by V. J. Banis
She did think, though, that she ought to try to make conversation, and besides, it was hard not to think of dozens of questions that one would like to ask about this strange place.
“What about the lights,” she asked, noticing them. “They couldn’t be as old as all that.”
“Oh no, your mother’s sisters added the lights and the plumbing, and did quite a bit of remodeling. Such a shame too.”
“A shame?”
“Yes, they had only finished the work when the house burned to the ground.”
That was certainly another confusing answer. Jennifer thought for a long moment, wondering if further questions along these lines would be rude. And if not, which piece of information should she question first. Every answer that she got from her aunt, far from satisfying her questions, only seemed to provoke further questions.
“Aren’t you my mother’s sister?” she asked finally, deciding to take things in the order they had been presented to her.
Aunt Christine’s laugh sounded over her shoulder as they started up the wide staircase. “Heavens, I was your—let me see now—your great-great-grandmother’s sister. I suppose I should have been more explicit in my letter, but the years have diminished my vanity very little. I think Aunt Christine makes me sound quite old enough, without adding the rest.”
It was pointless, Jennifer thought to ask about the house burning to the ground. Aunt Christine might be teasing her, or perhaps her aunt was just not quite right mentally, not a very pleasant thought. In any event the answers she was getting were not making much sense.
“This is your room,” Aunt Christine said. They had reached the second floor and turned to their left. The door that Aunt Christine indicated was the first in another long line of doors, again all closed.
Half frightened at what she might find, half hopeful, Jennifer turned the knob and pushed the door inward. Her hopes sank and faded. The room was every bit as dirty and uncared for as the rest of the house. Worse, even had it been clean, it would still have been a dismal-looking chamber.
The walls were covered with what she was certain, was the worst paper she had ever seen. At one time no doubt the red of the cabbage roses had been quite vivid. With the passing of time they had taken on a faded musty hue that was almost overpowering in its sense of agedness. The same paper stretched over the ceiling as well, giving one the impression of being smothered in an avalanche of paper flowers.
From the papered ceiling, although strangely not from the center of the room, hung a grotesque light fixture. It held three uncovered bulbs that glared harshly. Each light was held by the figure of a woman in flowing robes, not unlike those worn by the women on the lawn, or worn by those old Greek statues she had seen in pictures.
These were no innocent maidens, however, no happy women. Each of the three was frozen in a grotesque position, each face a study in horror and pain, a pain that would last through centuries, until the metal of which they were cast would return again to dust
Jennifer pulled her eyes away from the light fixture, shuddering a little involuntarily. The furnishings in the room were sparse and uninviting: a sprawling fourposter, a flowered comforter stretched across its surface, dominated the room. There was as well an old fashioned dresser, heavily carved, with its mirror set lopsidedly atop the dusty surface; a massive armoire that occupied one wall; and between the armoire and the bed a small stool. The single window was all but covered from sight by velvet drapes, and the floor was wood, stained to a somber blackness that fitted the overall dreariness of the room.
“I think you’ll be comfortable here,” Aunt Christine was saying from behind her. If she had noticed Jennifer’s dismay, she gave no sign of it, and Jennifer kept her thoughts to herself.
“And I see Aunt Abbie has brought your dinner up,” Aunt Christine said.
Jennifer followed her glance to the dresser, wondering how she had failed to notice the tray before. In sharp contrast to the rest of the room, or the rest of the house for that matter, the tray and its silver cover gleamed brightly, clean and sparkling.
“I’ll leave you to yourself now,” Aunt Christine went on. “If you need anything, just let me know.” With that she was gone, closing the door softly behind her.
“I’m alone,” Jennifer told herself, staring unhappily about. “Alone in this nightmare of a room, in this peculiar house, miles from anywhere.”
She shut her eyes and tried to remember just exactly where she was. She had left home at eight that morning and she had taken the highway north. The names of one or two towns stayed in her memory but they did little to make the picture any clearer. She was not accustomed to traveling, and furthermore she had virtually no sense of direction. Of course there was Aunt Christine’s letter in her purse. At least with that she could always find her way back simply by reversing the directions.
If she went back. That was the rub. Put in the baldest terms, she had nothing to go back to; an empty house that held little appeal for her, and an emptier life. Kelsey House and its occupants seemed strange to her, that was true enough; but then, she herself had always been regarded as strange. It was possible that there were reasonable explanations for everything she had observed here. This was a large house, and it was possible that the family just did not try to keep it all clean.
That dancing on the lawn—well, it looked peculiar to her, but it might be quite harmless. Suppose someone who knew nothing of the game happened upon a group of people playing charades; that would look peculiar too.
She must be patient. As for the house and its dirt, she could begin by taking the initiative and beginning a good cleaning-up job. Perhaps they would follow her example. With a lot of work, and soap and water, and maybe some paint, the house could be made—she paused in her thoughts and glanced around again—well, not charming, but at least more comfortable.
She would be very patient with Aunt Christine and the others. “They will come to like me,” she said, “and to respect me.” That thought raised her flagging spirits a little.
Her shoulder had begun to ache, and she was reminded that she was quite tired. She crossed to the bed, examining it with a feeling of revulsion. With two fingers she grasped one corner of the spread gingerly and pulled it to the foot of the bed. The sheets, protected by the spread, were relatively clean.
“That’s something to be grateful for,” she thought. At least she could have her sorely needed sleep; in the morning she would set herself to cleaning the room thoroughly.
The window was next. She tried without success to draw the drapes aside. Giving up on that attempt, she stuck her head behind the heavy velvet and tugged at the window, hoping to get at least a faint breath of fresh air into the musty room. The window refused stubbornly to budge. Still more disconcerting was the discovery that her hands were covered with the black dust that was thick on the windows.
“Oh dear,” she said. She gave up on the window and stepped back into the room. It probably hadn’t been opened since the fire, whenever that had been.
Her eyes fell on the silver tray still waiting atop the dresser. For a moment she played with the idea of going straight to bed without eating. She was more tired than hungry. Indeed, her very surroundings discouraged an appetite.
She was a creature of routine, however, and common sense told her finally that, hungry or not, she should try to eat a little something. She picked up the tray and turned around once or twice looking for a logical place to eat. There was none. Only the little stool and the bed offered any seating. Resignedly she carried the tray to the bed, setting it down in the middle of the uneven surface, and seated herself beside it. She removed the cover.
Beneath its silver cover, the tray was empty. Not really empty; neatly arranged on its surface was an assortment of dishes, cups, tableware, even a neatly folded napkin. But the dishes and the various containers were empty. Not one scrap of food marred their rather astonishing cleanness.
“Oh,” she said aloud; and again, “Oh.”
&
nbsp; She rose from the bed, starting impulsively across the room, then came to an abrupt halt.
Perhaps they really were mad. Or perhaps, as seemed more likely, this had been intended as a joke. She had a great deal of experience with that, ranging back to her childhood. The other children had often teased her in such a fashion, encouraging her with friendly gestures to do things that afterward were revealed as foolish, so that they could laugh at her. Funny Jenny, they had called her, and not only behind her back.
And for all she knew, the family was waiting for her somewhere, downstairs, or even just out in the hall. If she went marching out in search of Aunt Christine, she would give them their opportunity to have a good laugh at her expense.
There was the possibility too, she tried to console herself, that it was not a joke at all, but an honest mistake. There were reasons enough to suspect that the inhabitants of Kelsey House were a little eccentric. Aunt Whoever-it-was who had delivered the tray might simply have forgotten to put the food on it, in which case she would only be making a scene by protesting and making herself unpleasant.
“It can wait until morning,” she said firmly. She removed the tray once again to the dresser. After all, she really wasn’t hungry. In the morning, after a good night’s rest, she would politely mention the matter of the tray to Aunt Christine, and no doubt there would be a perfectly logical explanation for it.
With a renewed if slightly less firm patience, she began to undress. She put her simple gray suit in the armoire on the single hanger that had been provided there, making a mental note that she would have to ask for more hangers.
The light switch was on the wall across the room and by the door, with the result that she stubbed her toe on the stool trying to find her way back to the bed. She stood still for a minute or two, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Amazingly enough, the small opening provided by the drapes did allow a bit of moonlight to filter into the room through the dusty window. After her pause, she was able to make her way to the bed without further mishap.
She pulled the sheet up to her chin, uncomfortable without her flannel nightgown. Despite her discomfort, however, and a day that had been trying on the nerves, her exhaustion had its way with her. She fell quickly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
She awoke with a start. For a moment the room and the bed were unfamiliar to her. It came back to her finally—the long drive and its conclusion. She was at Kelsey House, as a house guest. It was the middle of the night and something had awakened her. Someone had called her name; no, that wasn’t possible, surely. She had dreamed it.
She peered into the darkness, her eyes slowly becoming adjusted to the darkness and the sudden awakening. She made out the dresser and the armoire, and the stool.
A movement from the direction of the hall door caught her eye. There it was again—faint, billowy, a white robed figure. With a tightening in her chest, she realized that there was someone in her room, someone in white who moved with maddening slowness toward her bed.
She lay motionless, her breath held in tightly. For the first time it occurred to her that she might be in some danger, alone with a houseful of people she did not know, who from all indications were far from normal. It was this thought that kept her from speaking out, from demanding to know who was there. She clutched the sheet tightly in her hand, watching through half closed eyes as the figure in white drew nearer. She could make out the form now of a woman—long dark hair falling about the shoulders, hands outstretched toward the bed. The face was in shadow.
Should she speak, Jennifer thought, demand an explanation for the intrusion? Or wait to learn the identity of her visitor. Or perhaps she should leap from the bed, make ready to defend herself?
Her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, she closed her eyes, just as she had done when as a little girl she had been frightened in the darkness. Maybe whoever was here would go away. Maybe it was only a bad dream. If she pretended to sleep, it would just leave, surely.
The seconds crawled by. Frozen with fear, she listened for some sound, some indication of what was happening. The house lay silently about her. The room itself seemed to be waiting, listening.
Why was there no noise? Had her visitor, as she hoped, gone away?
A hand brushed lightly against her face, a hand soft and so cold that it seemed to stop the blood in her veins. Jennifer nearly screamed. She bit sharply into her lip to stifle the cry that rose in her throat. Her body trembled and shook, seized by an inexplicable chill, and she felt a warning turn in her stomach.
Oh God, she thought, I’m going to be sick.
CHAPTER FIVE
The touch of that icy hand was brief, and did not come again. The room remained silent. At last, unable to contain herself any longer, she bolted to a sitting position, her eyes springing open. The room was empty! She was alone!
She stared about in confusion and fright, doubting her own senses, but the room was really empty. She pinched herself once to determine that she was awake.
With the diminishing of her fear, she became suddenly angry.
“That is the limit,” she said aloud, not caring if anyone heard. She almost hoped they did hear, in fact, even if it did hurt their feelings. She was not accustomed to having strangers parading through her bedroom, pawing over her, to say nothing of frightening her to death.
Bounding noisily from the bed, she marched across the room to the door and switched on the light. The lock in the door was complete with key. She turned it angrily, locking herself in, and any intruders out. So much for moonlight visitors. Aunt Christine would hear about quite a few things in the morning, and if she offended them that was just too bad. There was a limit to what they could expect a person to tolerate without complaint
She reached for the light switch; then, changing her mind, she left the light burning and returned to bed. At least if there were anything further in store, she would not be in the dark.
This time it took longer for her to go to sleep. She listened for a time, thinking that her visitor might return and try the door, in which case she would tell someone a thing or two without waiting for morning.
As it happened, though, there was no further disturbance. At length she fell asleep, this time rather fitfully.
When she awoke again, it was morning. And her visitor had returned. At least, there was someone in her room. An elderly lady, looking older even than Aunt Christine, stood by the dresser. A tiny, birdlike creature with silver white hair and sparkling blackbird’s eyes, the woman was humming to herself, a sad, hauntingly familiar melody. She wore the same peculiar white robes that Aunt Christine had worn the night before and her hands, like twin doves in flight fluttered about in the air over an empty vase on the dresser.
“Oh, good morning,” the stranger greeted her when she saw Jennifer’s open eyes. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”
“Yes, you did,” Jennifer said, and at once wondered sleepily if she had been too blunt. The memory of her nightly intrusion came back to her then, and with that memory came some of her previous annoyance. “Not nearly so much as you did last night” she added, more sharply.
“Oh, did I see you last night? Were you on the lawn for the rites?”
“The rites?” It took Jennifer a moment to grasp the fact that the woman was referring to the strange goings-on she had seen on the lawn when she arrived.
“No, I was not,” she replied coolly.
The stranger took no apparent notice of the coolness.
Her hands, as she spoke, continued to flutter about the empty vase, tugging at the air, patting it.
“Well then I couldn’t have seen you last night. I left the rites early, only because Aunt Christine told me it would be all right, mind you. Let me see—oh yes, then I brought a dinner tray up here. After that I went straight to bed. I always retire early.”
Jennifer hesitated to argue the matter. There was not really any evidence that it had been the same woman in her room the night before, and perhaps she wa
s rash to make that assumption. They all seemed to wear the same robes. Better to take that matter up with Aunt Christine who, so far as she knew, was the mistress of the household.
Nonetheless, it was certainly disconcerting to find people wandering in and out of her room at will.
“How did you get in here?” she asked, suddenly remembering the locked door.
“Through the door,” her visitor answered, quite as though it should have been obvious to anyone. As indeed, Jennifer told herself, it should have been. She opened her mouth to point out that the door had been locked, but her visitor interrupted her before she could mention it.
“Heavens, here I am chattering away with you,” the woman said, “And I haven’t even told you who I am. I am your Aunt Abbie.” She beamed as though this bit of information should make everything quite clear.
“I see,” Jennifer said, and, after a pause, she asked, “If it’s not too rude of me, what on earth are you doing with that vase?”
“Why, I’m arranging the flowers. They’re from my garden, you know. Aunt Christine says that no one can do as well with flowers as I do.”
Jennifer looked again at the vase, then slowly about the room. If there were any flowers in the room, they could only be hidden under her bed. For a brief second she almost leaned out of the bed to look under there.
Now I’m beginning to act as oddly as they do, she chided herself.
“I’m especially pleased with the roses this year,” Aunt Abbie went on proudly, giving a final tug at one of the unseen roses. “I don’t know when I’ve seen such colors. There, I think that will do. I thought that you might appreciate some fresh flowers in your room when you awoke, and Aunt Christine said it would be all right. I hope you don’t mind.”
Jennifer was on the verge of telling her, manners or no, that she did mind, but again she was interrupted before she could begin.
“I almost forgot, I brought a robe for you,” Aunt Abbie said, pointing to the foot of the bed.