by Dani Lamia
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” Phoebe returned, following it up with a kiss to Dzolali’s lips.
The sun shone brightly enough that both women peered through slitted eyelids. Dzolali buried herself under the comforter, not yet ready to face it.
Phoebe, on the other hand, was more than ready to get out of the bed. She felt that she had been in it for days, and a trip to the bathroom was past due. Not seeing her clothes, again, she picked up the nearest garment.
Dzolali’s black, colorfully flower-patterned kimono, fully infused with that delicious Dzolali scent, enveloped Phoebe as she quickly padded off to the bathroom.
Afterward, Phoebe took a quick but refreshing shower, then put the kimono back on. She saw herself in the mirror and froze. The notion that she had seen that kimono before began to settle into her mind.
Of course, silly Phoebes, she chided herself. Dzolali wore it last night when she came in. Duh.
Phoebe left the bathroom, took a quick look around, and darted back into the bedroom. She hung the kimono over her chair and searched her dresser for fresh clothes. As she dressed, her eyes kept going back to the beautiful robe.
Phoebe went to the bed, peeled the comforter down far enough to kiss Dzolali on the cheek, and left the room. She went down to the kitchen for a quick coffee and whatever she could find to eat. Halfway through her cup, Phoebe’s memory clicked.
The kimono was in the dream from the night before last. Dzolali had come in, somehow moving the chair out of the way, and in the dream, her wiccan lover had been wearing it.
No, that can’t be right.
Phoebe’s brow ruffled in thought as she looked out the kitchen window. She replayed the dream in her mind over and over, certain that she had seen Dzolali slip that very robe from her body before coming to her bed.
Then came the exquisite lovemaking. The restraints. The fighting with them to get at her love. Then the gargoyle came.
No. No, no. That was a dream, as was the one on that first night here. It wasn’t real.
Phoebe’s thoughts turned to Ned Onenspek and the gingerbread men. She wondered if it could be possible that she had been drugged. She shuddered as she further considered the possibility that she could have been somehow violated.
Phoebe shook her head and wiped her face with her hands. Was her love guilty of violating her? Had she been tricked into love with this person of her same sex, a persuasion that she had only in the slightest sense ever pondered but never seriously considered?
She needed to talk to Holgrave, but first, she needed to go about her daily chores like nothing was amiss.
Phoebe tackled the laundry first, as her own clothes and some of Onenspek’s and Holgrave’s were down in the great hamper, in its place under the laundry chute. She entered the basement cautiously, halting on the stairs every couple of steps to listen. The cement floor was back, as were the laundry machines and paneling. With her eyes peeled and her attention on any sound, she loaded the washing machine and set it to run. The washer rumbled and squealed, and she turned to go but was curious to have a look at the spot where the dark-haired woman from her dream, or spiritual possession, if she were to believe Glendarah, had been standing and pointing.
In the dream, Phoebe had fallen on the floor near the stairwell. She stepped to that place and faced the wall. The giant laundry machines were offset to the right, and the worktable was placed to the left. Holgrave’s developing work was done on another table along the north wall to her left, and she was certain none of that was there during the confrontation.
The light. That gas light, where was it?
She looked up to the bare ceiling. To her recollection, the lamp had been mounted to the support beam just to the right of where she had “landed.” The strange spirit had been standing almost in line with that same beam. Phoebe found it and followed it with her eyes. That spot, the place the woman had pointed, was under the worktable. Specifically, it was under the legs on the table’s right end. There was nothing unusual on the cement surface.
The noise of the machine became unbearable once the load began tumbling. She headed to the stairs and went all the way to the third floor to strip the beds.
Phoebe found the master bedroom unoccupied, so she took care of that one first, working quickly, not wishing to run into Hester. She followed that with Glendarah’s room, then Dzolali’s.
Mr. Onenspek’s bed, to Phoebe’s relief, had finally been slept in, so she stripped it and made it fresh. She sent the linen down the chute and walked past Onenspek’s second room, the studio.
A light rush of breeze pressed against her ear, entreating her to stop and pay it attention. She stilled and listened. The gentle gust happened once more, and behind it came the sound of a child’s, or perhaps a woman’s, call. It sounded rather far away, certainly further away than the limits of the home’s walls, but at the same time, it felt near to Phoebe.
Disturbing the floorboards, which loudly shouted at her with creaks and cracks, she stepped to Onenspek’s studio door and pressed her ear close.
The cry happened again, and Phoebe thought perhaps, instead of a child or a woman, it was Ned Onenspek, sounding as if he was suffering physical pain. Another thought occurred, and in disgust, she jumped back from the door, wondering where Dzolali was at that moment.
The small, focused wind swept to her again, this time giving the door a shake in its frame, as if the windows beyond had just been opened. Another cry, this one of obvious despair, wafted to her ears and, picturing Ned Onenspek having opened a window to jump, Phoebe tried the knob and pushed the door out of the way.
“Ned?” she called into the room. Only a stiff breeze, this one consistent, met her.
Phoebe stood for a long moment, like an actress that had been late for her cue and thrust out on stage, feeling as if she was under the scrutiny of hundreds, perhaps thousands. These eyes were indeed all around her, in the form of the characters in the paintings covering the walls. No thought was given to their straightness. They were hung to dry directly on the wallpaper, their borders nearly touching.
Phoebe stepped forward, forgetting the open door, forgetting about Ned’s possible suicide dive. Her mind scrambled to decipher the paintings on the wall. It seemed impossible for her to take in one at a time. They had been suspended together in such proximity but were so distant in relevance to one another that the colors of the next one would pull her eyes away. Settling on that one, its neighbor would do the same.
Reaching the last in a row at the end of the wall, a sound of disgust slipped from Phoebe’s throat as she took in the color-rich scene of an executioner dropping a guillotine blade on a prisoner, most likely of the French Revolution, while an attendant carried away a wooden basket full of heads, two of which threatened to tumble out, much to the bearer’s indifference to the situation. The blank look on his blood-speckled face told her he had seen much worse, and a few more bouncing skulls were nothing new.
The overwhelming blue and purple of the one below it was of an exploding volcano, its lava flowing between short buildings and coming up the street in the foreground, toward the viewer. The bright red and orange lava had gathered up many victims, both human and some animal, many dead but some alive, their flesh charring as the hot mess flowed. People in the foreground, as yet untouched, sprinted in horror, their faces frozen in desperate fear. One man had turned to the danger, his shoulders sloped in surrender.
Another was of a woman being stalked in a dark room. A single ray of light revealed the danger of the room: a man in black tattered rags, armed with a sword. In the gloom, the mutilated body of a man lay in a bloody mass on the floor. The woman was a redhead, her hair set in a wavy, old-fashioned arrangement. Her clothes, and those of the deceased male victim, were decades out of fashion, though elegant. In moments, the beastly killer would be on her, and Phoebe saw no way for the woman to escape her do
om.
Phoebe turned to the wall on her right and found that decapitation was a theme for many of Ned’s works. Dismemberment and the arrangement of separated limbs as prizes was the theme of still more. More and more paintings, with horrors of Mother Nature, murder, trauma of vehicles both of land and of sky, war, and war, and still more war.
The horror of death was everywhere, even at her feet, as many paintings were not hung because either Ned had run out of room or hooks, or the will to elevate them. These paintings were on the floor, leaning against the walls on either side of her, even blocking the closet door at her right. Paint splatters were all over the wood floor and crushed into the burgundy runner under her feet. She could see paint on the wallpaper. In between the works were splashes and even the outlines of some paint that had dried there but that was now long gone.
Phoebe carefully stepped further inside, noting the cool air filtering through the stale room. Once past the entryway, she looked around the corner. The bed had been removed, and in its place, two large easels had been set upon drop cloths that had once been white. On the easels were more Onenspek nightmares, neither complete. Beyond and all around the easels was more paint on the walls, border-to-border, floor-to-ceiling. Phoebe could not bear to look directly upon them, for her peripheral vision was gathering enough horror in reds and blacks to last a lifetime.
The windows had been opened. The curtains, long ruined in the process of Ned’s creations, sailed gently in and out. At first hidden by this dream scene of an artist’s prolific period was the figure of Ned Onenspek himself, draped in drapery, looking out upon the dead forest.
Phoebe gasped when her eyes found his ghostly figure in the fluttering fabric, for he was slight of figure and had been unmoving. “Ned?” she tried.
She heard the cry again, faintly and from behind. She turned to see nothing more than the walls covered in nightmares. A shadow passed over the wall, and before she could scream, Phoebe was in the clutches of a madman.
“Where?!” Onenspek demanded shrilly with his arms around Phoebe, one around her midsection, the other around her neck.
Phoebe’s scream was cut short by the pressure of the crook of an arm. She grasped at it with both hands, her nostrils filling with his foul odor, a mixture of excrement, urine, and sweat. How he had come to be in this condition since just the previous night, she barely had time to contemplate.
“Where?” he repeated and tightened his hold. “I need it. You fuckin’ gave me one, so you should know!”
Phoebe’s ear rang, overwhelmed by his bellowing directly into it. She couldn’t have answered if she’d wanted to, as there was no airflow.
“You see, we have a fucking problem!” he shrilled. “I can’t continue my work if it all stops. It all stops when I can’t continue my work.”
“Ack!” Phoebe attempted.
“It’s kind of a symbiotic relationship. Do you know what symbiosis is?”
Phoebe nodded, though it brought pain.
Ned laughed and she could feel him shake his head. “Possibly, possibly. But in case that’s a bluff, I’ll explain. It’s a relationship—”
He squeezed every time he emphasized a word. Phoebe choked in response and her world began to dim.
“—between two entities . . . where one helps the other for a mutually bene-fucking-ficial outcome!”
Phoebe coughed and her throat flared painfully.
“I think yer getting it. So,” Ned said between breaths, “tell me where you’ve moved the fucking cookies.”
He had lessened the pressure, perhaps by accident, perhaps to allow her to talk. She forced air in and out in a furious pace, pushing away the darkness that had encroached upon her vision. She took the opportunity and stomped her left heel upon Ned’s foot.
Onenspek screamed and let his grip slip. Phoebe lifted her left arm and twisted that way, elbowing Ned in the beak. He stumbled back on his heels, eyes shut to the pain, his arms pinwheeled to keep from falling.
Phoebe, seething with the rage that had built up with interest over the last few months of personal and professional failure, compounded with the lack of sleep, the previous night’s séance, and the jealousy and confusion over her need for Dzolali, turned her defense offensive.
She closed on Ned, who had recovered his balance. She clocked him with an uppercut from her right, which knocked his head back. His eyes seemed to gain appreciation in his paint splatterings on the ceiling.
“Phoebe!” a masculine voice called from behind her.
Not to be distracted, she sent her left fist in for good measure, catching Onenspek’s right cheek. Ned spun around, falling through the unfinished painting on the right. He crashed to the floor with a crunch, the easel and the painting ruined.
Her name was called again, louder this time and from much nearer. Phoebe raised both fists and danced around on the balls of her feet to face whoever was the next contender. She wheezed and coughed, her throat still burning.
“Easy now!” called Holgrave. His eyes were wide with concern, darting between her and the fallen artist. He had his hands up once again in surrender, a stance he was becoming accustomed to taking in the presence of the youngest Pyncheon woman.
Eyes burning with tears of anger and fear, Phoebe took a moment to recognize the newcomer to the room. She settled from her defensive stance and dropped her fists. She stood there, panting for breath as she stared into Holgrave’s face. “What are you doing here?”
“Apparently, aborting a rescue,” Holgrave said, disarming her with a smile. His hair was down, strands falling in his face.
Holgrave went to Onenspek, kneeling at his side, being careful not to put his knee into the wet, ruined, or perhaps improved Onenspek original, which now bore the artist’s blood as well as his paint. The man was breathing.
Holgrave looked to Phoebe in amazement.
“Fucker attacked me,” she said between wheezes. Her voice was gravelly and uneven, and sounded not in the least bit apologetic.
“It appears, fortunately for him, that he shall live to regret it,” Holgrave said and stood.
Phoebe nodded curtly, unable to conjure a kind word of relief.
Holgrave stepped to her, his caution discarded. “Are you all right?”
“I dunno. I think, yeah.” She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. She sensed her great-aunt approaching, and she was not alone. Phoebe faced the open doorway expectantly.
Holgrave followed her eyes. A moment later, he heard the floor creaking and bumping to the rhythm of rushing footsteps.
Hester wafted in, her feet unseen beneath her long dress. Glendarah and Dzolali appeared right behind.
“What the devil is happening in my house?” Hester demanded. Her eyes were abundant with outrage, becoming more intense when she saw Onenspek’s fallen form. “What have you done?!” she thundered at Holgrave.
Before he could muster a thought to word his defense, he found himself pointing at Phoebe.
“Yeah. Thanks, dude,” Phoebe said and shot him a hard look.
Holgrave shrugged apologetically.
“You?” Hester roared, turning on her grandniece.
“He attacked me,” Phoebe fired back and coughed from the strain. “He’s strung out and came after me for one of your goddamned gingerbread whatevers!”
Hester blinked, and for a lightning-quick moment, there might have been compassion. Her eyes passed over Phoebe’s form, as if looking for injury.
Phoebe pushed on in the silence. “He grabbed me from behind. Tried to choke me out.”
Hester snapped her fingers and pointed to Onenspek. Glendarah moved to the unconscious man’s side. With Holgrave’s assistance, they turned him over. Ned’s eyes remained shut, but he coughed, spewing droplets of blood that had streamed down from his nose.
“Sit him up,” Glendarah said, and together, they brought hi
m up into a sitting position. “Ned,” she said quietly.
Phoebe closed the distance between herself and Hester, turning her head up to the old woman’s face. “I don’t know what you’re giving him,” she whispered, “but it’s making him crazy. Maybe even killing him. You disgust me, Auntie Hester.” With a glance to Dzolali, who wore an expression of shock, Phoebe stormed out.
***
Phoebe went to her room and threw herself onto the spongy bed, face down, and cried. Her throat hurt from Ned’s grip, and the strain of the emotion added to her discomfort. She felt like a child, crying into a pillow, something she hadn’t done since her high school days.
She forced herself to stop blubbering and rolled out of the bed. She felt angry, violated, and confused. She stared out the windows for a time, sitting on the cushioned bench. Someone knocked on the door. She ignored it.
Phoebe spent the next several hours in her bedroom, distracting her mind by working on her novel with her earbuds in. Without internet access, her variety of music was limited to what she had downloaded onto the laptop, so when the first song she chose that afternoon repeated, she stopped the music and pulled the tiny speakers out of her ears.
Almost on cue, there was a knock on the door. Phoebe saved her work and grumbled a “Who is it?” even though her psychic gift had already told her. Out of spite, she ignored it.
“Dzolali,” came the answer.
Phoebe was about to say that it wasn’t a good time, but the questions in her mind were nagging, debilitating. She rose quickly, bumping the office chair with the backs of her knees and sending it sliding across the floor. She unlocked the door and pulled it open.
“Are you all right?” Dzolali asked, her concern obvious and sounding sincere.
Phoebe repressed the urge to embrace Dzolali but said nothing as she moved out of the doorway to allow her entry. She kept her expression carefully neutral.
Dzolali stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She stared into Phoebe’s face questioningly, which somehow, to Phoebe, felt indignant and insulting.
“I need to know something,” Phoebe said.