by A. D. Koboah
“Avery.”
“Of course, sir. I mean, Avery.”
She began to move away but I stopped her.
“On second thought, book that trip to England for Mallory and me. You can have that week off instead. It has been some time since I spent some quality time with Mallory. Don’t you think?”
She gulped but managed to keep the consternation from her features.
“Yes, sir.”
She fled down the corridor to another room, but her thoughts still reached me.
Good God. That man is so damned creepy. If it wasn’t for Mallory, I’d pack my bags and get the hell away from him and this house!
I stared at the vase. It was ugly. I didn’t remember seeing it before today, but it seemed as if there was a lot going on in this house that had escaped my attention of late. I had to pull myself out of this fugue long enough to pay attention to what was happening around me, especially if what she said about Mallory running wild was true. Which it most likely was.
So that evening, I had dinner with Mallory for the first time in months. When I entered the dining room, Mallory immediately left her seat and ran up and hugged me.
Good evening, Uncle Avery, she signed with an adoring smile.
Over dinner, I listened to her thoughts as always. She yawned through most of dinner, her thoughts on her classes, her annoying teachers, her friends. But she mainly seemed to be preoccupied with a science project she had to finish that evening.
I noticed some tension between her and Bernice when Bernice came to tell us she was finishing for the evening. She lived at the mansion, in one of the rooms on the ground floor, so she was nearby if Mallory needed her. Bernice’s gaze was icy when she told Mallory to make sure she got a good night’s sleep. Mallory gave her a smug smile and nodded. Bernice turned to me with a smile and bid me goodnight. But her thoughts were of contempt for me as she left the room.
As was the norm, I stayed in my study until Mallory came down at around nine in her nightgown and bid me goodnight. When I heard her settle into bed, I left the mansion. I waited a short distance away where I could hear what was happening within. Sure enough, I heard movement in Mallory’s bedroom, the tinkling of the phone in her room when she made a phone call, along with a hurried conversation.
Twenty minutes later, a car pulled up outside the mansion gates. Mallory exited the mansion a few seconds later and ran toward the car. I was shocked when I saw her fully as she got into the car, her pretty, delicate face marred with heavy make-up, hot pants exposing her pale slender legs. The other thing that shocked me is that the driver was a male in his late twenties. This wasn’t the first time he had been to the mansion to pick her up. The car pulled away.
I re-entered the mansion. Bernice was in her room talking, or, I should say, shouting down the phone. I heard my name substituted with a few choice insults before I moved upstairs toward the sound of breathing coming from Mallory’s bedroom. I entered and stared down at the source of the breathing. A portable tape player lay on the pillow.
I felt something for the first time since Luna’s death. Anger.
I went down to my car. There was no need for me to hurry, for I had seen where they were headed.
***
They were parked by a bayou beneath ghostly trees dripping with Spanish moss when I drove up to them. The headlights of my car cast a flare of amber light across them in the back seat of the car, but my supernatural vision had seen them long before then.
I won’t describe what I saw.
The car headlights startled them enough for them to disengage from each other, and I saw intense fear in Mallory’s face when she recognised my car.
I got out and walked toward the car, giving them enough time to fumble with their clothing. I pulled the unlocked car door on her side open, took hold of her by the arm and dragged her out.
“Go and wait for me in the car.”
She folded her arms over her chest and shook her head, scowling.
I stared at her for one long moment, my anger simmering beneath the surface. She held my gaze for a few seconds before she looked down. With a fleeting glance at her companion, she walked over to my car and got in, slamming the door shut behind her.
I turned my gaze to the fleshy faced, dark-haired man.
“Hey,” he drawled. “I don’t know who you are to her, but she’s old enough to choose her boyfriends.”
“Old enough,” I hissed. “You call fourteen old enough?”
He paled visibly.
“She told me she was eighteen! I swear, if I’d known there’s no way I would have touched her.”
For the first time in decades, I desperately wanted to kill someone. And I could not trust myself to stay around him.
“You’ll be hearing from me again.”
I got back into my car and we drove home in silence.
Bernice appeared in the corridor the moment we entered the mansion. She took in my hand on Mallory’s arm and the anger blazing in my eyes, eyes that had been vacant the entire time she had known me. She immediately grew anxious.
“Mr Wentworth. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, Bernice. You go on back to bed.”
Her gaze was on Mallory, who was wiping away angry tears. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get the two of you something to eat, or perhaps some warm milk? Or maybe some hot chocolate? I’ve—”
It seemed she was going to run through every single thing in the kitchen, but I interrupted her. “Thank you. But we will be fine.”
I pulled, or, more accurately, dragged Mallory along with me toward the study. I paused at the study door, realising how abrupt I had been. “Thank you, Bernice. I will let you know if we need you.”
Her anxious gaze was on Mallory as we entered and closed the door behind us.
In my study, she sat with her arms crossed and glared at me stonily. Her thoughts were as closed as her lips when I placed the tape player I found in her room on the desk in front of her.
“Clever, very clever. Unfortunately a heartbeat cannot be duplicated quite as easily.”
Well, it was good enough to fool you all these months!
“Months?”
She paled, but the defiance reasserted itself. I inhaled and tried to calm my anger. Deciding to move on to marginally less emotive subject matter, I picked up the tape player.
“How long have you known about me? Or, to be precise, what exactly do you know?”
She merely gave me a withering glance and then leaned back in the chair with a smug smile on her lips, her mind still completely blank.
“Clearly not as much as you think, if you really believe that little wall can keep me out of your mind.”
I briefly leaned against the mental wall she had put up, having no intention of searching her memories, as I did not want to see the excruciatingly intimate details of her extracurricular activities. She reacted visibly to the mild intrusion and screamed out, bringing her hands to her head although I had already backed away.
Her reaction shook me and for a few moments, all I could do was stare at her wide-eyed.
When she met my gaze, her eyes were glistening with tears of anger and of fear. Her mind, or I should say its surface thoughts, was open once more.
I’ve always known, she spat at me mentally. I would have to be stupid to not know you’re different.
“I see,” I replied.
My attention was only partially on what she was saying, as now I was caught up in a memory of hers with Bernice, some weeks old.
Bernice was standing in the foyer in her dressing gown and slippers, her hair covered by a black headscarf. It was four o’clock in the morning and she was shouting at Mallory, demanding to know where she had been and threatening to call and tell me about Mallory’s nightly outings.
Mallory glared at her and then swept past her to the stairs. She stopped then and faced Bernice, signing rapidly.
Who do you think he’ll believe? His little white princess or the black
help? You’ll be looking for another job by the end of the week!
Bernice stared at her stonily. Mallory let the silence linger for a few moments and then moved to Bernice.
I love you, she signed. I don’t want you to leave. I would be all alone without you.
She wrapped her arms around Bernice briefly and kissed her on the cheek before she ran up the stairs to her room, knowing Bernice would not tell me a thing.
Of all the surprises that night, that little exchange between her and Bernice was the worst.
After a few moments, I was able to speak.
“I have neglected you. For that, I apologise. But that is still no excuse for your behaviour, especially the way you spoke to Bernice a few weeks ago. I had no idea how much she loved you until today.”
I had the satisfaction of seeing her gaze shift away from mine in guilt.
“As I said earlier, you do not know as much as you think you do about what I am. Otherwise you would know just how close your little friend came to dying this night.”
She was completely still, her thoughts retreating slightly.
“I want you to go upstairs and bring me all your make-up and any item of clothing that is not suitable for a girl of your age. And I mean all of it!”
She glared at me before she got to her feet.
“There will be no boyfriends and you’re grounded until I can be sure you can be trusted to behave like what you are—a fourteen-year-old child!”
An angry flush crept to her cheeks and she flounced out of the room. I listened to her stomp up the stairs to her bedroom and slam the door shut. Half an hour later, she stamped her way down the stairs and entered the study, her arms full with two bin liners of clothing and make-up. She threw it on the floor. She moved to the door then stopped long enough to glare at me, her eyes shining with rage and tears.
I hate you!
She was gone before I could react.
I was left alone in the silent study, shaken by the vehemence behind those words. The sound of her bedroom door slamming shut moments later caused me to flinch.
I tried to reassure myself that countless parents had heard those same words articulated with just as much heat, but I was still deeply shaken.
About five minutes after Mallory slammed her bedroom door shut, I heard footsteps muffled by slippers treading carefully up the stairs and then along the corridor to Mallory’s room. Mallory’s bedroom door was opened quietly a few moments later.
They signed to each other, the silence occasionally broken by Mallory’s sobs. Bernice stayed with her in her room that night whilst I remained in my study, pondering everything I had discovered, angry at myself for failing to notice Mallory had steadily been running out of control for months. Her friend’s round, fleshy face came to mind and it was an effort to restrain myself from paying him a visit, one that would see his battered body covered with earth before the sun rose.
Just before dawn, I entered Mallory’s room and gazed down at her curled in Bernice’s arms, the two of them fast asleep. I knew she had told Bernice nothing about what I was, for she had been keeping my secret for years. But I entered her mind and modified the conversation we’d had and made her forget everything she had noticed about my being “different.”
I still felt shaken by the hatred she displayed before leaving the study and considered erasing that, too. But it would not be fair. Besides, that hatred was a reminder for me to stay present and do what I entered into when I signed Mallory’s adoption papers.
I left the room as dawn seeped into view and materialised outside in the field of flowers to face the pain. She was not there waiting for me. She was gone. I could no longer hide from that fact. She was gone.
***
At first the ferocity of Mallory’s anger continued to stun and wound. She did not speak to me at all during the month-long grounding I imposed. But in comparison to the intensity of Luna’s silent treatments, it seemed extremely trivial. A few weeks into her punishment, I could even be amused as I watched Mallory at breakfast one morning. Feeling my gaze on her, she looked up and gave me a poisonous glare before she returned to her cereal.
I hid a smile behind my napkin, a smile that soon fell away. I realised I owed her a debt of gratitude for snapping me out of the zombie-like trance I had been in for the last few years. Even thinking about it concerned me deeply now.
Every day without Luna was pain, like walking through broken glass. But I realised that there was something unnatural about my grief. I could see it now. My feelings would have been the same, but it was as if there had been something dragging me down. It kept me from dealing with my grief in a normal way, and caused me to retreat so far down I was hardly aware of my surroundings. The only other time I experienced that sensation of being dragged down was at the chapel, when I had been captured by Master John and lay waiting to die.
Troubling.
At the end of the month, I rewarded Mallory with a holiday to the Caribbean. I asked Bernice to come with us, knowing it wouldn’t be the same for Mallory without her. Bernice came and I had to look at her pinched expression and hear her thoughts as she inwardly moaned nonstop about the heat, the mosquitoes, and anything at all she could think of to complain about. It was surprising, therefore, that on the journey home she gazed out of the airplane window, her thoughts clearly and truthfully revealing she’d had such a pleasant holiday and would miss the Caribbean.
I shook my head, deciding that I wouldn’t even begin to try and understand that woman.
Mallory soon returned to her affectionate, sweet self thereafter and I realised all she had wanted, and needed, was my attention.
Chapter 43
I dreamt I was in the clearing by the chapel door. I saw Mama as clearly as the day Luna’s mortal life came to an end. But this time she was on her knees with her head bowed, her back to me. A low moan escaped her.
I was awake, startled as I stared at the ceiling, the low ache making my limbs feel like lead, not the only thing bothering me. I got out of the bed. She had shown me Ebony, a young woman who was directly descended from Lina. But she had shown me little else. It was almost as if I had been torn out of the dream before she could show me the rest. I glanced at the clock opposite the bed. It was nine twenty-five a.m. It would not take me long to reach New Orleans. But I was still troubled by Mama’s distress and how little she had been able to show me. Ebony was an extremely successful artist, but that was all I knew about her. I decided it would be a good idea to go and see her mother first and find out a little bit more about Ebony.
***
I was outside a small two-storey house. I received a few stares as I made my way to the front door. This wasn’t a part of town where you saw many whites. I knew the house was empty before I reached the front door, but for appearances sake, I knocked on the door anyway, deep in thought. Footsteps approached shortly after.
“It’s about time you got yourself over here.”
I turned around. Augusta, Ebony’s mother, stood behind me. She was a petite, plump woman who was only a few shades darker than I was. Her long wavy hair had been pulled away from her face. She was carrying two grocery bags.
“I beg your pardon?” I said as she approached.
She thrust the two grocery bags at me and I grasped them as she pushed past me to the door.
“Well, ain’t you supposed to be our guardian? Yet my Ebony’s been suffering and you’re only here now?”
She opened the door and held it open, pausing to glare at me. “Well, don’t just stand there. Get inside so I can put them groceries away.”
I followed her into a small, spotless kitchen and placed the groceries where she pointed. I finally found my voice as she began unpacking.
“Madam, I think you may have mistaken me for someone else. My name is—”
“You hush with that lie. I know who you are. I would’ve known you ain’t what you pretending to be even if I hadn’t read Luna’s journal.”
“You mean you have som
e of Luna’s psychic ability? But I thought it had died out with Lina.”
“That kind of power never dies out. We all got some of it to some extent. My Ebony’s got a big dose. It’s just that some of us don’t know that we got it or how to use it. And that’s probably for the best. In life good things always has its opposite. And that kind of power can be dangerous, too. But I guess you know that already.”
I nodded. I wanted to discuss the fact that the witch line had continued past Lina, but that dream of Mama was like a dark shadow hovering over me and I was more than troubled now.
“What has happened to Ebony?”
She sighed. “Well, I’d better make us some iced tea, ‘cause we got some serious talking to do.”
***
I had, in fact, done almost no talking at all, merely listened as Augusta told me all she knew of the trouble Ebony was in. It was evening now, a warm, sensuous evening that belonged entirely to this part of the world. I was outside Ebony’s home, one of those beautiful old houses in the Garden District of New Orleans. I had spent the rest of that afternoon with her mother and what I found out was worrying. I saw all of these men and women as an extension of Luna and the bond we had shared. They were the children we never had. Any misfortune that befell them hurt me deeply. I entered Ebony’s home.
I moved through the dark house. All the rooms were neat and orderly, but they had the stale, dusty air of rooms that had not been used in some months. Ebony was in one of the upstairs rooms. I entered the room and what I found tightened my chest. This room was markedly different to the others I had passed. The walls and floor were black and it had only two items of furniture in its centre: A chair and a mattress. It was clear she used only this room. There were used plates carefully placed to one side. Books had been stacked to knee high against every wall. Ebony, a small fragile-looking woman with a deeper complexion than her mother, lay asleep on the naked mattress, mumbling gently in her sleep. She wore double layers of clothing although it was a warm night.
