“This story begins in the sands of Egypt a long time ago…” And so began my story and song. Unlike Vivian’s monologue, mine was not original, but it was one that Mother would’ve recognized from when we lived in Cairo. It was about an Egyptian princess who made the ultimate sacrifice for her dead child, a sacrifice that brought the little one back to life. I can’t say why I chose such a morbid tale for Mother’s party. Even as I began telling it, I questioned my decision. Why was I reminding Mother of happier times with Father? Oh yes, I know. Because I cannot forget. And even as I spoke, I knew the truth. I had never forgiven them for bringing us here. I blinked back the tears that threatened to fall from my eyes and continued with my performance. My telling did not take nearly as long as Vivian’s, but I received the greatest amount of applause of any of us. I curtsied and hugged my mother’s neck. She was the picture of sadness and looked paler by the minute, so much so that her guests began to say their goodbyes and many of them quietly expressed concern about her health to me. I assured them that I would give her all my attention and that despite what it looked like, she was certainly on the mend.
Dan and Vivian had not returned, and as the remaining guests began to leave, I felt a kind of strange sadness washing over me. I squatted down in front of Mother and took her hands in mine. Yes, they were still icy cold. I rubbed them, but it did no good. “Go to bed, Mother. I will come in to kiss you goodnight soon. Do you need anything at all?”
She shook her head, pressing her handkerchief to her pale lips. “No, Joanna. I do not need anything.” There was no kindness in her eyes. She paused as if she had something else she wanted to say to me, but she released my hands. “Thank you for a lovely party. No need to fuss over me, Joanna. Go have some fun with your friends.” She smiled wanly as Emma pushed her chair toward the elevator.
And then Danny was there, eyes flashing, and he wasn’t willing to let me talk. “Kindness, Joanna. That is the only thing you are missing. You have beauty, wit, intelligence but no kindness… I fear that you do not have enough of it.”
I rose to my feet, taken aback by my friend’s accusation. He and I never spoke so frankly to one another about private matters, so I was surprised to hear him say such a thing to me now. I knew he did not approve of my dislike for Vivian, but he’d always kept his opinions to himself before.
“Who have I been unkind to?” I asked even though I knew the answer. This was all about Vivian. Why would Danny take her side? Why was he so determined to involve himself in my affairs?
“Your mother, for one, but I am speaking about your friend now. Make peace with Vivian and be kind to her. Life has a way of making us regret those small cruelties, Joanna.” He lifted his head and peered down at me as if I were truly beneath him even though I was only a few inches shorter. “I think your father would agree with me.”
“How dare you invoke my father’s memory to further your own questionable motives, Dan Petit? I think you should leave Morgan’s Rock, and I will thank you not to involve yourself in my personal business again.”
Dan reached for his overcoat. “Have it your way, Joanna. Be a vicious bitch if it pleases you, but don’t expect me to stick around to watch you enjoy your little cruelties. It really is beneath you.”
He left me in the Great Room, and I watched him disappear down the stairs. I felt like ice as I made my way to my own room. I closed the door behind me and cried until the sun came up.
Chapter Two
April 1922
I was dreaming about Egypt again, and strangely enough I was riding not on a camel but on my own beloved horse, Magadan. The beautiful gray mare shook her head joyfully as she often did when we rode together.
But this isn’t right. You can’t be here, Magadan. I left you in Kent. I love you, my own dear pet. My Magadan. One day I will see you again. I will, I promise.
I petted the horse’s fur, but with each stroke she began to disappear. It was almost as if my strokes were erasing her. I cried as she gradually vanished. I stepped back, confused by the sight of my horse fading along with the Sphinx behind her.
I wasn’t in Egypt at all. I must be dreaming.
“You would like for me to go away, wouldn’t you, Jo-an-na?” I woke up suddenly with Vivian’s sing-songy voice in my ear. Although I was startled and immediately sensed danger, my arms were pinned to the floor by her bony knees so I could not move a muscle. Vivian wore her favorite dark blue nightgown, a wispy garment that barely covered her thin body. Her icy-cold hands clamped over my mouth as she accused me again. “You hate me, and I think you want me to die.” Her voice was slurred as if she were drunk, but I smelled no alcohol. What was the matter with her? I screamed against her skin. If I could bite her, I would. What was she doing? What did she want from me?
“No, no, Joanna. Be quiet, be very quiet or else I will have to go visit your mother. And what do you think would happen if I held her down like this? If I put my hand over her mouth and held her in place, she would certainly be frightened. She could have a fit, and you know that is a dangerous thing. She might even die.”
I swore at her, but she could not hear my muffled words.
“But I think she will die soon because she wants to. She wants to be with him. She talks to him all the time. She uses my blood to call him. Did you know she used me, cousin? Dan says you know nothing, but how can you not know that? That is why I am here. This is why they brought me here, Joanna—your precious parents did this to me. For my blood. Did you know? Answer me!”
I bucked against her weight and screamed into her hand again, but it was useless. My nemesis had me at a disadvantage, and she was saying things that I did not want to hear. Had she lost all reason? Of course I had no idea what she meant—she was a madwoman to be sure.
Vivian sobbed as she held me. I could feel her tears fall on my skin. “What do you think I should do, Joanna? She wants more of my blood, but it does no good. And now I grow weak and can do nothing else for her. My blood does not call him anymore—you should give her your blood. I told her this, but she says no. You are too precious, Joanna, too precious even though your blood is much more powerful. But it is not fair! It would be much better, much sweeter I’m sure, if we used your blood.” Vivian stared off into the distance as if she could see or hear something I did not. I struggled again and finally brought her attention back to me. “I do this for her, I give her my blood to restore her to health and to call her dead husband, and you hate me! How can that be?” Vivian sobbed and stared into my eyes. It was dark in my room, but I could see her perfectly in the dim light. I could even see the dampness beneath her eyes. “I was happy once. I never wanted to come here. Never. But for what reason do you hate me, I wonder? I must show you something, Joanna. I will show you the truth, but you must believe me. Are you ready to see the truth? No screaming…if I move my hand, you must listen. Promise?”
I was hardly in a position to argue with her or make any kind of deal. I nodded my head slowly, and she moved her hand away from my face. I kept my word and did not scream.
“Look at this.” Vivian slid back her gown sleeves and held up her arms. They were badly bruised. What had she done to herself? There were multiple wounds, slices and cuts. “This is what your mother has done to me. I cannot help her anymore, Joanna. I cannot. It hurts me, and I feel so sick. You must make her stop.” She lifted off me, and I scrambled to my feet. She didn’t run or back away from me. “You have to make her stop.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Vivian. What did you do? Have you hurt my mother?” I began to fear the worst. I eased toward the door. I should go see her and make sure all was well.
“No. You are not listening to me. You have to stop Zea. My blood cannot help her anymore, but I fear that without it she may die. But I think she wants to die, and then what will happen to me? I know you hate me.” She began to sob quietly with her face in her hands.
Be kind, Joanna. Kindness.
I paused and reached my hand out to her. What should I do
? She was crying loudly now. “Sit down, Vivian.” I invited her to sit on the edge of my bed. I didn’t quite trust her, but I was curious. “Please, sit.”
She did as I asked and sat beside me on the bed, her pretty face stained with tears. I reached for a handkerchief on my nightstand table and handed it to her. “I know you hate me,” she whispered as I clicked on the lamp light.
“Vivian, what do you want? Why are your arms cut to pieces? What have you been doing to yourself?”
She rubbed her nose with the handkerchief; she looked so thin. So thin that the bones in her hands looked almost skeletal. Had she stopped eating? What was going on here?
“You do not know, then? Of course you don’t. They don’t want you to know.” She twisted the handkerchief in her hands. “And if I tell you, they will send me away, won’t they?” She bit her fingernail thoughtfully and stared at the doorway as if she could see someone I couldn’t. I glanced in the same direction, but there was no one there. I hurried to close the door and walked back to her.
“Let me see your arms, Vivian. I think I have some salve in my dressing room.” I touched her arm softly. Maybe Dan was right. Perhaps I had been too cruel to Vivian. Why should I hate her? She did not kill my father as I sometimes imagined. That was just a child’s fantasy.
“No, no salve,” Vivian mumbled. The lovely brunette had the look of someone who was waking from a dream. One minute she was frail and vulnerable, but not now. “I think I hear your mother calling me.” She rose from the bed and flinched away from my touch. Her eyes were flitting about the room again; I could not see anything, but I believed I felt something. A moving of the air. A shadow that remained outside my direct line of sight. It hovered just at the edges, and no matter how quickly I turned my head, I could not catch full sight of it.
Stop it, Joanna. You’re letting Vivian’s madness rub off on you. She’s having you on, making you see ghosts too.
“You couldn’t possibly hear Mother calling from here, Vivian,” I corrected her, but I too heard a voice—no, make that voices. And they were just outside my door. They spoke over one another, but none of them were loud enough for me to discern. Curious now, I ignored Vivian’s shrinking posture and hurried to the door to get to the bottom of this.
“Who’s there?” I asked as I swung the door open furiously.
The hallway was empty. Nobody was there. It was pitch black, but that didn’t stop me from stepping outside my room and looking up and down. “Hello?” Still nothing to see and I now heard no voices, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there. I walked back into my room and saw Vivian whispering and pacing the floor. Her voice was soft and low and strange. Like the ones I heard in the hallway.
“Vivian? What is it?” She paced faster and laughed in my face. Just a few seconds ago she was a weepy-eyed victim of some nefarious plot perpetrated by Mother. Now she was the Vivian I knew. Had this all been an act? I noticed to my horror that her left wrist was bleeding. How did she cut herself? I had no knives in here. Then I saw that her fingernail tips were stained with blood. She cut herself with her own fingernails!
“Oh God! Vivian! What have you done to yourself?” Her expression had changed completely. The crying waif that woke me with her desperate attack had disappeared. The old Vivian, the one who despised me as much as I despised her, had returned with a vengeance. She raised her wrist and turned it so that her blood splattered on the carpet, and then as quick as a cat she raced from the room. I could hear her laughter travel down the hallway, and I didn’t know what to do except close and lock my bedroom door. I would never again sleep with the door unlocked. Never.
I retrieved some towels from my water closet and sopped up the blood as best I could. Hopefully the carpet wouldn’t be ruined. I would have to have one of the housemaids clean it properly in the morning. Surely it wasn’t enough blood to do much damage. The rug was a thing of beauty, a Turkish prayer rug, a gift from long ago. Strange that Vivian would stain that particular relic with her blood. I tried to think about something else besides the weird happenings of this evening, but my mind kept returning to Vivian. What was I going to do about her? Clearly, she was disturbed. I would have to deal with her. No question. She could not stay at Morgan’s Rock any longer. This would simply not do at all.
There were no more voices, no more whisperings, but the hallway sounded too quiet. No ticking of the clock. No footsteps. Nothing at all. Eventually my eyes grew heavy, and I settled into a restless sleep.
And I dreamed about Vivian.
She wore her veil again, the blue one with the painted silver stars. She was whispering, intensely. Vivian hovered in my face, speaking to me. I could not discern the words at all, but the message was clear. She was cursing me. Instinctively I swung my hand at her. I had to push her away, get her out of my face, but she wasn’t actually there. She was a shadow, an evil shadow.
“Stop it! Stop it, Vivian!”
And to my surprise, she did stop, but her face was completely covered by her veil. Was this Vivian? I could hardly think to ask. It was then that she cocked her head at me. My skin crawled and I felt sick, but I could not move or take my eyes off her veiled face. My fingers shook as I reached for the fabric. With a quick tug, I pulled the cloth off her head.
I expected to see her beautiful face, maybe a disdainful sneer, but that’s not what I saw. A skeletal face stared back at me, and suddenly the face opened its mouth and screamed at me.
I woke up and vomited in my bed.
Chapter Three
Present Day
It took all my strength to fling back the covers, and when I did, I immediately felt sick. What was going on? Where was I? This wasn’t my bed. I shouldn’t be here!
“Vivian?” I whispered as I blinked my eyes against the bright light that appeared to fill every corner of this room. Wait, I knew where I was. This had been my room when I came here as author Megan Pressfield. This had been Megan’s bedroom, on the bottom floor of Morgan’s Rock. Joanna’s bedroom had been upstairs. This big empty bed had been mine, but I wanted no part of that life now—I’d chosen Joanna’s.
I struggled with the nausea as my mind raced to get a handle on what was happening. I never wanted to be Megan Pressfield again. Never. I had made another choice! I had spent too much time writing about the things that Joanna experienced, too much time, and I had allowed life to pass me by. Too much time reading about adventures and heroines…but being Joanna, I had the chance to do both. And I was in love. As Joanna, I loved someone.
Paden! Paden Kincaid!
I sobbed as I realized he was lost to me. Even as I whispered his name, my mind was effectively burying his image as if he’d been a figment of my imagination or someone from a dream. Some part of my subconscious. Yes, my mind worked against me as all memories of him began to fade.
No! Stop! How can I forget Paden? I love you!
Paden’s warm skin. His shaggy blond hair. His ability to laugh at every one of my fears. I had loved him completely. Had I been wrong to do so? Maybe. Perhaps it had been morally wrong, but it had been my choice to make. Or had it been? The past apparently rejected me now, but why? What had I done to deserve this?
“Paden…” I whispered as I sighed away the remnants of him.
And then I could not recall his face at all. I couldn’t conjure it no matter how I stilled my breathing or clamped my eyes shut. I was here in the present. Back where I belonged. Without Paden or any good memory of him. But others…I could remember them.
Danny. Vivian. Mother.
Something had happened with Vivian. Yes, those eyes of hers, they bore into my soul. She wanted me to remember, and I could see the blood. Her bloody arms. What have you done, Vivian? What have you done?
But she did not answer, and I could not summon anything else to help me recall her message. I clutched my stomach and let the tears fall freely. I felt such grief. Such overwhelming grief. I turned on my side facing the wall as if that would change the truth of my ne
w reality.
I had returned to Morgan’s Rock, but I was no longer Joanna Storm.
Chapter Four
“Since when did you start smoking?” I heard Alex’s voice before I saw him. That was the only disadvantage to the Great Room. The stairs opened up practically in the middle of the room and the treads were carpeted. The floor may have creaked a little when he walked up, but I’d been lost in my thoughts and my notes. And that letter. More than anything in the world, I wanted to show Alex that note. I wanted to get his opinion, but he wasn’t open to hearing about it right now. I picked a piece of tobacco off my lip and defiantly took another deep drag from my cigarette.
“Since you’ve been gone,” I popped back flatly. I shuffled the papers in my lap together and stubbed the cigarette out in the crystal ashtray on the side table next to me.
“I’ve only been gone a few hours, Megan. What’s the matter with you?” he asked as he slid a box of office supplies onto my desk.
“Did you come to pick a fight with me? Because I’m game if you are, Alex Wagner.”
Alex frowned as he unpacked the box and set the contents neatly on my work space. He’d brought me spiral notebooks and blue pens, my preferred mediums when brainstorming chapters. “I’m not interested in fighting with you, Megan Pressfield, since we’re using our full names today. I’m just here to help. If you want to smoke yourself to death, that’s your business. In the meantime, I think I got everything on your list. You should know that the publisher is really anxious to take a peek at a few chapters, but I’m sure you could get away with a partial. Maybe the first few paragraphs. It’s just a formality.”
“I know the drill, Alex. You’re all business, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question, more an observation or an accusation. Why was I so unhappy with Alex all of a sudden?
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