Hallow House - Part Two

by Jane Toombs

  If, at that moment, he'd asked her to camp with him, she was still so bemused, she'd have eagerly agreed.

  "I'm going to visit Samara," she told him. "Then I'll have to be heading back to San Francisco."

  "Come again," he invited. "I'll be here at least another month."

  And then he kissed her again, locking her into an embrace she hoped would never end.

  Naomi was half way to Porterville before she came out of her haze of passion. She spent the rest of the way into town reminding herself of all the reasons why she couldn't possibly go back, why it would be completely reckless to ever see Grant again.

  Samara was delighted to see her, but surprised she was alone.

  "I thought you were bringing Larry along." Samara said. "We were looking forward to meeting him."

  "He had to take call unexpectedly."

  Samara grimaced. "I know all about that. Well, you must not have gotten to the ruins, then."

  "Where are the kids?"

  "Believe it or not, Kevin actually took the afternoon off and brought the kids to the park. They'll be back soon. You didn't answer me about the ruins."

  "I went there first," Naomi said reluctantly.

  "Did you happen to see a man there? I meant to tell you I gave this anthropologist permission to dig around in the ruins. Only because he's sort of an agent from the Yokut tribe. I felt I couldn't refuse."

  "Grant Rivers?" What pleasure it gave Naomi to say his name. "Yes, I met him. He seems very--capable."

  Samara gave her an odd look and Naomi realized she was smiling like a fool.

  "We both liked him," Samara added, as if offering Naomi the chance to say more. She didn't dare.

  Since Naomi had rotating days off, she didn't have another weekend coming up for some time. Furthermore, her schedule and Larry's didn't mesh well, which prevented him from planning a trip for both of them to go to the ruins. Though she told herself over and over she had no intention of making a solo trip there, that didn't keep her from thinking of Grant during every spare minute and sometimes when she should have had her mind on her duties.

  By the time her two days off neared, her yearning to see him again was overwhelming. She vowed she wouldn't give in, but that didn't stop her from arranging for another overnight pass to visit her sister in Porterville.

  Naomi drove straight to the ruins. This time she found a pickup trunk she knew must be Grant's parked by the garage. She eased her Mustang up beside it, jumped out and looked around for him. As though he'd been waiting for her arrival, he came running from the ruins and caught her in his arms.

  As before, the world narrowed down to only the two of them. After a time, he led her into the pine grove, to where he was camped. Between frantic caresses, their clothes melted away and they made love on a blanket under the pines. It was the most wonderful experience of her life.

  Nestled against him later, she said, "I think I like being ravished."

  "Think?" he said. "You don't know? In that case, we'll just have to try it again."

  Much later, when they'd dressed and were walking back to her car, he said, "You've honored me."

  "I have?"

  "You've let me be the first. What about letting me be the only?"

  Naomi knew she'd like nothing better. After this, how could she ever let another man touch her? Somehow she was going to have to try to explain to Larry.

  "You are the only," she told him.

  "You've been good luck for me all the way around," he said. "Right after you left, I found the burial ground--under the house, as the legend went. Also, as I was told by my foster grandfather, no skulls, only the rest of the skeletons. Actually, I did find one skull, rather badly smashed. But no others. He says the skulls are buried in a cave on this property."

  "He's right."

  "I hesitated to ask your sister about this cave, since she has such an aversion to any mention of the bones. I did ask Kevin, but he isn't sure where it is."

  "I can show you where it is," Naomi told him. "But I'm not going inside."

  She wished he hadn't brought it up, wished they could stay in their own private world without the intrusion of a past she didn't want to remember.

  "It's rather a long way without horses," she said.

  He grinned at her. "I take it you didn't look in the corral."

  She'd been so eager to get to him, she hadn't seen anything else, but two geldings were right there, practically under her nose.

  "Kevin said I'd need a horse," Grant told her.

  "So you borrowed two? You were that sure I'd come?"

  "I think I'd have died if you hadn't," he said.

  She believed him because that's how it had been for her. Hearing his words almost made up for having to show him the way to Skull Cave.

  Chapter 45

  The boy of about ten waiting for the horses looked vaguely familiar to Naomi, so she asked him his name.

  "John Guerra," he said. "We live a couple miles from here.

  Guerra. Horses? "You can't be Sal's son!" she cried.

  He grinned. "You know my dad?"

  "Know him! He helped teach me to ride. You tell him Naomi Gregory said hello."

  "Yeah, I guess he used to work here when he was a kid," John said. "Before the earthquake knocked it all down. I was named after Mr. Gregory."

  "My father. Oh, John, you don't know how glad I am to meet you. We'd lost touch with Sal in the past few years. He's a vet, isn't he? Where?"

  "In Lemon Cove."

  "I'll have to tell my sister Samara. I'm sure she'd like to see your dad again. Your mother is Rosita, isn't she?" At the boy's nod, Naomi added, "I think Samara know your mother, too."

  Turning to Grant, she said, "This is such a wonderful surprise. What a great day!"

  As they rode toward Skull Cave, Naomi was reminded of taking Ronal there. It was hard to imagine she'd ever been so young and foolish as to imagine he was the man for her. Time had also taught her that Katrina, who accepted instead of pushing, was a far better choice for him to have made.

  Which brought her to the present--who was the right man for her? The heat between her and Grant was no mere brush-fire, to be easily doused. Never in her life had she imagined a man could make her feel the way he did. Yet she'd thought she liked Larry enough to marry him. She still liked him. But that fondness was a pale shadow of the passion Grant evoked in her.

  He was a totally unexpected encounter in the life she'd planned for herself with Larry, an encounter she wasn't likely to recover from.

  "I love this country,“ Grant said. "It seemed like home to me from my first visit to my grandfather's people. I don't say my mother's, because she turned her back on the Yokut from the day she married my father. Which was her privilege. Mine was to come back and connect. My sister travels a middle road."

  Naomi couldn't deny the beauty of the valley that had always been her home. Yet, for her, its loveliness was marred by the tragedies in her family.

  "I sometimes feel I don't really belong anywhere," she said.

  He smiled at her. "Maybe we don't, those of us who need to travel."

  We. The two of them so unexpectedly linked together. The thought warmed her.

  "Is your sister married?" she asked.

  "No. We Rivers are hard to please."

  "Oh?"

  "Took me thirty years to find you, didn't it?"

  She saved his words in her heart. Being with Grant was almost enough to keep her from thinking about their destination. She hadn't had the recurrent nightmare about being in the cave for almost tow years now, but she could never forget it.

  "You won't mind if I don't come in the cave with you?"

  "Whatever you want to do is up to you."

  "It isn't that I'm afraid of skulls. After all. I'm a nurse. But that place is like a festering sore for the Gregory family."

  He shot her a questioning glance.

  "Nothing good ever came of going to Skull Cave," she told him. "I found out only recently
from my sister Samara that her twin bother stole one of the skulls from the cave and brought it to--well, a room in Hallow House. She thinks that may have precipitated his death."

  "That may explain the single smashed skull I found in the ruins. There were no others."

  Seeing that Grant's focus had narrowed to his work, Naomi fell silent. She didn't blame him. Unless she explained what, to her knowledge, had happened to the Gregorys both in the past and since she'd been born, he couldn't be expected to understand how she felt about what he was doing. At the moment, she wasn't ready to expose all she knew of the secrets and sins of Gregory clan.

  All too soon they arrived at the clump of trees where the horses had to be tethered. "We go the rest of the way on foot," she told him.

  After they reached the top of the incline, she showed him where to slide down and pointed out exactly where he'd find the cave. "I'll stay up here," she said.

  While she waited, she lost herself in a reverie, playing back every moment they'd been together since first they met. It almost seemed as though they'd been fated to meet. Eventually the warmth of the sun made her drowsy and she was half asleep by the time Grant leaped up the far side of the incline toward her.

  "Did your sister tell you how many skulls were in the second chamber?" he asked.

  Naomi yawned and got to her feet. "Nineteen. With an empty place for the stolen one."

  "There were no others?"

  She blinked at him. "Not that anyone told me."

  "I found another chamber in there, not mentioned in Grosbeck's book about the Yokut. Did you know I met him not long ago? William Grosbeck's study of the local branch of the Yokut is the definitive book on them. Apparently he used to teach your sister and her brother at Hallow House."

  "That would've been before I was born."

  "Then you wouldn't know why he gave me a message for your sister, Samara. He asked me to tell her he hadn't known Mark was what he was and that Mark was dead. When I told Samara, she looked rather sad, but didn't explain."

  Mark. Naomi remembered that name. He'd taught her to swim. She recalled Johanna once saying she liked Mark even if he was a spy.

  "He might have been a spy during World War II. I have sort of a vague recollection."

  Grant nodded. "Back to the cave. What I found there matches my foster grandfather's tale about the Dawn People. He's the local medicine man, so is well versed in the history of the Yokut per oral tradition. I felt in my bones he'd be right."

  She saw his excitement. "Dawn People?"

  "Those who came before. The Ancient Ones. That's whose bones my ancestors believed these were. It might be the earthquake that destroyed Hallow House unsealed the inner cave chamber. Naomi, there are hundreds of skulls buried in there. It's a major anthropological find."

  She wanted to be happy for him but, instead, a chill seized her. Grant had proved the old story of a valley of headless skeletons, the tale her great-grandfather had refused to believe, was true. Now Grant had found the heads. The skulls. All of them, rather than just a few. Hallow House had been literally built on ancient bones. She'd lived her early years on top of a graveyard.

  "Wait for me," Grant said. "I've got to get something. I'll just be a minute or two." He slid back down the incline to return to the cave.

  Naomi stared after him. Surely he didn't mean to retrieve one of the skulls to bring back with him. Didn't he have any idea how she might feel, considering these ancient bones might well have caused her mother to die? The thought so revolted her that she turned away and went back to the horses, untied hers and urged him into a fast trot.

  Leaving him in the corral, she slid into her car and roared away. Ignoring her plan to stay with her sister overnight, she drove straight to San Francisco. But she didn't return to the dorm. Instead, she stopped at Johanna's and Brian's place. Since by now it was early evening, they both were home.

  "What a wonderful surprise," Johanna said. "We hardly ever see you." Then evidently seeing something in Naomi's expression, she added, "What's wrong?"

  "Bones," Naomi muttered. "They've been there all the time. Grant found them. And all the missing skulls." She shook her head. "I don't ever want to see him again." Then she burst into tears.

  Much later, when she'd calmed, she managed to tell a coherent story. Answering Johanna's questions, though, forced her to reveal more than she meant to about Grant himself.

  "Why do you put the blame for this on the Rivers guy?" Brian asked when she paused. "He was just doing what anthropologists do--and with Gregory permission."

  "Why are you blaming him?" Johanna asked.

  "He brought back the past."

  Brian and her sister exchanged a look. They didn't understand about Grant, didn't know how he violated what was between them.

  "You'd better tell her, Brian," Johanna said. "Obviously Katrina hasn't."

  "Tell me what?"

  "Katrina and Ronal want to rebuild Hallow House," Brian said.

  "Rebuild? Oh, my God, no!"

  "It's still in the discussion stage." Johanna said hurriedly.

  "You can't possibly intend to allow it," Naomi insisted. "You of all people."

  Johanna shrugged. "The idea bothered me at first, but then I realized it wouldn't be the same place."

  "It would, it would. The bones are still there, the bones that killed Mama."

  "If you feel that strongly, maybe you'd better talk to your twin," Brian advised. "You'll have to wait, though. She and Ronal are in Seattle for a week visiting his grandmother. "

  "The subject is now taboo for the evening," Johanna announced. "The important thing is to decide where we're going to dinner."

  After spending the night with Johanna and Brian, Naomi returned to the dorm and found an angry note from Larry, who couldn't understand why she'd left for two days without telling him where she was going.

  "A relationship is about trust and sharing," he'd written at the end.

  She certainly hadn't been sharing with him and he had a perfect right not to trust her. She decided to confess all and tell him it'd been a mistake.

  When they met two evenings later, she tried to do just that, but the words stuck in her throat. All she actually told him was that she'd gone to visit Johanna and Brian. She also apologized for not letting him know ahead of time.

  She may have made up her mind that she was going to marry Larry after all, but she couldn't bring herself to so much as mention Grant's name to him. Nor did she say a word about the bones or Hallow House.

  A week later, she reached Katrina on the phone.

  "Oh, that," her twin said. "I've been meaning to talk to you about our plans."

  "Don't lie to me, you know it never works. You didn't dare mention rebuilding Hallow House to me, that's why I'm the last to know."

  "I'm sorry, but I don't have time to discuss it now. Let me know when your next days off are."

  Naomi told her.

  "Okay, how about this?" Katrina asked. "Samara's been at us to come for a visit. Suppose I arrange with her for it to be on those days and let Johanna and Brian know, too. Then we'll all be together in Porterville and can hear what everyone thinks."

  Much as Naomi didn't want to go anywhere near where Grant was working, she grudgingly agreed that was the logical way to go about having a discussion.

  "By the way, I had a foreseeing," Katrina said. "A good one, this time. I saw you getting married."

  "To Larry, of course."

  "No, I've met Larry. Your groom was a total stranger to me."

  "Then it must have been only a dream, not a foreseeing. Because Larry's the man I plan to walk down the aisle with."

  After she hung up, Naomi thought about asking Larry to come with her, but shook her head. Time enough for him to get in on family squabbles after they married.

  She paused, recalling the last time they'd been together. When he'd kissed her it wasn’t unpleasant but she hadn't felt that special rush that seized her with Grant's kiss.

  Ma
rry Larry? Suddenly she knew to do so wouldn't be fair to him. Or to her, really. Not that she planned to see Grant ever again.

  When she put in for her overnight pass, to give herself more time, Naomi wrangled an extra vacation day by saying it was to be a family reunion. Which, in a way, it was. Before she left, she wrote a letter to Larry and enclosed the engagement ring. A coward's way out, she knew, but, looking at it another way, hadn't she already betrayed him with another man? Larry was lucky she'd managed to realize in time that he deserved a woman who loved him whole-heartedly. But sending the letter and the package off to him depressed her.