by Andre Norton
Persis arose quickly from her chair. “I fear you are overtired, sir. Please let me summon Mrs. Pryor—”
His scowl became pronounced. “Summon the devil if you wish!” he snapped and turned his head from her.
The girl was only too glad to leave the room, meeting Mrs. Pryor and Dr. Veering coming up the front stairs.
She nodded to both, but they seemed so intent on a low murmur of conversation that she hardly believed they saw her. And inside her own chamber Molly was waiting, plainly excited about something.
“Miss Persis, that old Indian witch—she’s come back—and she talked to Mrs. Pryor—out in the yard where they couldn’t be overheard. She kept looking at the sea as if she expected another storm. Do you suppose she knows about something like that? They say they do—like animals—they can smell out a storm.” “I don’t know.” Persis thought of her last ordeal by wind and wave and wondered how any rational being could abide living under such a threat. In spite of her long time abed this morning, she now felt sleep creeping up on her and was only too willing to yield to that now.
10
P ersis awoke quickly, as if someone had called her name. There was the very fleeting memory of a dream and she was breathing hard, her body sweating so to dampen patches of her night rail. Pushing aside the light sheet she had pulled over her, she sat up to listen.
There was no sloughing of wind. But there was something else. A rise and fall of a voice chanting words she could not understand.
Moonlight lay in patches on the floor, bright enough to rival candle flame. Persis slid to the side of the wide bed. The sound—the threat from the dream she could not remember. She was fully awake now—not only awake but apprehensive. She felt out with one foot and her toes touched her slipper. Yet she did not bend forward to secure it on her foot. It was as if she must not move, must not allow herself to be noticed—
Noticed? By what—or who?
That same strange, awesome feeling which had come upon her on the night she had gone to retrieve the portfolio, hung in this chamber. There was moonlight enough, when her eyes adjusted to the half dark, to make sure that she was alone. But—
Fear choked her, such fear as she had never known. It was as if she drew this terror to her whether she would or not, and was a magnet for it. Her hands crumpled the edge of the sheet, pulled it up to her mouth and she bit down hard on the folds of herb-scented cloth, seeking so to stifle her terrible inclination to scream, to—to—move into what might be greater terror.
Persis tried to interpret those whispering sounds. Though she could not understand them, they played upon her so that she knew she was swaying back and forth in a grotesque answer to their broken rhythm.
She wanted desperately to close her ears with her hands, but she found she could not. It was as if she were frozen, one foot off the bed, the other half-curled under her—searching the room—or what she could see of it—wildly—for what her inner sense told her was there and what her eyes and the remnants of her sensible confidence denied could be.
There was a dark shadow along the front of the bureau. One of the drawers had not been firmly closed, and now showed a noticeable gap. The portfolio? Had someone crept in during her period of sleep and searched for it again?
But—what she felt here—Persis slowly moved her head, it required a vast amount of energy and determination to break that strange apathy which held her to do that. There was no one in the room.
She forced herself to drag the wet linen self-applied gag out of her mouth. This was just the remnants of a bad dream—it had to be!
Only all her arguments could not expel the fear which still imprisoned her like an evil cage. And she stiffened, her hands clawing at the sheet.
The glimmer of light, flickering of sparks of light! That she had seen before! In the hallway. It was cold–cold. Something old, something which she could never understand and did not want to, was here, growing stronger and stronger—stronger—
With a little cry she could not stifle, for the first time in her life, Persis fainted. Or was she purposefully overcome by that thing which had nothing about it except dark purpose and overwhelming fear?
Dream—was it a dream which awaited her like a great beast in hiding? She could not have told. Save she was swept up into another time and place.
It was as if her body (though she was no longer aware of even having a body) floated in the sky. Though she had never remembered seeing colors in any dream before, such were all about her now, strident, cruel, threatening.
She was a prisoner of some force which willed her to look—to watch–
While what lay beneath her was so alien to all she knew that she felt totally lost.
This was not day, but night, and fires leaped high. Still the colors were there—the red of blood, the green of a poisonous vine, the yellow of a snake—all comparisons which flitted through her mind were those of wrongness, of evil. There seemed to be a stench composed of vile deeds and imaginings arising like the smoke from the torches, to taint her spirit as the smoke tainted the air.
And there were many of those torches, some borne by those in canoes who paddled purposefully toward what lay directly below Persis—or below that part of her which was caught in this dream. For what did stand there, the water of a small lake washing at its shell-armored sides, was a tall hillock of which the top was squared off after a fashion, though it angled inward toward the crest. While the crest itself was a platform with stone planted in its middle.
Up the side of the hillock were steps cut away and shell-paved, while on either side of those were planted more torches, even as there was also a veritable wall of them set around the outer edge of that top square.
Those in canoes did not move toward the stairs, rather their craft gathered in ranks around the outward skirts of the mound. But near the stone at the crest were others who waited. And, though their bodies were human, broad necklets upon their chests, their heads were encased in masks—with huge plumed crowns all in the forms of snarling visages of animals. One looked out from between the threatening teeth of a huge spotted cat. Another was snouted and fanged like an alligator.
And, very dim and far away, a thin chanting reached Persis. She felt that she was on the very edge of learning some mystery. But it was not a mystery of her kind and she had no desire—no right—to understand.
There came a last canoe, bearing at the bow a man who was not masked, but rather plumed and crowned, and about him there was the air of one who gave orders and was speedily thereafter obeyed. While behind him, between the two paddlers who maneuvered skillfully to bring their light craft to the beginning of that stairway of light, was another figure, but so draped in white that Persis could see neither face, nor hands.
The crowned chieftain stepped easily to the small landing which lay at the foot of that stairway. Then he turned and held out his hand while the paddlers brought the canoe around a little so that the figure in white could also disembark.
Persis, though she could not tell why she knew, believed that this was a woman, a young woman. And from that swarthed figure there came a breath of fear as strong as if the sea wind buffeted Persis.
Up they went, step by step. The chieftain first, proud, his face one which teased Persis’ memory for it seemed she had seen its like before—with the jutting beak of nose, plugged on one side in the nostril with a disk of green stone. He made no move to urge on or aid his companion.
Yet that other climbed, step by step. And her fear arose with her like a sour breath of corruption. So they reached the top. Then two of the animal-masked men moved quickly to the side of the white-shrouded one. They wore gloves as Persis could see when they raised their hands, but the gloves were skillfully fashioned of skin, while talons set in them glistened in the light.
These ripped and tore. Rags of white fluttered to the pavement of shells. A girl stood there, her young brown body brought into life by the torches. She made no attempt to raise her limp arms. Her face was passiv
e, her eyes staring straight ahead. They had drugged her, these priests. Persis did not know how she was certain of that. But the drug controlled only her body. Trapped inside the victim’s mind was alive, and fear was eating at her.
With the ease of long practice the cat-headed priest stooped to catch her ankles, the alligator already gripped her shoulders. Unresisting she was limp in their hands as they swung her up and across the stone.
No—she would not watch! Persis had no eyes to close—not in this dream. But her will arose with such a fury of revulsion that she struggled as the poor victim could not. There was a vast silence. The chant which had reached her faintly had stopped abruptly.
Away—Persis summoned all of her will. She would wake! She would!
It was like suddenly finding a way out of a prison, the falling to the floor of a bar across a door. She was—out!
Once more she opened her eyes, saw that she lay so close to the edge of the bed (her hands tightly gripping the rumpled sheet until her fingers ached) that she might have rolled to the floor. Still the nightmare held her for several breaths and she looked about her, eager to make sure of where she was—and when.
That had been unlike any dream she had ever had in her life. It was—real—even if she had had no part in it but was only an onlooker. She raised her head and was aware that that distant sound of chant was gone. It had not been of the dream. She had heard it before she had been caught in that nightmare.
Askra! The woman who might be the last of her tribe, who was credited with strange powers, and who was allowed to return to the Key to carry out communication with her dead (or so they said) because she could overawe in turn even the fierce Seminoles who had invaded and taken the lands of her people.
Had Persis this night somehow looked into Askra’s memories? Yet the girl had the feeling what she had witnessed had happened very long ago. The mound, the lake around it—those had stood clear, well tended. And there had been no house. Still she was certain that it had been the same mound as that on which the house now rested. What had Lydia said on that first day here—that this was blood-soaked ground with its own ghosts—the Old Ones Askra believed in—the Spanish—the pirates—the Spanish again—and now people of her own race. She sat up in bed and looked at the room with its bars of moon and its shadows. If evil was done—murder—over and over again in a place–then did that evil still hang like a dark cloud above it—perhaps forever?
There was, she drew a tentative breath, an odor in the room—some night-blooming flower? Perhaps—but she did not fancy it. And she felt queer and giddy. If only there was someone within reach she could go to now. Molly? No, it would be foolish to seek out the maid for no other reason than a bad dream.
However, she sought for her second slipper and firmly pushed her feet into them. She had to go to the window, to look out and reassure herself that the here and now was back. Without waiting to pick up her wrapper from the foot of the bed she did just that.
The moon shone on the causeway now uniting the mound and Key. There were no canoes, no torches. She wanted light within her room as well, though she knew the folly of sleeping with a candle aflame. Yet at the moment she did not feel as if she would ever truly sleep again.
Moving to the small side table she struck a spark from the tinderbox, and watched the welcome cone of fire answer on the wick. Then, she did not know why, she took up the candle, shielding the flame with her other hand, and moved to stand at the door—though she did not open that.
Instead, she listened. There were sounds out of the night—rustle of leaves, others made by insects. But nothing she could connect to either the chant or the uneasy feeling of the presence which had haunted her first awakening.
It was when she turned reluctantly once more to her bed, determined that she must fight sleep lest she somehow return into the world of nightmare, that Persis saw it.
A dark rod was lying at the foot of the bed, as if someone had twitched loose the netting there and laid it for her to see. She held the candle closer, until it nearly set aflame the netting before she jerked it back again.
The fan!
A glance toward the chest told her that the bottom drawer gaped open far enough. Someone had deliberately taken it from where Molly had put it and laid it here for her to find.
It cost her high resolution to touch it, draw it out into the full light of the candle. In her hold it was heavy, seemingly oddly balanced. And this was the one she had found buried! It could not be opened—as if it were a box made to resemble the fan Lydia had taken such malicious amusement in showing her. The opal eyes of the cats watched her, not with menace, but with the detachment of the furred kind. As if they were waiting for something—or for some action on her part. But how had it come here?
She had buried it, Persis knew that, she could even sense this moment the very feel of the earth and stones she had pressed with all her might down around the lead box which had held it. And then Molly had found it among her things. Yes, that was the drawer she had hidden it in for a space. And it would seem that it had been deliberately left in the open this time in mockery—to prove to her that she could not rid herself of her find.
Shivering, the girl collapsed on the edge of the bed. She would have given all she possessed, all Uncle Augustin had hoped to obtain to insure her future, to be safely back in New York. There was an uncanny shadow over this house—though she had never believed truly such things could honestly be. Now it would seem she was partially its victim.
She set down the candle carefully on the bedside table, wishing at that moment she possessed a dozen more to make a barrier of light around the bed. No—that made her think of those torches and the wall of light they had furnished for that very sinister crest of the mound!
If she could only hurl the fan away from her—out the window—into the vegetation where it might be lost forever. But though she willed fiercely to do just that, she could not move. This was like being caught in another dream. Was she? Could dreams be layered one upon the other so she might now think herself awake and yet not be?
But if anything was real in this suddenly frightening world it was this room, the bed—and what she held in her hand. Persis concentrated on the fingers which held the fan so tightly, loose—throw–
She brought up her other hand and began to straighten them one after another. Then she paused. There was something new stirring beneath the fear which was like a cloud of poison in this room. She—she had sat so before, and there had been—
For a moment the room beyond the reach of that single candle wavered, showed a ghostly otherwhere. Not the mound and the masked priests. No, rather rough walls. And she was a captive there—waiting—
Ah, but she had the answer—it lay right in her hands. Persis no longer tried to throw aside the fan. Instead she gave a turn to the narrow end. What it contained slid out smoothly, a delicate and deadly length of steel. Though she could not know it, a small, crooked smile shaped upon her lips, and there was a new depth of light in her eyes.
She held a dagger, nonetheless deadly for being so short. It would be long enough to cut a man’s throat—or even find his heart. The opal eyes of the cats flamed in the half light, promising. Persis dropped the fan-shaped sheath, put the forefinger of her other hand to the needle-tip of the hidden blade.
This was a key to unlock the door of desperation. As she held it so, once more shadows moved in her mind. Not memories of hers, rather a faded picture which might have come from a long distance, or far away in time. The girl she had seen brought to the mound in her dream—she had had no such weapon—it had not existed then.
But there had been a later captive, as helplessly entrapped here. And this had been her way to safety. Persis’ hand no longer tried to reject the touch of that blade. Why should she throw from her the one defense left.
Soon he would come; she knew it as well as if she already saw him walk through the shadowy doorway. Then she must play her little game, be one who cowered and feared—bring
him close—even endure his touch until—until she could use the steel she held!
She was breathing fast, the tip of her tongue passing quickly back and forth across her lips.
Slowly she turned the blade in the candlelight. From it shimmered kind of radiance, cold and deadly. The girl watched that half-bemused—but at the same time she was listening. When would he come? Perhaps it was part of his cruelty to keep her waiting this way. But he would discover—she moved the blade lightly through the air. The point caught on one of the folds of the net around the bed, and slit it easily apart.
So small a thing, but the action jerked Persis from her bemusement. What—who—? She dropped the blade, her hands going to press against her cheeks. Her skin felt hot, fevered. Was she ill and those dreams part of delirium? She was—she took firm hold on her thought—Persis Rooke! This was a room which had no confusing shadows to cloak it. And what lay before her—
With a shudder she thrust the thin blade back into the concealment of the mock fan. Though she had been only a spectator at the grisly torch-lit scene of her too-vivid dream, this time she had been near enough awake to at least confusedly realize she was in a house. Who had been there to open the drawer where she had hidden the fan earlier, who had brought it back? And why—?
The lost lady–?
Persis made herself give searching survey to the room. A woman had vanished years ago, many years ago, leaving a dead man behind her. Where had she gone? There must have been no escape from the Key for her. If she had killed the man, who would have forced her—had she just walked into the sea?
It was the hidden fan which had so strangely reappeared which troubled her. She forced herself to pick up the blade, slip it once more into the case which had held it. That quick twist of the fingers which anchored it within—how had she known that must be done?
Throw it into the sea? But even as she picked up the fan-shaped case she knew—against all reason—that she could not do so. Now as she held it once more her fingers tightened around it protectingly—Protectingly? Yes, she had to keep this—there was a reason. It was as if a thin voice, very far away, was raised in warning.