by Anne Stuart
Ruth was gone before Meg could question her further. She took one last, longing look out the window, but the old man had disappeared. Sinking back down on the bed, she thought about what Ruth had said. As far as Meg could tell, there weren’t any good guys at all in this place. Everyone was a villain, with the possible exception of the mysterious old man and Ruth herself. Did that mean that in reality there were nothing but good guys? She’d be wise not to trust anyone but herself.
She was halfway through The Shining, unable to put it down, when Salvatore knocked at her open door. He had his customary expression of disapproval on his swarthy face, and his glance at her casual clothes was disdainful. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Meg just stared at him for a moment. “A visitor? My father…?”
“You think Ethan would just let your father walk in? Don’t count on it, sweetheart. It’s the local padre. Pastor Lincoln, to be exact. Come to offer you succor.”
Meg looked at him warily. “You think a minister is going to countenance Winslowe’s keeping me prisoner here?”
“Not likely. Lincoln thinks Ethan is the spawn of the devil. I’m sure he’ll offer you a way out.”
“Does Ethan know you’re letting me see him?” She still didn’t move from the bed, not trusting her sudden good fortune.
“Ethan knows everything,” Sal said, echoing his own words. “As a matter of fact, it was his idea.”
“Even though he’ll give me a chance to escape?”
Salvatore’s smile wasn’t the faintest bit reassuring. “It’s up to you whether you want to take it.”
The trip through the hallways was long and torturous, following Salvatore’s broad back. Nothing looked familiar, and if Megan had traveled that particular pathway before, she didn’t remember it. She had to stop several times to catch her breath, to fight the lingering spasm of coughing that was pneumonia’s legacy. It wasn’t until they reached the front hallway that she recognized anything, and the knowledge that they’d reached it from the opposite direction was depressing. The house was so impossibly vast that she could get lost in it for days. No wonder Salvatore no longer bothered to lock her in.
She headed for the parlor, but Sal’s meaty hand on her arm stopped her. “He’s on the front porch. He doesn’t want to set foot under the devil’s rooftop.”
Megan looked up, trying to discern whether Sal was kidding. Sal wasn’t a man for jokes.
Still, all the better. If Pastor Lincoln was convinced that Winslowe was evil incarnate, he wouldn’t have any qualms about getting her out of there.
Salvatore opened the front door for her, keeping out of her way as she stepped into the fitful sunlight. Her first view of the pastor wasn’t encouraging.
He was a tall man, thin, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Dressed appropriately enough in black, he had thinning gray hair and surprisingly cherubic pink cheeks. He also had the faintly bulging eyes of a fanatic.
“Sister!” he cried when he saw her. “God has sent me to deliver you from this house of evil, to bring you to the bosom of the Holy One and wash away your sins. Give me your hand and I will lead you from this unclean place.”
“Actually, the house is spotless,” Meg couldn’t resist remarking. She’d grown up in a nice, liberal, Protestant church, and fanaticism always made her uncomfortable. At his sudden frown, she realized how foolish she was being, throwing away her best chance of rescue because she didn’t happen to like the man’s style, and she quickly managed to look demure. “I would appreciate a ride out of here. My car…” She looked to the driveway where her rental Ford had last been seen mired in the mud. In its place was the pastor’s form of transportation, a rusting old mini school bus with the legend God Sees All, Judges All, Punishes All on the side. It didn’t look promising.
“That evil spawn of Satan has destroyed it with a thunderbolt,” Pastor Lincoln announced. “Come away with me, now, before he turns you into one of his unholy ones.”
She almost wanted to refuse, which would have been madness of the highest order. “You can give me a ride to the nearest town?”
“Of course, my child. To Oak Grove.”
“But I need to get back to Chicago, to my family….”
“Your only family is God’s!” he declaimed. “We’ll do all we can, but first we must purify you….”
She started backing away at that. “What denomination are you, Pastor Lincoln? I’m United Church of Christ myself, and—”
“Those sects are all unknowing,” he said loftily. “I follow the true way, like my father and grandfather before me.”
“But you must have been trained—”
“Don’t need training, sister, when you have a calling.” He clamped a hand down on her arm, and she was surprised by the steely strength in those skinny fingers. “Come with me, child. We’ll teach you about the real God.”
“No, thanks,” she said hastily, pulling away. He was too surprised to hold on, otherwise she might have had difficulty escaping. “I think I’ll stay here for now. But thanks for the offer.”
“Evil!” Pastor Lincoln screeched, pointing his finger at her. His entire body was vibrating with outrage. “It’s too late for you. He’s taken you, made you one of his succubi….”
“One of his what?” she demanded, not knowing whether to be amused or outraged.
“There’ll be no cleansing of your sins, short of fire. You’re one with the evil, lost in the sins of the flesh, rioting in fatness and sensuality!” He ran down the steps to his school bus, still shrieking.
“Guess you made an enemy of that one,” Salvatore said with a smirk.
“He made an enemy of me with that crack about fatness,” Meg snapped back. “Is everyone around here loony tunes?”
“Just about,” Sal said. “Ready to go back to your room?”
The enormity of what she’d just done hit her. She whirled around for one last wistful glance at the school bus as it jolted and jarred its way back down the road. Repent or Perish, it said on the back. Her only chance of escape and she’d thrown it away. So what if he’d wanted to purify her? It probably wouldn’t have been any worse than what Ethan Winslowe had in mind for her.
She turned back to Salvatore, keeping her back straight. If one opportunity came, another would come. Ruth was her best chance so far—she had a good heart, even if it came with a misplaced loyalty to the Phantom of Oak Grove. Meg simply had to keep working on her.
“Ready,” she said. “Unless…”
“Yeah?” he demanded impatiently.
“I’d really like to spend some time outside.” She could hear the sounds of construction from the left side of the house. If Sal would just leave her alone on the porch, she could go in search of the workers. The day she couldn’t talk to a construction crew and get them to do what she wanted would be the day she’d give up.
“They won’t help you,” Salvatore said, reading her very clearly. “They know where their paycheck is coming from.”
She resisted the impulse to make a face at him. One person had her interests at heart, one person would help her, she knew it deep in her heart. “As a matter of fact, I’d like to spend some time in the rose garden I saw from my window. Got any problem with that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check with Ethan….”
“Isn’t he asleep in his coffin? Come on, Igor, take some responsibility on your own shoulders.”
He glared at her. “He’s not going to like your attitude.”
“Tough. Let me go to the rose garden and I’ll be docile.”
There was a long pause. “Can’t see the harm in it,” Sal said finally, surprising her. “Just one word of warning.”
“What’s that?”
“Watch out for ghosts.”
Chapter Seven
The rose garden was cooler than the front porch. The grass was wet and green beneath her sneakers, and the rich scent of spring earth was almost erotic in its intensity. Salvatore left her there, muttering something
about returning in an hour, and she was alone.
The garden was lovingly tended, the roses very old and just beginning to bud. Ruth had told her the sullen townspeople of Oak Grove came in daily to take care of the house—one of them must have a green thumb to keep such ancient roses in such healthy shape.
But it wasn’t a townsperson, she knew that instinctively. It was the old man who’d found her that night, the old man she’d glimpsed less than an hour ago from her window.
She turned and looked back at the house, shaking her head in amazement. From every angle, the building was a wonderment as one architectural style gave way to another, a crazy quilt of building styles that was both bizarre and oddly appealing. She could only guess which windows were hers. The turret rose above her, made of solid stone, and she knew with a pang that it must have been built exactly as the old castles of Europe had been built. The old castles she should have been visiting, instead of being trapped in a state like Arkansas. A place where nothing was as it seemed.
She crossed the damp grass and stepped up into the gazebo, sinking down on one of the wooden benches, hiding behind the greenery. Ever since she’d arrived at the Meredith place, she’d felt as if someone was watching her, following her every movement. She knew that no one could see behind the tangle of rose bushes. For a few minutes, she was going to sit back, alone, away from everyone, and try to figure out what in the world she was going to do to get away from there.
She wrapped her arms around her body. She should have worn something a little heavier than the soft cotton shirt she’d unearthed from her suitcase, but it hadn’t seemed that chilly. She leaned back against a post, closing her eyes for a moment, and wondered whether she ought to shed a few tears of self-pity.
She decided against it. She was quickly regaining her health and no one had actually done her harm. Certainly she was trapped in this place against her will. She was also becoming more and more fascinated with its occupants, Ethan Winslowe in particular. If he were suddenly to capitulate, to let her father off the hook and set her free, her obvious reaction would be overjoyed relief. But it would be tinged with regret. Perhaps even disappointment. She had wanted to go to Europe for adventure. Whatever happened when she finally got there would probably appear tame after what she’d been through in the past week or so.
She opened her eyes and sat forward. A man was kneeling in the dirt on the far side of the gazebo, digging at the roots of one of the rose bushes, concentrating on his work. His hands were old and gnarled, stained with liver spots, and the white hair beneath his old cap was wispy. He must have felt her gaze on him for he looked up, and once more Meg looked into what must be the kindest, gentlest eyes she’d ever seen. Here was a man who was truly ageless—he looked at least ninety—and yet he was clearly spry and active if he kept this garden looking as it did. And she knew without a doubt that he did.
“I thought you might be asleep,” he said, sitting back on his heels and brushing the dirt from his hands.
“I came looking for you.”
He nodded. “I thought you might. Did you ask them about me?”
“No one will admit you exist.”
His smile was peculiarly sweet. “I’m not surprised. Maybe I don’t. Do you like my garden?”
“It’s very beautiful.”
“It’s even prettier when the roses start blooming. By the middle of May, the place is a riot of color and scent. A perfect place for a wedding.”
Meg was startled. “Is anyone getting married?”
“Not here,” he said sadly. “The only one would be Ethan, and he never comes out into the daylight.”
“Why not?”
“Ask Ethan.”
“I’m asking you,” she said stubbornly.
“Ask me something I can answer. You sent that crazy minister away, didn’t you?”
Did everyone around here see everything? “‘Crazy’ is the word. I got the impression he’d dunk me in a vat of boiling water to cleanse the devil from me.”
“I hadn’t realized Ethan had gotten that far.”
She sucked in her breath. It was one thing hearing Ethan referred to as evil by a crazed fanatic, another by this gentle old man. “You think he’s the devil?”
He shook his head. “I know just who and what he is. If anyone’s the devil around here, in my opinion it’s Pastor Lincoln and his crazy followers. They run around saying everything’s unclean and make life a living hell for the few people who don’t believe exactly as they do. People like Burt and Ruth Wilkins. It doesn’t help that Ethan does everything he can to goad them. If he’d leave them be, then they might let him alone, too.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“No. Lincoln and his crew won’t rest easy until they’ve destroyed Ethan. They’re so convinced he’s the epitome of evil that they can’t use their limited brain power to think about anything else. Including how to get out of the mess their town has gotten into over the last century.”
“It’s a little hard to right the wrongs of a century, isn’t it?” Meg observed.
“It depends whether they want to or not. The town of Oak Grove is doomed, evil. The best thing that could happen would be if one of those tornadoes came right through here and flattened everything.”
Meg moved from the bench to the gazebo steps. The sunlight had faded into a misty afternoon fog, and the old man seemed faded, indistinct. “Isn’t that a little extreme? What’s wrong with the town? Just isolation?”
“They’ve chosen that isolation. It started around the turn of the century. It was a bad time for the people around here. Drought, year after year, wiped out their crops. Then came the windstorms, wiping out half the families. The only ones who survived were the ones who were too mean and bitter to die off. The ones who locked their neighbors out in the storms to face certain death rather than risk their own necks. And those mean, bitter people just keep inbreeding over the years, so now, there’s no one but them left. The good ones leave any way they can manage it. The bad ones stay on, locked in their own miserable, bitter little lives.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a whole town could be classified as rotten.”
“You haven’t seen enough of this one. It’s…evil. I hate to use Pastor Lincoln’s word, but it fits.”
“Then why does Ethan stay here? Wouldn’t that make him evil, too?”
The old man looked up at her out of indistinct, faded blue eyes. “He stays here because he feels he belongs. He thinks all people are as cruel, as heartless, as intrinsically rotten as the people of Oak Grove. It reinforces his opinion of mankind.”
The weight in her chest grew, but this time she knew it wasn’t from the lingering effects of the pneumonia. Her lungs were clearing. It was her heart that was heavy.
“Is there any way to help him?” Her voice was very quiet in the stillness of the misty afternoon.
He looked at her with both surprise and compassion. “Why should you want to? Hasn’t he been keeping you a virtual prisoner here? Hasn’t he threatened to destroy your father and everything you care about? Why would you want to help him?”
She didn’t bother asking how he knew. Everyone around here seemed to know everything. Except for her. She knew absolutely nothing at all, and the longer she stayed around, the more confused she got.
“Maybe if I help him, he’ll let me go,” she suggested, knowing that was the least of her worries.
“I wouldn’t count on it. Ethan’s good at anything he sets his mind to, and tenacity is one of his dubious virtues. I should know. He blames Doc Bailey and the townspeople for his father’s death more than fifteen years ago, and he’s still working on the perfect revenge.”
“But why should he blame them?”
“Oh, they’re to blame, all right. He had a heart attack out here in the gardens. Doc Bailey was too drunk to help, and the townspeople refused. Ferdy down at the gas station had the only working vehicle, and he wouldn’t drive him to the hospital. Ethan’s father might have di
ed anyway, but the townspeople helped him along, and Ethan was an orphan before he was twenty.”
“That makes him about thirty-five,” Meg quickly computed.
“How old did you think he was?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. What happened to his mother?”
The old man snorted. “His mother was a worthless butterfly who couldn’t stand the sight of her own son. She died in a car crash when he was twelve, and if you ask me, it was eleven years too late.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“She deserves it for what she did to him,” the old man said, his voice calm and implacable. “He’s not past saving, Meg, but his time’s running out. Soon it’ll be too late. I think you were sent for him. His last chance.”
The heaviness rose, threatening to choke her. “Last chance for what?”
“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself,” he said gently, his voice fading in the thickening fog. “Don’t blame yourself if you can’t save him. It may already be too late.”
“Save him from what?” She could no longer see the old man, only a faint outline in the swirling mist. A light drizzle had begun to fall and she retreated into the dubious shelter of the gazebo. “Save him from what? Don’t go yet. You haven’t explained—”
“I’ll be here,” his voice whispered from the distance. “When you need me, I’ll be here.”
“But who are you? What’s your name? Where are you going? Who…”
“Joseph.” She didn’t know whether she actually heard him speak the name, or whether it somehow just echoed in her mind.
She called after him, but there was no answer. Only the thickening rain and mist, with her trapped on the gazebo island in the midst of it all.
“SHE CALLED ME IGOR,” Salvatore said in an aggrieved voice.
Ethan laughed. “It’s appropriate. After all, you really are the evil madman’s faithful henchman. You don’t have a hunchback or a cast in your eye, but we could do something with a costume.”