hearing… explain. Make this make sense,” I fumbled inarticulately, struggling to grasp why any sane person would slip me poison and then ask that I take even more.
“We’ll get to that one last.” Mr. Talbot smiled sadly. “There are three things you need to do first—tasks if you will—before you can drink the potion. Technically, it is a potion. It just happens to be poisonous for more than 99.9 percent of the population; hence the test amount I just gave you.” His eyes flickered to me meekly. “And the infinitesimal drop I gave you last night.”
“Of course. I often go around poisoning people I’ve just met.” There was no way to even attempt to control the sardonic tone in my voice, so I didn’t bother trying.
“Potion,” Sir Talbot corrected unhelpfully. “I know how it sounds, believe me. I really am glad it didn’t kill you, truly I am, but we’re running out of time right now. Sadly, this is a kind of test for your inheritance—the one you and I both know you’ve been searching for. The first task must be done this night. After you finish that, it’ll lead you to what you need to do next. On the grounds behind the house, there’s a rather large old fountain. You’ll need to gaze into it and come back and tell me what you see.”
“Um, after I get back from the hospital, you mean.”
“Nothing a hospital can do for you, I’m afraid. The effects are already wearing off. You’re color is already much nicer. Yes, you’re going to be fine.”
“Well, thanks for the lovely cup of tea. I’m leaving now.” I walked unsteadily toward the door.
“Oh, you’re not leaving.”
“I. Am. Going. Now,.” replied I, in the calmest voice I could muster.
“I don’t think so.”
I opened the door with absolutely no hesitation.
“Oh, my dear, even as stubborn as you are, you’re not going to go anywhere. I know this because I am the one who knows all about you. I know about all of the terrible things that have happened,” he casually poured himself another cup of tea, “I know that you think you’re cursed.”
I froze with my hand on the doorknob.
“I also know that’s the reason you’ve been hiding these past years. You thought you could make it stop by hiding. Or you hoped you could, anyway. Or are you just punishing yourself?” He paused, his expression quizzical. “Whichever. But, of course, that’s not the way these things work. All you really had left was your dog, Rocky wasn’t it? And he succumbed to old age only recently. Poor thing. It will never be over until you follow your grandfather’s instructions.... the only way to make it stop is to see this thing through, go into it even deeper, but you’ve always known that, haven’t you dear?”
I opened my mouth but no words came out.
“Goodness, are your hands trembling? Maybe you should have a seat, dear.”
I glared at him again. I was apparently capable of nothing else.
“Did you bring your medicine? Not that it will really do you a whole lot of good. Anti-anxiety medication only really works when your anxiety is actually worse than whatever it is you’re anxious about... not really true in your case, is it?”
I crossed my arms in an effort to control the shaking, and perhaps a little bit in childish defiance. “I know that misleading you wasn’t really the best way to earn your trust, but given you’re, ah, fragility when it comes to this topic, I felt it best to ease into this conversation.”
I slid slowly against the wall, crossing my arms tightly and silently cursing my stupid fragility.
“I know you must think I’m being a bit cruel, but this really is for the best. You’ve got to toughen up if you’re to succeed. Your grandfather and I disagree about whether or not you can even handle what’s coming, but seeing as we have no other choice, you’re going to have to do.”
I tried to control my breathing but found it was still coming unsteadily, unevenly. Panic was setting in.
Sir Lawrence Talbot seemed to be speaking from very far away. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. We can’t have you falling apart at every turn just because of some sad memories. Everybody has unhappy memories, Evangeline. You can’t spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Your grandfather would have me coddle you, tell you that none of this was your fault. Even let you walk away if you chose. But that’s not going to get us anywhere. And besides, it is your fault, Evangeline. If you had just sucked it up years ago instead of running away, you could have saved some of those people. But like always in your life, you needed to go against the grain. Most people either crack up or fight back... you stuck your head in the sand and pretended it wasn’t happening. Wasting your life at a dead-end job just so you can hide out and work on one of you little “projects” doesn’t stop the world from spinning, and you know it. And, in the mean time, you’ve all but ruined your life, your career. Dropping out of law school was just about the stupidest decision I’ve ever heard of. What is it that you’re doing now? Some sort of banal research, summarizing statistics and drawing rather obvious conclusions about them? A monkey could do that. I can only imagine what Jack would think if he could see what you’ve become...”
I could no longer hear what he was saying. His lips were still moving, but it was too late. I was under the water now... drowning. It was offsides, forbidden, for anyone to mention Jack. None of my friends even knew anything about him until I confessed to Simon. I just couldn’t bear for his name to be dropped casually in conversation; it felt like a cheapening of his memory. But this wasn’t one of my friends dropping his name so frivolously—it was a murderously cruel little old man I didn’t even know. Self preservation seemed to take hold of me.
“Enough,” I said to myself sharply, trying to regain my hold on reality. I straightened up, arms crossed tightly, and sucked in a deep breath. Trying whatever means to diffuse the venom building inside me, I pumped my fists to regain strength.
“You don’t know me. You have no idea how I feel or how it feels to be the cause of anyone’s death. I loved Jack more than someone like you could possible imagine...” I trailed off, uncrossing my arms but leaving my jaw and fists clenched, just in case.
“Good girl! I’m so sorry to have to do that to you, but I needed to snap you out of it. That really was the fastest way,” He gazed at me with what I now interpreted as fake sympathy. “Please know none of this is your fault, but we needed to toughen you up.”
My brow remained furrowed.
“Now we can get started.”
9.
“I must be out of my mind for agreeing to this.”
“More or less.” Mr. Talbot smiled. “Now keep to the path—it’s very easy to get lost out here in the forest. And don’t dawdle, please. Not even for a moment. That means no rebellious ignoring of these rules. Not tonight.”
Temporary—or perhaps non-temporary—insanity is my only excuse for not running and never looking back. I just couldn’t. The glowing embers inside me had been stoked—there was no turning back.
Sir Talbot had explained that my family had left certain things undone—and, unless mended—the outpouring of evil would only continue. What was I to do? I’d certainly seen my fair share of evil.
Walking behin
d the house through a dense forest of trees, I felt surreally calm, calmer than I could remember feeling at any other time during all the weirdness of this night. Maybe it was the poison talking. The oak trees overhanging the path leading to the fountain seemed larger than life somehow, like nothing could possibly lie beyond them. Only the smallest beams of moonlight reached through clouds and canopy to reach me. Waves crashed against the shore somewhere in the distance. The path zigzagged through the trees so closely that I nearly had to hug them to just to keep my balance.
At the end of the path, the forest opened up into a clearing, with a magnificent magnolia tree towering at the center of it. A tiny shimmer below the tree drew my eye, luring me closer. An ancient rectangular stone fountain surrounded the shining water—a faint silver glowing from within its depths. It grew brighter until the ethereal light illuminated the entire clearing.
Beloved Evangeline (A Dark Paranormal Urban Fantasy Trilogy for Grown-ups - Book 1) Page 9
