A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror

by V. J. Banis

  The door opened suddenly without advance warning. Jennifer turned her head in that direction, intending to snap at the intruder. To her delight, though, it was the young girl who had been beside her in the dining room, the one who had taken no part in the farce of eating. Slight as their bond was, Jennifer looked upon this child as the one genuinely friendly person in the place, and she was truly glad to see her now.

  “I came to see if you were feeling better,” the girl said, smiling brightly. There was something hauntingly sweet about the expression.

  “I’m glad you did,” Jennifer said, and meant it “Please do come in. I—I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “I’m Marcella.”

  “And I’m Jennifer. Would you like to sit down. The bed is the best I can offer; here, let me turn the spread back.”

  Marcella seated herself dutifully on a corner of the bed. “You don’t mind my coming for a visit?” she asked.

  “Mind? Heavens, you don’t know what a relief it is to find someone sane in this house.”

  “I’m supposed to be with the others, but Aunt Christine said I could miss the rites for the evening.”

  “Oh, yes, the rites.” Jennifer walked to the window and looked down upon the front lawn. There they were, the whole lot of them, doing their queer little dance again. It looked, she thought, not unlike a children’s game; handholding and twirling about. Or a square dance, perhaps. But the impression was that it was more than just a game, or even a dance. There was some deeper significance to it she felt certain; religious symbolism, perhaps.

  “What does it mean?” she asked, genuinely curious. If only she could begin to understand these people, the mysteries here might start clearing themselves up. Everything was so totally incomprehensible to her. She might as well be in a foreign country, she no more understood anyone here than if they were speaking a foreign tongue.

  “Mean?” Marcella sounded puzzled by the question. “Why, it’s the rites. The moon rites.” She said it in such a tone of voice as to imply that that explained everything; probably, Jennifer thought, it does to her.

  “Are you a relative too?” Jennifer asked, turning away from the window, back to her company. Curious though they might be, the rites could not help her get away from here. But Marcella might. She sensed a friendliness in the young girl’s manner, and certainly Marcella did not behave like the others. Perhaps here, after all, was the ally she so badly needed.

  It seemed almost impossible to believe that this sweet young thing was related to the other members of the household; but, she reminded herself unhappily, she was related to them herself. That was certainly a depressing fact.

  “A relative of yours? Only a cousin, I think,” Marcella said.

  Jennifer sighed and said, “It’s so difficult for me to get all these relatives straight in my mind, after so many years of thinking I hadn’t any.”

  “Have you seen your mother?” Marcella asked when Jennifer paused.

  Jennifer was startled; it was certainly a strange thing to ask. But the explanation was probably simple enough. As odd as the others in the household were, they had apparently neglected to explain her recent loss to this child. It was thoughtless of them, but not surprising.

  “My mother is gone,” she said quietly. She thought that the most tactful way of putting it.

  Marcella however seemed to experience some difficulty in digesting that information, and Jennifer feared perhaps she had been too tactful. She was on the verge of rephrasing her explanation, but Marcella went off on another tack instead, to her surprise.

  “Were you happy with her?” she asked.

  Jennifer, who had been standing, seated herself on the opposite corner of the bed and thought about that question. It was one she had never actually considered before, not openly and fully. Had she been happy with her mother?

  “To tell the truth,” she said finally, “I don’t think I know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, it’s a little difficult for me to explain. She was a very strong woman, and a dominating one. I’m afraid I never really lived much of my own life, I just sort of shared hers, if that makes any sense. If I were happy or unhappy, I was merely sharing her emotions. She wanted me with her always. Everything I did was with, or for her. Sometimes I thought even my thoughts were hers.”

  Jennifer felt a little pang of guilt, discussing her mother this way, and with a girl she scarcely knew. And yet at the same time she experienced a sense of relief in doing so. She had never really had anyone to talk to before, never any opportunity to voice these thoughts that had so often crossed her mind, only to be pushed aside as disloyal and unfair.

  She smiled wanly. “It isn’t very easy to explain, I’m afraid. Even to myself,” she said.

  “Are you happier now?” Marcella asked.

  Jennifer shook her head. “Since she died, you mean?” Marcella nodded. “I don’t know that either,” Jennifer said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t guess I feel very much different. As I said, I never had a life, you see, and I don’t suppose at this late stage of the game that I’ll ever get around to having one. I could, I guess, but—oh, I don’t know. I just don’t really suppose she would want me to, somehow.”

  She reflected upon her statement for a moment. “There,” she said, “that’s what I mean. Gone or not, she hasn’t stopped dominating me. Her life is gone, but she’s still living mine for me. And to tell the truth, these last few days, I’ve wished she were here with me, to tell me what to do.”

  “But she is,” Marcella said simply.

  “Is what?”

  “She is here.”

  Jennifer frowned. She was thinking of the empty chair at the dining room table, saved for her mother. Perhaps this cult the family belonged to touched upon the subject of death. She tried to think of a tactful way to reply to Marcella’s comment.

  “Yes, it’s true, in a sense,” she said, “that we’re never parted from our loved ones. But only in a sense. And it isn’t quite the same, don’t you agree.”

  “How did she die?” Marcella asked, ignoring the question. “I mean, was it sudden, or did she...?”

  “Did she know?” Jennifer finished the question that Marcella hesitated on; she was glad to see that the child did accept the idea of her mother being dead. “Yes, she knew for quite a while that it was coming, which is always a little more unpleasant. I’ve always thought I would rather go suddenly, not knowing.”

  “Still, knowing in advance gives you time to arrange everything.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Anyway, we don’t as a rule get to pick how we die.”

  Marcella leaned back, her hands behind her for support, and stared dreamily up at the ceiling with its paper flowers. “I was always frightened of drowning. I remember thinking how horrible it must be, with the water and the darkness and being so alone. But it wasn’t that way at all.”

  “What wasn’t what way?” Jennifer asked. She had been growing uneasy as the conversation progressed. It was a morbid subject in the first place, and although Marcella might well be the most sane person in the household, she still did make some peculiar remarks.

  “It wasn’t that way when I drowned,” Marcella said matter-of-factly. “It wasn’t horrible at all. It was like sleeping and dreaming. Someone, I think it was Mr. Hawthorne who said, ‘We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.’ I felt like that. I heard music, strange music, unlike anything I had ever heard. And there were such lovely colors; not patterns or designs of any sort, just colors. And then the bad dream was over.”

  “You just fell into a lake and drowned, I suppose,” Jennifer said a bit cuttingly. It didn’t matter much if she offended Marcella on this subject. These were not very pleasant illusions for such a young girl to be having, and perhaps after all it would be as well to see them nipped in the bud, before she really did become as crazy as the rest of the family.

  “I di
dn’t fall into a lake. It was the stream, the one that runs through the woods. And as a matter of fact I didn’t fall, my mother....”

  “Marcella,” Jennifer said sharply, interrupting the girl. She did not at all like the way this conversation was going, and she did not want to hear what role, in Marcella’s fantasy, her mother played in this drowning. “I...never mind all that. I need your help. Will you help me?”

  “Oh, I should love to,” Marcella cried, looking delighted at the prospect “What shall I help you to do; is it a secret?”

  “Indeed it is a secret,” Jennifer said, reminded to drop her voice to a whisper. “I want to leave Kelsey.”

  Marcella’s jaw dropped, and her look of delight vanished at once. “But that isn’t possible,” she said, shaking her head solemnly.

  “But it is,” Jennifer cried, seizing the girl by her shoulders. “It must be.”

  “No one ever leaves,” Marcella said. “But you’ll grow to love it here. Everyone does.”

  Jennifer released her hold on Marcella’s shoulders. She felt like crying in the face of this new opposition. “How can I love it here?” she said. “You’ve seen what’s going on. You’ve no idea how terrible I feel, or how frightened I’ve been. I can’t sleep. There’s no food, and no water even to bathe.”

  “But there is water,” Marcella said, seizing upon that mention. “There’s a bathroom right through that door.”

  “Without water,” Jennifer snapped. Didn’t the child see the predicament she was in, without having to argue every detail with her. “I can’t even wash my hands.”

  Marcella looked at her a bit doubtfully. “Aunt Christine says you just don’t see things that are there,” she said. “She says you’ll get over that after a while, and then you’ll be all right.”

  “But there isn’t any water there,” Jennifer cried aloud. “Come here, I’ll show you.”

  Dutifully Marcella got up from the bed and went to the little bathroom with Jennifer. Jennifer twisted the taps violently. Nothing came from the faucets. She turned triumphant eyes on Marcella.

  “There, you see,” Marcella said. “There’s plenty of water, just as I told you.”

  She was speaking exactly as if Jennifer were a child. She went to the sink, and began an elaborate pantomime of washing her hands in the nonexistent stream of water.

  “You see, we can wash our hands,” she said in a sing song voice. “Let’s wash our hands together, Cousin Jennifer, come on.”

  Jennifer began to cry. She couldn’t help it, the tears came to her eyes and a great sob welled up in her throat. She turned and ran back to the bedroom, throwing herself across the bed, and cried brokenheartedly. What was she going to do? No one would help her, no one. And she was so tired and hungry.

  After a time Marcella came and sat on the edge of the bed, and patted her shoulder. “There, there,” she crooned in a low, musical voice. “It will be all right. You’ll learn to love Kelsey.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jennifer sobbed. The sound of a sympathetic voice only made the tears come more abundantly. “I’m so hungry. I haven’t had any food since I came.”

  “Well, that’s certainly the truth,” Marcella said.

  Jennifer stopped sobbing and looked up into Marcella’s concerned face. “It is?” she said. “I mean, you know that?”

  “Why of course. I notice things. And I’ve been worried. I couldn’t help thinking, she can’t go very long without eating and not get sick.”

  Jennifer seized the girl’s hands tightly. “Oh, Marcella, can you help me with that, at least? Can you get me some food? Please, I beg you, real food?”

  “Why of course I can,” Marcella said in a matter-of-fact tone. She pulled her hands gently free. “You just sit here and rest, and I’ll see to it at once.”

  “You won’t—won’t forget?” Jennifer asked breathlessly. She could hardly believe, after all she had been through, that help was so readily available as this.

  “No, I won’t forget, not a second time.”

  “A second time?”

  “I meant to bring some food with me when I came up, but I forgot. Aunt Christine tells me I’m the most thoughtless person she’s ever encountered.”

  She got up and started from the room. At the door, she paused to say, “I was only fifteen at the time.”

  Jennifer, brushing the tears from her eyes, asked, “At what time?”

  “When I drowned,” Marcella said. She went out, closing the door softly.

  That girl has been with these lunatics too long, Jennifer told herself; that’s for sure. Perhaps, she added, it would be wise to take Marcella with her when she left Kelsey. Of course, before she made any plans of that sort, she would have to determine just how she was going to get away from the place. She didn’t seem to be getting any closer to a solution.

  Or was she? Marcella was willing to help. If she could convince the child of the danger she was in...and if she suggested that Marcella come with her. Was that kidnapping? Well, it could hardly matter. Hadn’t she been virtually kidnapped herself, kept a prisoner here? No, the family surely would not want to make a police matter of all this. And it would be best for Marcella.

  She lifted her eyes and caught sight of herself in the dusty mirror over the dresser.

  “I am a sight,” she said. The scratches from her morning in the woods had turned livid, and there were smears of dried blood on her face and arms. Her suit was almost literally a shambles, and she was covered with filth. She looked like a wild woman; she scarcely recognized herself in that savage reflection.

  The minutes seemed to drag by. She had nearly decided that Marcella had lied to her, when a soft knock came at the door. She rushed to it, flinging it open. “Oh, Marcella,” she exclaimed, and then caught herself.

  It was not Marcella, but Aunt Abbie who stood outside, holding the familiar silver tray before her. She smiled disarmingly. “Marcella said you wanted something to eat,” she said. “So I’ve brought you a tray up. I’m glad to know you’re feeling hungry at last.”

  Jennifer watched mutely as Aunt Abbie brought the tray into the room and set it atop the dresser.

  “Now you enjoy your meal,” Aunt Abbie said, starting from the room again. “And then you’ll feel better. It isn’t good to skip meals.”

  Jennifer stood motionless for several moments after she had gone. Then, although she felt sure of what she would find, she crossed slowly to the dresser and lifted the lid from the silver tray.

  It was empty, of course. She nearly screamed aloud, or threw the tray at the wall. They were trying to starve her, it was obvious; or drive her mad; or both.

  But why? How much money had her mother left her, a few thousand? Certainly it was not a fortune.

  But of course her relatives would have no idea how much it amounted to. Was it possible that they somehow had a mistaken idea that it was more? Perhaps they thought she was rich, and that she stood between them and a fortune. Was it conceivable that they were doing these things to her for the sake of gaining an inheritance?

  Anything was conceivable. She might not have thought that a short time before, but she had learned that lesson at least in her stay so far at Kelsey House. Much of her thinking had had to be changed.

  She looked about the room, at the furnishings, ugly and dismal, at the horrid wallpaper, at the dirt everywhere. Impulsively she tore the slip from one of the bedpillows and began to dust frantically, running the cloth with ferocious movements over the dresser, the stool, even the floor. She worked as if possessed by demons, and the dust rose in the air like a fog, filling her nostrils, wrapping itself about her in little wisps, only to settle again as thickly as before. Tears streaming down her face left little white trails through the black that smeared her cheeks.

  At last with a small sob she threw herself across the bed again, clenching the now black cloth tightly in one hand.

  * * * *

  Lydia. Aunt Lydia. In her sleep, the name reverberated through her min
d.

  “We had hoped Lydia would be with us.... She’ll join us soon....”

  That was what Aunt Christine had said. A simple enough remark to make. Why should it haunt her so, as it did? Why did that name linger in her mind? There was something her mother had said at some time about Aunt Lydia. That, and the image of a letter. The memory teetered on the brink of her consciousness, and then was gone.

  “Jennifer.”

  Her name again. But it was not here, at Kelsey. She was at home, in her bed, the bed that had been moved into her mother’s sickroom. She was living again the long weeks before her mother’s death. Agonizing, sleepless nights, a constant vigil at her mother’s side, long days of exhaustion; and medicines to prolong both of their labors.

  “Jennifer.”

  It was that night again, the night of her mother’s death, and she was so weary, so very tired. She was asleep, deeply, heavily asleep, and the name had invaded her sleep. It came, the calling, and grew more plaintive and more distant, weaker and still weaker. She had awakened, or half awakened, but her sleep had been too deep. She had drifted off again, not to awaken again until morning, to find....

  “No, I didn’t hear my name,” she argued, burying her face in her pillow. “I dreamed it. You didn’t call.”

  Her voice became a whimper. The dream faded and passed away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Morning. Another morning at Kelsey House. How many had there been so far? The days had run together in a bewildering stream, so that she no longer knew how long she had been here. A week? Surely not that long, but she could not say for certain.

  She rose, peering out on the lawn, and there was Mr. Kelsey, Aunt Christine’s husband, standing by himself below her window. Mr. Kelsey who had not yet spoken a word to her. Was he as mad as the rest, or was he, in some way, a prisoner like herself? She had observed that he felt no affection toward the women of the household, and Aunt Christine had suggested as much. Perhaps he too wanted to leave. If only he would help her find her car, she would be more than happy to take him along with her when she left. She would take any of them along, any and all, if they would only allow her to go.