The Singing Stones

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I thought of siren legends and smiled. But the sound was disturbing and I went inside and got into bed where I could shut it away. Yet my ears remembered, and it seemed unsettling that the strange “singing” should continue out there, with no one to hear. Almost as if there were a summoning about it—directed at me.

  Once more I closed my eyes and this time I eased myself into that quiet place in my mind where I could go when I was most troubled and needed to clear my spirit. Here some part of me that was wiser than my fumbling conscious mind could surface and offer counsel. I used to be able to listen to this inner quiet after a difficult day in my work. But lately I seemed to have forgotten how.

  When a slow stirring began deep inside me, as though a voice whispered in my mind, I sensed an edge of excitement that meant something was about to crystallize. Now I could be quiet and open to whatever might offer itself. What evolved needn’t be earthshaking, and this was only a small thing, but it gave me a direction—something I could try before I left Virginia. Then I would feel free to go.

  Julian and Vivian, I felt convinced, had hidden something even from themselves—perhaps in denial, and unless this could be opened up and faced, Jilly would continue to suffer the consequences.

  So, after all, I must stay another day—just long enough to suggest, even to urge what I thought should be done. Having decided this, I fell asleep though not quite dreamlessly.

  It was past midnight when I awoke to some sound that connected with an uneasy dream that just escaped me. The door to my sitting room stood open, and a light had been turned on—though I remembered switching off all lights when I’d gone to bed.

  “Who’s there?” I called, aware of the thumping of my heart. My already strong sense of something wrong in this house became suddenly paramount, and I wasn’t sure what I might have to face.

  There was no answer, but someone had turned on a light. I got out of bed quietly and slipped on my robe. In bare feet I approached the door and peered around its edge.

  A woman in a long granny gown of printed lavender challis stood in the center of the room. Her hair hung in a dark braid down her back, and her rather strange eyes had a fixed, concentrated look. The woman was Carla Raines and I liked nothing about her nocturnal appearance in my rooms.

  “Is there something you wanted?” I asked, stepping into the light. Perhaps the very intensity of her focus had drawn me from my dreams.

  “You must be warned.” She spoke so softly that I barely heard her words. “I know you came here for the child—but Jilly is already lost. There’s nothing you can do for her, and you mustn’t stay or you will surely be lost yourself.”

  No one wanted to leave this house more than I did, but I didn’t care for this sort of mystical warning from a woman I already disliked.

  “Why mustn’t I stay?”

  A note of hysteria came into her voice. “Because this is a house of death. If you stay you will be drawn into terrible events.”

  “I can’t believe that,” I said, though I was almost ready to believe this oracle of doom in her simple gown that was so much less exotic than her daytime dress.

  She raised graceful hands in a dancer’s gesture of pleading. “You must believe. There has been killing—there has been murder. Save yourself while there is still time. It’s already too late for the rest of us. The wheel is turning and it can’t be stopped.”

  This was too much. The woman was unbalanced and I would report this incident to Julian as soon as morning came.

  “All right.” I spoke as calmly as I could manage. “You have warned me—thank you.”

  She turned away, her shoulders drooping. “You don’t believe what I’m telling you. But if you stay you may come to understand what I mean in some terrible way. Don’t let Julian Forster beguile you. Be on your guard.”

  She wore black ballet slippers and I glimpsed them as she moved out into the dark corridor, revealing the slightest limp. I returned to bed, but not to sleep. Carla Raines left me feeling thoroughly unnerved, yet all the more convinced that someone should get Jilly Asche away from an influence that could hardly be healthy. If some psychological imbalance drove Carla, and if there was danger under this roof, it might be to Jilly, and it might very well emanate from Carla herself.

  When morning came, I lay for a time in bed, watching the treetops outside my window, where autumn colors were beginning. In a day or two the hills would be aflame. In the morning light birch leaves looked almost pink against a blue sky, their slender silver trunks swaying in their own delicate ballet. As they moved, I could glimpse the scalloped rim of mountains showing between the trees. Virginia was so beautiful—and that was something I found painful to remember. Since now there was no one with whom I could share its beauty.

  Thanks to Carla Raines, a new, inner urgency stirred in me, and I knew I must get up and face whatever needed to be done that was within my capabilities.

  When I’d dressed in a khaki shirt and twill trousers, I went downstairs to find Vivian clearing breakfast dishes from the table. This morning she wore a housecoat sprinkled with tiny pink buds that put a glow in her cheeks, and she smiled when she saw me.

  “So you’re not leaving right away, after all?”

  “Perhaps I’ll stay one more day,” I said. “Did Julian tell you what happened last night?”

  “Yes, he told me. What have you decided?”

  She poured coffee for me and dropped bread into a toaster. I sat down and considered my course. I didn’t want to talk to Vivian about Carla Raines.

  “I haven’t decided anything. That is, I haven’t thought of any useful action as far as Jilly is concerned. But I do want to know the answers to a few more questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “What really happened the day Stephen was hurt? You’ve told me that the change in Jilly stems from that time. Is she holding something back? Something that frightens her?”

  Vivian poured more coffee for herself and sat down at the breakfast table opposite me. “I’m not sure that she knows what really happened.”

  “There’s more to it than Stephen’s fall, isn’t there? I seem to remember from a news report that someone else was hurt at the time?”

  “Not hurt—killed.”

  “Can you tell me about it?” I asked, startled.

  Vivian had begun to look uncomfortable. “Maybe you’d better ask Julian your questions. It was all so awful at the time, and we were so helpless. I hate to think about it—dredge it all up again.”

  “What do you mean—killed?” Carla’s words echoed suddenly in my mind.

  “Killed in a fall that was much worse than Stephen’s. But we don’t know how it happened. We don’t even know Why Luther Kersten, the developer for the condo project, was up there that Sunday. Somehow he slipped and went over the edge of the cliff and fell to his death. Afterward, the police wanted to question Stephen, but he was out of it completely. And even when he recovered from the coma, it was months before he could talk clearly—his memory was hazy. Even yet, he hasn’t remembered clearly what happened to him, let alone to Luther Kersten.”

  Vivian was giving me what little she knew in spite of her reluctance to bring it all back.

  “What about Jilly? If she was there—?”

  “When those schoolboys found them, she was dazed by a bump on the head. She either ran into something so hard that she knocked herself out—or someone hit her with a pretty heavy hand. Since Stephen would never have done that, it must have been Luther.”

  “And she doesn’t remember either what happened?”

  Vivian shook her head sadly. “When anyone attempts to ask questions about that time, she either gets hysterical or freezes up. So we’ve found it’s best not to question her. Julian has managed to protect her from too many questions by the police, but there’s no way to protect her from whatever is going on in her own mind. This is one reason why Julian felt we needed you here when we saw you on television.”

  “But I’m a stranger,
Vivian. There’s no way I can get through to her quickly. If at all. She’s an active, healthy little girl—not like the children I work with. They are usually eager to be helped, while Jilly isn’t.” I sat stirring the liquid in my cup as though swirls of cream would tell me something. “I realize the police must have had their own problems—with one man dead, and two people who had been knocked unconscious. It’s pretty weird. Who attacked whom—and how? Someone must have a clue.”

  “When you’ve finished breakfast you’d better talk to Julian,” Vivian repeated. “Mostly I don’t interrupt him in the morning, because that’s when he works on his book. But he asked me to bring you to him when you were ready.”

  Again Julian had read me correctly and been sure I wouldn’t leave early today. The next step was certainly to talk with him, and especially to tell him about Carla’s appearance in my sitting room last night. Though it might be pointless, I might even talk again to Carla Raines. The woman seemed more of an enigma in this house than anyone else, yet she might have been close enough to Jilly, having been her dancing teacher, to have learned something from her that she hadn’t told.

  “What sort of book is your husband writing?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t like to talk about his work very much, but maybe he’ll tell you.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Vivian shrugged. “He doesn’t have much confidence in my critical ability. Not that he wants criticism at this point, but he feels I’m too ready to admire anything he does.”

  I remembered what that had been like when I had been so youthfully adoring around Stephen—probably boring him quickly.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Vivian said more lightly. “Julian and I are comfortable together and happy with each other. I don’t mind if he’s miles ahead of me in so many ways. He needs a cushion between him and all those—vibrations?—that surround him most of the time. I furnish a buffer zone.”

  “What do you mean—vibrations?”

  Again the shrug. “You’d better figure it out for yourself. I don’t even try. I just know that he has something more than most people—a greater sensitivity. I’m sure you’ve already seen it. So now let’s go upstairs and you can ask your questions directly.”

  She led the way to the second level, and I followed. Beyond Julian’s closed study door, his typewriter was silent, but when Vivian tapped, he called to us to come in.

  She stood back to let me pass. “Go ahead, Lynn. I’ll be downstairs when you want me. You need to see him alone.”

  Finding myself suddenly hesitant—a fish out of water?—I went through the door Vivian had opened for me. Julian’s study had been papered between bookshelves in dark red damask that gave the room a Warm Victorian touch. I had suggested that color for what was to be our library. The carpet was a slightly brighter ruby red, and walnut furniture offered rich shades of brown. All as I had imagined—so that I had a strange feeling of déjà vu as I stood looking around.

  However, it was quickly the man himself who held my attention. He had risen from his desk to come toward me with his hand outstretched in the same warm welcome I’d felt yesterday.

  “You look rested,” he said. “You’ve let go of your tensions. That comes from making the right decision. You’ll stay awhile and try to help Jilly.”

  His graying hair gave him a look of dignity, and his deepset eyes seemed calmly assured as he watched me. He was making statements, not asking questions, and he went much too quickly, taking too much for granted. Julian Forster could be a bit overpowering in his own quiet way. And this time he was wrong. I felt far from rested—and my tensions had increased.

  “I haven’t made any decisions yet,” I protested as he indicated a tapestried chair near the glass doors to the deck. I sat down and looked out at mountains that rose, crest above crest, across the horizon. Silvery morning mists drifted between ridges, following the line of invisible streams.

  “At least you’re still here,” Julian said. “You didn’t leave right away, as you expected. So that was a decision of sorts.” He sat again in his desk chair, his manner quietly unassuming, even as he assumed so much.

  I held back on telling him about Carla, feeling my way. “I can only ask questions. Someone must know what is troubling Jilly, frightening her?”

  “It’s possible that she holds herself responsible for what happened to her father.”

  “Is that true? I mean, was she responsible?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Your sixth sense doesn’t work with Jilly?”

  He answered seriously, though I must have sounded flip. “I don’t try to label it, but whatever I may have can’t be summoned on command. It’s there, or it isn’t.”

  I had more time now to study Julian’s face by daylight. His features were finely carved—almost to the point of being gaunt—with an aquiline nose, sensitive mouth, and a chin that came to a point. In profile his jaw ran straight and strong to the lobe of his ear, contradicting what otherwise seemed gentle.

  From a woven basket on a table beside him, Julian took several small colored stones and held them in one hand as he talked.

  “Will you at least tell me any thoughts you have about Jilly, Lynn? I don’t read minds, you know, in spite of what Vivian claims. Perhaps I’m aware of signals that others give out, but that’s all.”

  He was a bit too modest, I thought—or perhaps evasive.

  “I have a few questions that Vivian said I should ask you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The most important one seems to be what really happened when Stephen was hurt. Vivian tells me no one knows, but there must be theories.”

  “Jilly is the one who might know, but I’m afraid she’s hidden whatever happened even from herself.” Julian clicked the colored stones from one hand to the other. “I believe that she’s terrified to have the truth come out. I’ve tried to talk with her and make her understand that whatever happened was an accident, and that no one would ever blame her. Most of all, she shouldn’t blame herself.”

  “What does she say?”

  “Nothing. She begins to shake when we press her, and sometimes she cries. Though not in the abandoned way you saw last night. She’s carrying around some terrible burden that she won’t share with anyone.”

  “Then there’s no reason why she would talk to me.”

  Julian shook his head reproachfully. “You know better than that, Lynn. A stranger can often accomplish what those who are close to acute suffering aren’t able to. Psychologically, emotionally, you know how to reach Jilly. I was guided to you for a reason. You have a special gift, so why not use it to help us now?”

  Without raising his voice, without any change in his mild expression, Julian Forster could push at every defense I raised against him. It was impossible to reach anyone so convinced that his one-track course was right. He could touch me in ways I might not accept or want. The clicking of the bright stones in his hands began to distract me.

  “Tell me about the man who died,” I said abruptly.

  “Luther Kersten? A rather unsavory character. He was the developer who employed Stephen’s firm as architects for this condominium project. Basically he was a scoundrel—or so I suspect. I knew him slightly because he was a protégé of Larry Asche. He had a reputation as a womanizer, and he was greedy to the extent of being thoroughly dishonest—while staying just this side of the law. From hints Stephen dropped, I can guess that Kersten was pressuring the contractor to use shoddy materials and cut corners that wouldn’t be visible to buyers. The builder was an honest man and he came to Stephen. He didn’t want to see the eventual owners of those apartments at White Moon cheated.”

  That name caught my breath and stopped me. “White Moon?”

  “That’s what Stephen wanted to call this particular project. It’s all been abandoned since Kersten’s death and Stephen’s injury. Litigation is tying things up until Kersten’s estate is settled.”

  I had stopped paying attention.
White Moon! I didn’t want to remember that day when I’d chosen White Moon as the name for our house. It had nothing to do with the present.

  “Surely there’s some conclusion about what might have happened?” I spoke more sharply than I’d meant to, and Julian regarded me thoughtfully.

  “You’re right, of course. There are various theories. The bad blood between Luther Kersten and Stephen was well known, and the police believe there was a fight between them up there at the site. Stephen had a black eye and facial bruises that doctors said hadn’t come from his fall. If those two fought near the edge of the building’s floor, where there was still no outer wall, Stephen could have thrown Kersten over. Or Kersten could have slipped on his own and fallen. In the worst case it could have been murder. More likely, it was an accident. Whatever happened, Stephen must have stepped forward onto that board laid across a stairwell that shouldn’t have been left unguarded. The board broke and dropped him two stories down.”

  In my mind I could almost see it happen, and I felt a wrench at the pit of my stomach. “So Jilly must have seen what happened?”

  “We don’t know. She hasn’t any idea of how she came to be knocked about. She may really have buried most of this. One thing we’re sure of. Stephen didn’t go to that place to meet Kersten, or he’d have been ready for trouble, and he’d never have taken Jilly with him.”

  I found myself listening to the hypnotic sound of those small stones being passed from one of Julian’s hands to the other. He noted the direction of my look and smiled.

  “These are my form of worry beads.” He opened one hand and showed me the colored stones. “Each of these has its own energies, and I let them go to work for me.”

  As the morning sun struck through glass, I caught the glint of brown and gold from a tiger’s eye. I recognized a bit of rose quartz, a piece of black obsidian, and the yellow glow of rough topaz. “What do they tell you, Julian?” Strangely, the use of his first name came easily now.