by V. J. Banis
That much at least was real. There, draped neatly across one corner of the bed was another of the peculiar robes that seemed to be the uniform of the household. Jennifer poked it with her foot.
“That’s very kind of you,” she replied, making an effort to sound grateful. “But I think I’ll manage with the things I’ve brought. I don’t suppose the caretaker has fetched my luggage yet?”
“Why, we have no caretaker.”
Jennifer sighed and spoke as she would speak to a child. “Well, whoever he was, the point is, I would like my luggage. Has anything been done about it?”
“Your luggage?”
“Never mind. I’ll take it up with Aunt Christine,” Jennifer said. This conversation was plainly getting her nowhere. “What time is breakfast?”
“Just as soon as you’re up,” Aunt Abbie said, looking pleased to have finished with the subject of the luggage. “But don’t you rush any now. We’ll be there whenever you’re ready.”
Jennifer did smile; it was maddening trying to talk to Aunt Abbie, but she was sweet, and she did seem genuinely eager to please. Aunt Abbie went out, closing the door gently after herself.
When she was alone, Jennifer remembered that she had not asked about the lock, or even about the dinner tray. Things were happening too fast for her. On an impulse she crossed the room to the door. No, the door was unlocked. And the dinner tray was gone. Had Aunt Abbie taken it with her? No, she had left empty handed, unless the dinner tray, like the roses, had somehow become invisible. Perhaps the nightly visitor had only been someone coming after the tray.
Maybe, she thought, maybe I dreamed the whole thing, the dinner tray, the nightly visitor. She had pinched herself, but what did that mean? She might have dreamed that she pinched herself.
With a shake of the head she tried the only other door in the room. It led to a bathroom, complete with tub, of an antiquated variety, but a tub nonetheless, and a basin and stool.
“Well, at least I have the comforts of home,” she said to herself, adding, “More or less.” For that she could no doubt thank the sisters who had installed the wiring, before the house burned; or else the unidentified relative who must have rebuilt the house after the fire.
She turned a faucet and waited patiently for a few seconds. Nothing happened. In dismay, she turned the other faucet over the basin, and then the two at the tub, leaving them all open. Not one drop of water came out. The ingenious relative had not, it seemed, carried his modernization project to its completion.
She returned to the bedroom. The robe, still lying on the bed, caught her eyes and she snatched it up. For a moment she felt the impulse to rip it apart, to vent her annoyance and frustration on the delicate fabric. With forced calm she dropped it to the bed again. She was not a woman to lose her temper, or give free rein to her emotions. This was unpleasant, true, but she would remain calm. That was what she had always done, and what she would continue to do.
For the moment she would make do, and when she had her chat with Aunt Christine, she would ask about the lack of water. And later, when everything had been satisfactorily put in order, they would all laugh about these silly little inconveniences, she along with the rest, and no one would think of calling her “funny.”
She removed her suit, the one she had worn the day before, from the armoire and donned it. It was crumpled and anything but fresh, but at least it was better than that silly robe they had provided her. And if she could not clean up, she at least had a comb in her purse, and some fresh lipstick. Thank God she still had her purse.
The results of her efforts, as viewed in the mirror over the dresser, were somewhat disappointing, but with a final assurance that they would suffice, she left her room and made her way down the stairs to the hall below.
Once at the bottom, however, her courage paled. She had seen nothing of the downstairs portion of the house the previous night with the exception of the hall itself and the room in which she had waited for Aunt Christine. It was a vast house, and the long rows of doors, still all closed, stretched cheerlessly down either wall. Where on earth was she to find the others? Aunt Christine had provided her no directions for finding the dining room, nor had Aunt Abbie thought of this difficulty.
She started slowly down the hall, listening for the sound of voices to tell her which room they were in. She reached the opposite end of the hall without hearing a sound. Whatever faults these people possessed, no one could accuse them of being boisterous at breakfast.
The little room she had seen before was empty. There was, she discovered, another door leading from it or she could return to the hall and start trying the other doors along its length. From outside the house had looked frighteningly large; she had the impression she could wander for days seeking its occupants.
“Now that’s silly,” she scolded herself. “They are here, in the dining room, and that can’t be too far away from the parlor.”
She decided upon the little door that led from the opposite wall of the room she was in, but it offered little encouragement. It opened to another hall, a small one, that led at first glance nowhere. A closer look told her that it had at one time gone somewhere after all, but one end of it had long since been boarded up, literally chopped off by the addition of a makeshift wall. With mounting regrets she tried one of the two doors offered by the remaining section of the little hall.
Another empty room presented itself, this one a study or a den of some sort. It was in fact difficult to tell what purpose some of the rooms might have served. They seemed to be furnished simply for the sake of filling them up rather than serving any particular need; but then, with so many rooms, many of them would be rather superfluous, no doubt.
Another door led her into what might have been a pantry, except that there was no evidence of a kitchen nearby. No doubt it was some sort of storage room, no longer needed. All the rooms were covered with the same layer of filth that she had seen everywhere she had been so far.
The room beyond was another den, or perhaps a library, judging from the case of books on one wall. This one had any number of exits, one of which led her into—what? A bedroom? There was a bed, a metal framed affair, but the bed seemed more like an afterthought. Perhaps, she concluded, a makeshift sickroom for some member of the family who had been unable to manage the long flight of stairs to the second floor.
Room after room seemed as lacking in apparent function as the first, and each of them as empty of any occupants. She had intended to leave the doors open behind her, but the first two had swung stubbornly shut and she had given up the attempt. Now, as she tried to retrace her steps, she found herself in still more rooms; different ones, she thought, from the ones she had already seen. Or were they? It was impossible to say. The furnishings were not much different from one room to the next.
Of course if she reentered the room with the bed or the little pantry-storage room, she would have recognized them, but despite the certainty that she was following the same route she had taken, she saw neither of these two rooms. She came into room after empty room, and there were doors, more doors than she would have thought possible in any single house.
With sudden panic, she realized that she was lost. For a moment she felt an impulse to run from door to door.
“This is ridiculous,” she told herself firmly, fighting back that urge to hysteria. “No matter how big this house is, these rooms can’t go on forever.”
The statement was lacking conviction. If ever a house could go on forever, she was ruefully afraid that Kelsey House would be the one. It wasn’t a house at all, it was a maze, a web of useless rooms and closed doors; and it was laughing at her. The house itself was watching her, laughing at her confusion and fright. She could feel it. At any moment she expected it to say, “Jenny, Jenny, eat a daisy, Jenny, Jenny, you are crazy.”
“Stop it,” she ordered herself. “You’re allowing your imagination to run away with you, Jennifer.”
But it was there still, that feeling of being watche
d. She looked around again, but the room was still empty. Only instinct, some certainty that came from within, hinted that she was not alone. There was an eerie moment of conviction, when the presence that she felt was not physical at all, but had only intruded itself upon her mind. She shook her head firmly.
“The windows,” she said in a rising voice. The rooms all had windows, and from them she could see where she was. With a new burst of hope she ran to the window nearest her and peered out. A tree—what was it, a pear tree?—old and gnarled, hovered near the glass, all but blocking the view. There were bushes beyond it, and more trees. She had only seen the front of the house from outside, in the dark, and at the time she had been more observant of the scene on the lawn, that peculiar dancing that was going on, than she had been of the grounds. The growth outside gave her no clue to her location in the house, except that she was not at the front. She was sure of that.
She had been at the front when she started out, though; she had followed the hall back to the front of the house, and had started from there. When had she turned? She tried to think back over the rooms she had come through, but they ran together in her mind. And the house was not straight, there was that funny angle to the wings.
She wanted to cry with frustration. She had the same odd sensation of unreality that she had had last night in the woods, a sense of being apart from time and the world, in another dimension as it were.
And then—had her senses been affected by all that had happened, or was that a breeze? Not just a breeze, more like a cold chill. She turned, startled, her eyes darting frantically about the room. The door across the room—was it the one through which she had entered—was swinging shut, closing itself. She stood frozen, watching it until it had slammed shut with a loud crash that echoed through the house, hurrying from room to room just as she had done. She thought, why I’m like an echo. I’m no more real than that sound. I’ve never been real. I’ve never been more than an echo of life, of reality.
That door had been closed before, she was sure of it. All of the doors had been closed, all the way through the crazy house. Why should this one be an exception?
She moved slowly across the room, stubbornly fighting down an urge to run, to scream, to do something other than remain calm. It took her a full moment to cross the room, and that long again to summon the courage to reach for the knob.
The door was locked. No, that wasn’t possible. The locks were the old fashioned sort that would require a key to operate, to lock or unlock. There were no night latches here at Kelsey House. The door could not have been locked without a key, and there was no key in evidence. Unless the key were on the opposite side, in which case she had only to stoop and put her eye to the keyhole, and she would see it. But she remained standing.
She tried the knob again. The knob turned, just as a knob should do; but the door remained locked.
“It’s stuck,” she told herself. “It isn’t locked at all, it’s only stuck. Doors do that. When it’s wet, the frames warp, and the door jams shut.”
Of course, it wasn’t wet at all, but dry and dusty in the house.
“A good tug will open it. All I have to do is hold the knob firmly and yank the door toward me.”
She brought her hand back from the knob. She held her breath, listening. She was imagining things, she must be. It sounded as if there were someone breathing on the other side of the door—but it couldn’t be, no matter how much it sounded like it.
There was a perfectly logical explanation. There was probably a window open in the next room, and the wind was blowing the curtains, and the curtains were those wispy affairs that sounded, when they rustled in the breeze, like someone breathing. It was the same breeze that had blown the door open, and then shut again, and now the door was merely stuck. And she was being overemotional and not a little bit silly.
Except, there was no breeze stirring.
CHAPTER SIX
“Oh, there you are.”
Jennifer jumped at the unexpected voice. Her eyes wide, she turned, expecting to see the devil himself standing behind her. It was only Aunt Christine, smiling brightly at her.
“I couldn’t find the dining room,” Jennifer explained lamely. She knew that it sounded foolish, but what was she to say: that she had been lost in this silly old house; that she had been frightened out of her wits by a little breeze? That she had thought she heard someone breathing?
“Why you were practically there,” Aunt Christine told her with a small chuckle, although Jennifer saw little humor in the situation. “But then this house is large and not too well laid out, I’ll admit. You really shouldn’t wander about like this until you’re more accustomed to it.”
And there, through the next door, was the main hall, and Jennifer hadn’t gone very far at all. Three or four rooms, she would have thought by the distance. But she had taken a wrong turn somewhere and had gone off down a wing of the house, circling about. If she had kept on, she would have found her way back in another moment or two.
They crossed the hall, entering a door on the opposite side and almost to the end, and they were in the dining room. There were a number of people in the room. At a glance Jennifer saw that all of them wore the same robes as Aunt Christine and Aunt Abbie, with one exception. There was an old gentleman seated near the end of the table, and he wore ordinary-looking trousers and shirt.
With a flush of embarrassment, Jennifer realized that the family were members of a cult of some sort. There were cults of all sorts, she knew from the Sunday supplements: nudists, for one, but there were others too, religious and all. Aunt Christine and the others were merely part of a cult that required the women to dress in this peculiar fashion.
“This is Jennifer Rand, Elenora’s daughter,” Aunt Christine was saying, laying a hand upon Jennifer’s shoulder. To Jennifer she said, “You know Abbie, of course. Next to her is Irene, your mother’s sister, and Marge, and Helen. And that is Marcella over there.”
Jennifer gave each of them a smile and a murmured “How do you do.” The names meant nothing to her; she had thought perhaps one of them would recall some memory, some mention by her mother that had heretofore eluded her. But they were all new to her. She tried to commit each name to memory.
“We had hoped Lydia would be with us, but she was delayed. She’ll join us soon, I’m sure,” Aunt Christine said, finishing the introductions.
Lydia. Aunt Lydia. It was the first name that meant anything to Jennifer; but what? There was a familiar ring, but whatever it was that almost popped to the surface of her mind disappeared again. No doubt she had heard her mother mention the name at some time or another.
“And that is your mother’s seat,” Aunt Christine said finally, indicating the first of two empty chairs before them. “Right next to yours, dear.”
It was another peculiar habit, not to say a morbid one, saving an empty seat for a member of the family who has passed away. But then, the family was a strange one. Nothing seemed impossible for them.
Her first thought as she seated herself was that Aunt Christine had neglected to introduce the old gentleman seated at the end of the table beside her. Nor had he expected it apparently, because he had not looked up during the introductions. His frail old shoulders were bent over the table, his dull eyes stared absentmindedly at the plate before him. He was unbelievably old, she realized, a faded shell of a man, scarcely aware of anything about him.
She realized now that he was the only male at the table. The others seated with her were all women. In fact, except for the hired man who had found her on the road and led her to the house, this was the only man she had seen since her arrival.
“Is the whole family here?” she asked on an impulse, directing the question to Aunt Christine.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Aunt Christine answered, seating herself at the opposite end, at the head of the table. “Most of those who went naturally never returned, unless they simply wanted to be here with us, like—like one or two have done over the year
s.”
Naturally they never returned, Jennifer repeated the phrase silently to herself. And I can’t say I blame them, I don’t think I shall either, when I have gone. Which, she amended quickly, will be soon. She turned toward the old gentleman.
“I’m afraid I missed your name,” she addressed him, little caring whether anyone caught the inference.
“Oh, that’s Morgan, Mr. Kelsey,” Aunt Christine answered for him. “My husband.”
Jennifer remembered then, with a start, her meeting on the road the night before, and the hired man’s comment. She laughed aloud.
“Mr. Kelsey. Well, I’m glad to see you.” She continued to address her remarks to him, although he made no response to her attention but only stared silently down at the table before him. “I didn’t expect to see you, I’m afraid. Your man, the one who brought me up from the road last night, told me you had been done in.”
She looked significantly up the table toward her Aunt Christine. “He said Mrs. Kelsey had done him in a long time ago.”
Aunt Christine seemed unperturbed by the remark. She laughed and said, “Oh, Wilfred has never forgiven me.” Mr. Kelsey still said nothing.
Jennifer found herself wondering whether Wilfred was the hired man, or someone she hadn’t yet encountered. And what hadn’t he forgiven her anyway? The difficulty in talking with these people is that you were never sure whether their remarks were intended as answers to your questions or not.
The others had followed this conversation silently and with polite attention. Now, at the sound of a footstep in the hall, they all looked in that direction. There was a sudden air of expectancy about the table, and Jennifer, sensing it, turned with them to look toward the door from the hall.
There was a lengthy silence and then another footstep, further away. Whoever was there had, it seemed, decided not to come in, and with the moving on of that presence, something in the atmosphere seemed to relax subtly.
Jennifer glanced toward her aunt. “We have another guest,” Aunt Christine said. “You’ll meet her in due time.” She looked pointedly toward her plate.