Victor returned the sketches to a large manila envelope. “She must have held in a lot of unhappiness she never showed anyone.”
“If truth lies in these drawings,” Christy said, “she was still in love with Oliver and he was pretty aloof and maybe upset about something himself.”
“Don’t try to read more than is there,” Victor warned. “If you start to interpret, you may go down the wrong road.”
“This might even mean that Rose was so unhappy and desperate that she committed suicide.”
“Or that she had become such a threat to someone that she was killed deliberately? So now we’re guessing again, and it’s no good, Christy.”
“There always seems to be a deep anger in Oliver,” Christy went on, paying no attention because she had to speculate—she had to discover the key. “I wonder if Rose was afraid of him? And I don’t understand the two views of Deirdre—the happy Deirdre and the one with the sorrowful, weeping face in the unfinished sketch.”
“You’ll never find your answers that way. You have the power to understand, Christy, if only you’ll use it. Perhaps you have it even more than your mother. But you block yourself by trying to force your conscious mind to solve everything. Why are you afraid to trust yourself?”
She rested her elbows on the table and pressed her forehead against clasped hands. “Because I’ve never wanted this—gift. Even when I was a little girl, my friends thought I was weird. I always wanted to be like everyone else. Nona understood. She did her best to suppress this in me.”
“Nona’s a remarkable woman, but I think she didn’t understand. Or maybe she wouldn’t allow herself to understand or accept. In herself, or in you. The talent is there, waiting, and it’s better to use it. Look, Christy—while I make some tea—you sit there and put your hands on that stack of drawings. Let them tell you.”
For a moment she wanted only to push Rose’s sketches away. But Victor had stepped into his adjoining kitchen and was paying no more attention. Hesitantly, she did as he’d suggested and rested her hands on the drawings. She closed her eyes and quieted her thoughts, allowing herself to open, to be inwardly ready for whatever might come. The only times she’d ever used this in the past were for the police—and on a few occasions here. But this seemed different. The sensation that trembled through her was something she’d never felt before.
This time there were no mists, no vision emerging. She was no longer Christy Loren. It was as though she occupied some other body, some other mind. Her thoughts were sad, frightened, confused. There was some terrible knowledge that she must resist and fight against. Danger was very near—a threat she didn’t know how to resist. She must escape—flee from this prison that held her, though there seemed no way. Something, someone, stronger—someone ruthless—would never let her go. She had no key to the lock on the door.
A cry of agony sounded in Christy’s mind: Help me! Help me!
Perhaps she cried out herself, as she’d done in the Sun Wheel, because Victor came quickly from the kitchen and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s all right, Christy. You’re here. Nothing can touch you or hurt you.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Rose was afraid for her life. She knew someone would try to kill her. But that’s all I know. For a moment I was inside Rose crying out for help.”
“You didn’t get any hint of who was threatening her?”
“Nothing,” Christy told him.
“Then relax. Come and sit in my kitchen.”
She sat at a square wooden table and drank raspberry tea Victor had poured into a blue mug. The bread he’d baked was sprouted grain and delicious. Since she’d skipped lunch the food tasted wonderful. She would think of nothing except how hungry she was. Victor had been wrong. There was no point at all to her encouraging her “talent.” She only wanted to be through with all that.
Then, just at the moment when she rejected and denied, a new conviction possessed her, and shook her so that her hands trembled, spilling tea on the table.
“It wasn’t Rose I went inside of just now!” she cried. “It was Deirdre!”
I know Rose was working on another book—a book about llamas. Before she put words down for the story, she used to draw little caricature sketches that an artist could later base real illustrations on. Once she showed me a single sketch. There weren’t any llamas in that one—it was just Deirdre’s face—like a mask—and she was crying. That was a face she never showed anyone, but Rose had guessed.
Rose let me see the sketch to let me know how much she’d suspected about what she called Deirdre’s “pain and suffering.” Idiotic, of course. Deirdre never had any real depth for either joy or sorrow, even though she cried easily. But Rose told me there were more sketches that tried to tell the truth about Redlands. Now I wonder if any of those drawings might point to me.
Of course I never really intended what happened. It was one of those spontaneous explosions, for which I couldn’t be responsible. Rose brought it on herself. It happened suddenly, unexpectedly, that last time we walked together in the woods. I can still hear the way she screamed as she fell—a perfect punishment for what she’d done. Of course there was no one about to hear her or see me there.
Later, after my exultation wore off, I was a bit shaken. I hadn’t planned this and it happened too quickly for me to take precautions. I didn’t remember the drawings until later, when I began to worry about them; about what they might reveal. But they didn’t turn up among her things—I searched for them thoroughly. They must be somewhere around—I don’t think she destroyed them.
Rose was very close to Donny. I never liked that, because you can’t trust small children. What if she let him keep them for her? I wonder if I can find out without giving everything away?
If he has them, he must never put those sketches in Christy’s hands. Especially not that one of Deirdre crying. I know who can help me—who must help me. Guilt makes a wonderful weapon. I’m glad it has never been a problem for me. I’m certainly not to blame for what has happened. People bring disaster upon themselves.
I still have that amusing notion to try, and I think now is the time.
13
Hello? Hello?” The call came to them from outside side the cabin, and Victor went to let Eve in.
Rose had caught Eve’s characteristics very well in her drawings. At the moment she looked much like the frowsy-haired llama in the sketch. She seemed surprised to find Christy in Victor’s cabin, though she hardly greeted her, being anxious to pour out her concern to Victor.
“Have you seen anything of Oliver? I’ve just been up to his house, and I can’t rouse him. He told me last night that he was going to stay home and work on something he’s writing. And his car is outside. But he didn’t answer when I called and knocked. I know he was upset over what happened on Wintergreen.”
“I haven’t seen him today,” Victor said, sounding curt. He didn’t like Eve—with good reason—and resented her intrusion.
Eve hardly noticed because of her own distraction. “Will you come up to Oliver’s house with me, Victor? I really think we should go inside and have a look. But I don’t want to do it alone.”
“No,” Victor told her flatly. “Oliver wouldn’t welcome my snooping around. And I don’t think you should go up there either. Let him alone.”
Christy had been watching Eve, but now something drew her attention to Victor. His guard was up again, as though he protected himself in some way.
Eve said, “Look, Victor, this isn’t my imagination. Oliver and I have been friends for a long time. I’ve known him since Rose and I were young. I’m very worried about him.”
“Maybe you should leave it alone,” Victor said. “Let him work it out in his own way.”
Eve moved impatiently about the room, though she hardly seemed to be registering what she saw. Rose’s sketches lay on the table, but fortunately Victor
had returned them to their envelope. Christy could imagine how eagerly Eve would have leafed through those drawings.
Now she took down one of the Zuni dolls and examined it—an action that merely occupied her hands, not her mind. “He’s in terrible trouble—I’m sure of it. He needs our help.”
“Maybe it’s trouble he wants to keep to himself,” Victor said flatly. “He won’t thank anyone who barges in to interfere.”
Eve set the doll back in place and swung around. “You know something, don’t you? You’ve seen something? You’re close enough to his house.”
“I don’t look where concealment is intended,” Victor said. “I mind my own business.”
Christy asked a question. “Eve, is it something connected with Rose’s death that’s worrying you?”
“I thought you were supposed to be psychic!” Eve snapped. “So why don’t you tell me?”
“It doesn’t work that easily—not on demand.”
Eve began to search through her jacket pockets almost frantically. What she drew out was a small silver lighter. “Oliver forgot this the last time he visited me—just a few days ago. He smoked that pipe of his a lot and used his lighter. Here, Christy—hold it in your hands and see if it tells you anything.”
Victor saw Christy’s hesitation. “Maybe you’d better try. Perhaps we’ll know then if we should interfere.”
Her fingers closed upon the lighter as Eve pressed it into her hand, and at once the throbbing started in her temples, the feeling of nausea. She sensed water—a lifeless body in water. Death. Murder? The lighter burned her fingers as though she touched flame. She flung it from her, and dropped onto the couch with its red blanket that now seemed on fire. Yet at the same time she shivered with cold.
“What is it?” Eve cried. “What did you see?”
For a few moments she couldn’t speak, and Victor came to sit beside her. “Think of the Sun Wheel and let yourself be quiet. Tell us what you saw, Christy.”
Somehow she managed to steady herself. “I saw something dead floating in a pond. I couldn’t see clearly and I don’t know if it was Oliver. There was an awful feeling of fright, of violent death.”
“Where?” Eve cried. “Where is this pond?”
“I think I can find it,” Christy said, helpless to resist the tide that swept her along. She had no choice. This was like all the other times when she had led the police to a body. The headache, the nausea, the urgency that she was forced to follow—all were the same.
Victor changed his mind. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “Shall we go in my car?”
“No. We must follow the path above your house. Yes, Victor, please come with me.”
When Christy and Victor hurried out the back door, Eve followed, frightened and anxious.
A narrow, winding, uphill path overgrown with vines, as though little used, drew her along. She had known it would be there. The climb was steep and Christy was breathing quickly when she stepped into a clearing around what must be Oliver Vaughn’s house.
“There’s no pond up here!” Eve cried.
Christy stood looking at the gray-shingled house while a dreadful anticipation grew in her. It was always like this. The tension increased as she neared her goal—increased until it could be released in discovery.
A flight of stone steps led to the front door, and she went up them quickly. The house was silent—lifeless. That was the way it should be—a dead silence.
“You said a pond!” Eve’s voice shook, and Victor touched her arm.
“Steady,” he said. “Let Christy do her thing.”
The front door was unlocked—which wasn’t unusual—and Christy went inside. She crossed the living room with the others following, and started up the stairs. She was hardly aware of the bedroom she walked through—a bedroom Oliver must have shared with Rose. The bathroom door stood open, and she knew now why she had seen water. Not a pond.
“In here,” she said.
Victor went ahead of the two women and stood blocking the door. “Maybe you’d better not come any further.”
Neither Eve nor Christy paid any attention. They both pushed past him into the room.
In death, Oliver was no longer a beautiful man. He lay naked in the tub, and a bar of soap had been dissolving in the water near him. He was not floating—the water was too shallow—but lying back, and his features were contorted in terror. Worst of all, he was not the only dead thing in the water. A copperhead snake lay under the surface—as lifeless as Oliver.
When Eve would have rushed toward the tub, Victor held her back. “There’s nothing you can do. We’ll go down to my place and call the sheriff.”
He pushed Eve out of the house and caught her arm as she stumbled on the steps. When he looked back at Christy, she nodded.
“I’m all right. Go ahead.”
The throbbing in her temples and the sickness had stopped, as always happened once the horror she’d been directed toward was fully exposed. Only then could she be released. She felt weak and hardly able to think, but the pain and distress were gone. Yet this experience was worse than the others, because this was the first time she had found someone she had known in life.
Passing the Sun Wheel, Christy longed to step into its safe boundaries and let its healing power flow through her. But she knew she must never take such turmoil into the Wheel. First, she must cleanse herself of what was seared into her vision. There was a ritual she had worked out, and a prayer she could say, but these would come later.
When Victor had phoned the sheriff’s office, Christy called her aunt and told her what had happened. “No, we don’t know how he died. There—there was a copperhead in the water with him. I suppose he could have been bitten.”
Victor shook his head as she set down the phone. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see any of the signs of swelling, and if he’d been bitten he’d have gone for help as fast as he could. Christy, are you able to carry this any further and tell us how it happened?”
Eve was in a state of shock and she hadn’t stopped pacing the room, but now she came toward Christy anxiously.
But Christy shook her head. “I don’t know how, Victor. The pictures always stop after someone is found. There’s nothing more.”
Victor poured brandy for all of them, and Eve drank hers at a swallow.
“He had a bad heart,” she said miserably. “Rose told me that once, though Oliver always kept quiet about it. What if the snake got into the water and frightened him to death?”
In the end, that was the verdict at which the police arrived. Oliver had died of a heart attack, and the doctor in Waynesboro, to whom he had been going for several years, verified the heart problem. As Eve had said, it was quite likely that the copperhead had slipped into the tub and frightened him. Though copperheads disliked water. Where the snake had come from was anybody’s guess, but not unusual in the area. Sometimes snakes crawled into houses when no one had any idea how they got in. The official verdict was death by accident. No one suggested that the snake might have been put deliberately into the water with him.
For Christy, however, the suggestion of murder had been powerful, and she at least had no doubt. But there was no point in saying anything, when only her vision was involved. She had the strong feeling that Eve knew more about Oliver than she was telling. Even though Eve managed to evade all questions and seemed stunned by her own grief, Christy sensed concealment. It was enough for the police that Eve, who had long been Oliver’s friend and his wife’s friend, should have been concerned about him and had asked Victor and Christy to go up to his house with her.
Though of course Christy told Lili and Nona of her premonition, and Nona decided to tell Hayden. No one else knew. Floris claimed that her animals had been strangely restless around the time of Oliver’s death. They had hummed in alarm, with no visible outward cause to upset them. But llama emotions
weren’t likely to be used as evidence.
A few days after Oliver’s death, Hayden phoned Christy and asked if he could talk with her. She agreed to have dinner with him, not altogether sure whether she looked forward to being with him or simply dreaded whatever he might have to say.
A strange thing happened shortly before Hayden called for her that evening. Donny turned up on the back deck outside her room, tapping on the glass doors. Sinh had come with him, and she let them both in. He didn’t explain his presence at once, and she let him watch while she fastened on the dangling amethyst earrings her mother had given her long ago. She could remember her mother’s words.
Amethysts help you to get in touch with your own inner being. They open up one’s psychic centers, and they guard against outward manifestation of harm. Wear them for protection.
Tonight she had need of amethysts.
Donny said, “My mother used to let me watch when she combed her hair and put on her earrings.”
Christy knew he had come for some special reason, and she waited, giving him time. Sinh seemed as uneasy as Donny, and carefully avoided Christy. She sat by the door, her blue eyes regarding the room suspiciously.
“I saw my mother again,” Donny said, “I saw her this morning, and she told me she knows who put the snake in the water with Oliver.”
Christy made no foolish effort at denial. She sat very still, watching the boy’s reflection in the dressing-table mirror. “Did she tell you who it was?” she asked.
Donny shook his head. “She said it was better if I didn’t know, and she said I shouldn’t tell my father I’d seen her. But I need to tell somebody, and nobody else believes that I really do see her.”
“Are you sure it was your mother, Donny?”
“I never see her close up, because she always stays back in the trees. I just see her moving in the shadows. But I know it’s my mother. I know how she sounds.”
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