Hallow House - Part Two

by Jane Toombs

  What was that noise? Johanna shot to her feet, hand to her mouth, holding back a scream. Where was the sound coming from? She stared apprehensively at the north tower door and, terrified, watched the knob turn.

  Chapter 34

  The door to the north tower room swung open and Brian stepped into the room. "So this is where you're hiding," he said. "I thought I was the only one who came up here anymore."

  Johanna went weak-kneed with relief. Once she would have flung her arms around him in a hug, but their relationship was no longer an easy one.

  "You s-scared me," she said. "I thought--well, I don't know what I

  thought."

  "That I was the big bad bogeyman from behind the black door?"

  Johanna tried to smile, but her spine tingled with left-over fear.

  Brain peered onto her face. "You really were scared, weren't you?" He touched her cheek. "And you've been crying."

  He bent his head until their lips meant in a gentle kiss. His mouth was soft and warm and she wanted the kiss to last forever. He put his arms around her, holding her in a comforting embrace.

  "I won't let anything hurt you," he said as he released her.

  "I know you won't. This time she was able to smile.

  "He pulled her down so they were sitting side by side on the window seat. "You told me wild horses couldn't drag you up here."

  "I n-needed to be by m-myself. Daddy--" She paused, shifting focus, "Did you mother ever tell you about--?" She stopped, uncertain how to ask.

  "About what?"

  "I'm not exactly sure. I m-might have something to do with--with incest." There, she'd managed to say the word.

  Brian, who'd been leaning toward her, straightened, but didn't reply.

  Johanna, watching his face, said, "You do know something, I can tell."

  "I can't talk about it."

  "You have to, because I know part of it already. Marie told me my father believes something is so, but he's wrong. You know what that something is, don't you?"

  Brian nodded.

  "Your mother tried to talk to talk to me the n-night of the quake," Johanna went on. "She wanted me to know."

  He rose and turned to gaze out the window. Silence settled into the room like dust. When he finally spoke he blurted out the words.

  "Uncle John thinks my father, Vincent, was your father as well as mine. My mother told me John was wrong."

  Though she'd been expecting to hear something unpleasant, she hadn't quite been prepared for this. "Vincent? My father?"

  Brian kept his face turned toward the window. "I don't like to talk about your real mother, not in the way--"

  "Don't worry about that. "Vera's my mother in every way that matters. Marie said a little about Delores, how pretty she was and how it b-brought her nothing good. So I guess m-maybe Daddy believes that Delores and Vincent were l-lovers."

  Brain turned to look at her. "My mother said they were. And there were other men, too. But Delores told Marie the baby--you--were John's from the night he--" Brian swallowed. "Well, Delores swore he raped her."

  Johanna stared, not so much at him but at what he'd revealed. At the same time it seemed to her that somewhere deep inside she already knew this, but had forgotten. Perhaps it came from a conversation she might have overheard when she was too young to understand, but now comprehended.

  "Marie t-told me Delores never lied to her," Johanna said at last. "What do you t-think of all this?"

  Again he didn't answer. She stood and faced him, detecting uneasiness in his eyes.

  "Brian, you c-can't believe I'm your half-sister!"

  "How will we ever know for sure?" My mother told me all this before I went to camp last summer. I knew I had to tell you about it and I planned to do that when I came home. But she died in the quake and that bothered me more than I ever thought it would. I know she wasn't much of a mother, but she tried to be when she could. Somehow, after the funeral, I just couldn't tell you."

  Johanna blinked to keep back tears.

  "I thought I could be your brother, at least," Brian went on. I--well, there was Sue and Cheryl and I guess you know..." He shrugged.

  "I refuse to think of you as my b-brother!" she cried. "I love you, but not l-like a brother."

  Brian's eyes, blue as the ocean when the sun shone on the water, darkened. He pulled her close and kissed her in a totally different way. The warmth was there, but also the heat of another, more fiery emotion that sent waves of need through her.

  He thrust her away so abruptly she staggered.

  "We can't," he said hoarsely, "What if..." He didn't finish, rushing past her to the door. She heard him pounding down the stairs.

  Johanna clenched her fists. Brian was wrong. So was Daddy. And he is my father. Not Uncle Vince. Just as Delores had told Marie, Maybe Daddy didn't want to remember he'd raped his wife.

  A restless compulsion drove her from the third floor to Delores' room. No one had used it since her death. With the twins, she'd peeked into the room before but the clutter of personal objects on the dressers, combined with the portrait on the wall had convinced them Delores didn't want anyone meddling with her things. Sergei's room was now Brian's--all trace of Sergei had vanished. But this was still Delores' room.

  Johanna hesitated at the door, but opened it and slipped inside the room. Red was everywhere, oppressing her almost as much as the shadows. The portrait of Delores stared down at her as though asking who was violating her room.

  Johanna stared at the painted brown eyes. Why? Why did you have to be my mother instead of Vera? Why did you need Uncle Vince and those others?

  Vera would never betray Daddy with any other man. Johanna knew she'd never betray Brian in that way, either. But Delores had.

  The dark eyes gazed enigmatically down at her, the lovely red mouth didn't answer. "You don't think I'm beautiful like you," Johanna said. "Well, I'm not, but Brian loves me anyway. Whatever you did, Brian's not my brother. Do you hear? He's not!"

  She turned from the painting and examined the room. So much red. Did Delores always wear red? Opening the closet door, she was shocked to find clothes hanging inside. Not only had Vera not removed the things atop the dressers, the closet had never been emptied, which was unusual for her. Delores' room had been more or less left untouched. Almost like it was cursed.

  The clothes in the closet were not all on hangers, some lay in disarray on the floor and Johanna stepped back until she realized last summer's earthquake must have shaken them off. Most of the gowns were red. She picked a filmy robe with feather trim off the floor and, on impulse, carried to the long mirror attached to the dressing table, where she held the robe against her.

  The brilliant crimson overwhelmed her coloring, making her skin appear lifeless. She wasn't Delores in either body or soul. A faint whiff of a heavy perfume from the bottles on the dresser top made Johanna grimace. She quickly hung the robe on a hanger, then did the same with the other clothes on the floor. Once they were all in place, she noticed that the shoe rack had been torn from the closet wall--more earthquake damage--leaving shoes tumbled about.

  Looking closer, she saw that the wood attached to the back of the closet, where the rack had hung, was split, and decided she'd tell Vera, so it could be repaired. Maybe then the entire room would get refurbished. As far as she was concerned, she wanted no reminder of Delores.

  Pushing the clothes to one side, Johanna knelt to examine the damaged wall and saw a metallic gleam. Inserting a cautious finger, she felt what seemed to be the links of a neck chain. She tried to pry it out, but it was caught somewhere inside the wall. Retrieving a long nail file from the dressing table, she picked at the opening and was when a whole section of paneling fell out of the wall.

  A secret compartment! Wait till she told Brian. Then she remembered things were not the same between them. Focused on the opening, she cautiously reached in and saw the chain was inserted into a book, which she removed. A journal like the one she'd taken from Samara's drawer
years before. She eyed it with trepidation. Gathering her courage, she opened the journal and recognized the spidery handwriting as Tabitha's.

  A she hastily closed the book, the chain slid to the floor. Examining it, she saw the heavily links were silver, now tarnished, and so was the circular pendant attached to the chain. Inscribed on the pendant were two figures facing each other and holding hands. Both wore robes with hoods. In the dimness of the closet she couldn't make out any more detail.

  After making sure there was nothing more inside the secret compartment, she carried her findings into the bedroom. The figures on the pendant were identical except for the faces inside the hoods. Johanna bit her lip as she stared from one to the other, from the human face to the skull concealed in the hood of the other.

  The pendant slipped from her nerveless fingers to drop onto the red carpet. Who would want to wear something so gruesome? Delores? But hadn't Aunt Adele told her Delores' room had once been Tabitha's? Maybe the secret compartment was from Tabitha's time. Perhaps Delores had never know about it. The journal was Tabitha's, after all, and the pendant seemed more likely to have been hers.

  Johanna bent to retrieve the chain and pendant, aware she could hardly put anything back in the no-longer-hidden cubby-hole. Holding it, she was gripped by a sudden desire to put the chain around her neck, to feel the pendant nestled between her breasts.

  "No!" she cried and thrust it between the pages of the journal instead.

  She left Delores' room, determined to give what she'd found to Vera, but, instead, s few minutes later she was hiding them beneath the sweaters in the bottom drawer of her highboy. Only until she had a chance to glance through the journal. Maybe she'd ask one of the maids for silver polish and clean the pendant and chain, too.

  The next day Conception brought the polish to her room, along with a polishing cloth and offered to do it for her. Johanna thanked her but declined.

  The task turned out to be harder than it looked because the links took a lot to time and effort. Once she'd finished the chain and the pendant, the silver shone and she had an inexplicable urge to put it on.

  Slipping it over her head, she stared into the mirror at the image of the twins on the pendant, one alive and one dead, yet still holding hands. Time lost all meaning. She had no idea how long she'd stood there until Frances' knock on the door recalled her to her senses. Snatching off the chain, she thrust it into the drawer where the journal lay hidden.

  Later as she busied herself wrapping Christmas presents and waxing her skis to get them ready for the New Year's skiing expedition, she did her best to ignore her strange desire to wear the pendant again.

  On the day before Christmas she was helping the twins wax their skis, all three of them looking forward to their coming school ski trip.

  "Yosemite's okay," Naomi said. "If we get good snow, it'll be the best skiing in California. But I wish Daddy would take us someplace exciting like Switzerland. Monica Matthews has been there twice with her family and she says there's nothing to compare."

  "Daddy doesn't like to travel," Johanna reminded her.

  "Oh, I know. Isn't it too bad? Because Mama won't go without him, so she never gets to go anywhere, either. Now that Samara's had Ivan, she'll be stuck home all ski season, too."

  "He's so cute, "Katrina said. "All that curly hair. Ivan doesn't seem like the right name for him--it's too solemn for a baby."

  "It means John in Russian," Johanna said. "We could call him Johnny."

  "I'd like to travel," Naomi said. "If I could go alone I'd visit every country in the world."

  "Daddy'd never let you go anywhere without an adult along," Katrina reminded her.

  "Even then he'd probably think of reasons not to let me go." Naomi flung her arms wide. "What good is money if you just sit on it?"

  "You get almost everything you want," Johanna said. "We all do. Traveling can wait." She had no particular desire to visit other countries. Maybe she would someday--with Brian. But then, anywhere was all right if Brian was with her.

  Samara and Kevin spent Christmas Day at Hallow House with their new baby. Ivan was too young to even notice the tree, but Kevin held him up so he could see it anyway and the colored lights shone in his blue-green eyes.

  "Ivan's eyes aren't as green as yours," Johanna told Kevin. "They're sort of a bluish-green."

  "They may change. Nearly all babies start out with blue eyes. He could wind up green eyes or even hazel or brown."

  Kevin handed Ivan over to her to hold and she gazed into the baby's eyes. Brian's eyes were blue and Johanna imagined how she might feel if this were her baby, hers and Brian's. Even if they did marry, though, would they ever dare to have a child? Because of Brian's fear they might be half-siblings, she knew she could never tell him what Aunt Adele had said about Celia and Micah. She'd carry that secret to the grave.

  Naomi badgered her, wanting to hold Ivan, so she handed him over. Christmas had been wonderful, but Johanna was eager to get on with the ski trip. Ever since their talk in the north tower, Brain had avoided being alone with her and that was one of the reasons she couldn't wait to go skiing. She was the best skier of the girls at school, better than many of the boys, and almost as good as Brian. She'd surely find a way to talk to Brian alone on the slopes or at the hotel.

  Kahweah Academy chartered two buses for the Yosemite excursion. The twins, Johanna and Brian were in the first bus, but Sue crowded past Johanna and slid into the seat next to Brian before she had a chance to claim it.

  Skiing conditions were good at Badger Pass, with enough snow to make the runs fast and temperatures below freezing to keep the snow from getting sticky. Many of her classmates headed for the beginner slopes, but Johanna meant to start with the intermediate run. She checked her clamps, zipped up her new buttercup yellow jacket and caught the tow. As she left it at the top, she picked out Brian's orange jacket with the white stripes on the left sleeve. He was halfway up the hill on the tow. Should she wait for him? She decided not to.

  The air was clear, the pines standing etched against the snow with such clarity that the view seems artificial. Johanna took a deep breath of the crisp air and pushed off, taking her first run with care, but alive to the rush of wind, the feel of being the only one on the hill. Nothing was ever as good as the first run.

  After lunch at the Ski House, the buses drove on to the ice rink for an hour or so of skating before the group checked in at the Ahwahnee Hotel. Johanna was only a fair skater, she'd never been able to keep her ankles from wobbling. Brian took her around for the rink for a few turns before he skated solo, showing off with a series of loops and figure eights until he joined the other boys in a crack-the-whip line. Johanna laughed with the others when Brian, cast from the end of the line, went head over tea-kettle into a snow bank.

  The Ahwahnee Hotel was an old and beautiful building with architecture that reminded Johanna of Hallow House. "Victorian" as one of their chaperones called it.

  Naomi and Katrina were sharing a room and, to her dismay, Johanna found she'd drawn Sue Middleton for her roommate. She and Sue kept up a pretense of friendship which Johanna knew on Sue's part was based solely on her interest in Brian. She didn't really like Sue and was sure Sue felt the same about her.

  Snow began falling soon after they reached the hotel and after supper everyone was ready to go out into it. The flakes fell soft and feathery on Johanna's face as she raced around with the others. She stuck out her tongue to catch the cold wetness and, as she did, a snowball caught her on the shoulder. She whirled and scooped snow into a ball, but Brian dodged and he missed him. Soon they all, shouting and laughing, were covered with snow.

  Finally Johanna found herself alone with Sue in their shared hotel room,, without having had a moment to be alone with Brian. Sue undressed, tossing her clothes carelessly onto the floor, and donned emerald green pajamas, She climbed into bed and stared at Johanna.

  Johanna turned her back as she took her clothes off, slid her white flannel nightgown
over her head and finished undressing underneath.

  "You're built almost like a boy," Sue told her.

  "So?" Johanna countered, wishing she didn't flush so easily.

  "Ralph likes you, you know," Sue went on. "He says you're the best skier in the whole school.

  "Oh, no--Brian is."

  "School was really dull until Brian came last year. :You, too, of course. And the twins. Your sisters are really cute. I always wanted to be a twin, didn't you?"

  Johanna shook her head. Sometimes she wondered how Naomi and Katrina could stand to be duplicates and always do everything together.

  "Is Brian going to Stanford next year or to one of the Ivy league schools back east?" Sue asked.

  "He doesn't know yet."