“You were lucky I didn’t pick you up and throw you over the balcony.”
“Ha! I believe you already tried that.”
“If only you had died that night,” she said, her misery showing. “You were a miserable tyrant with everyone but Julita. Her, you spoiled rotten.” Lucretia felt hot tears as they invaded her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. “But when she began parroting your nasty words and habits, I knew I had to get her away from you. It was bitch this and bitch that, but that wasn’t all. When her little mouth began to form the words fuck and cunt, I knew what I had to do.” She turned her dark eyes on him accusingly. “But even that took second place to what followed.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? You began molesting her, you bastard! And the worst part is, you did it blatantly. In front of me. It was one more way to torment me.”
“Oh hell, Lucretia, that was your wild imagination working again. I never once molested Julita.”
“I saw you, you selfish brute! With my own eyes! I saw you push your hands up her dress everytime she crawled into your lap.”
“She was a baby, she didn’t know what was going on.”
“That didn’t make it right, you sick, sorry bastard!” Lucretia looked at him with disgust. “You were preparing her, weren’t you? With your nasty words coming from her lips, and your ugly hands crawling up her dresses, you were preparing her to one day occupy your bed. I’ve never heard of anything so sick in my life!”
Anger roiled inside him. His mind entertained thoughts of murder as his eyes finally lifted toward Lucretia, giving her a murderous look. She waited, but no words of denial passed the lips that were closed and pressing into a guilty line.
Hating the sight of him, Lucretia whirled away and started for the door. “I’m sick of looking at you, old man.” She looked down at his food. “Eat that sorry-tasting oatmeal, or do without!” she yelled.
“Why didn’t you bring me some orange juice? There’s nothing wrong with orange juice. It’ll be good for me.”
“Sorry,” she said, her lying mouth trying to keep from curling into an evil smile. “Used the last of the orange juice this morning.”
“Bitch!” he mumbled. He knew she was lying, but being her prisoner, he could do nothing about it. He found himself praying day after day for the miracle of her death. He knew if he could just get out of this chair … for an hour … even a few minutes … he would wrap his hands around her scrawny neck and kill her. He dreamed about it, fantasized about it. Sometimes the desire was so thick inside him he could taste it on his tongue. And even as hungry as he was, it tasted better than the finest steak in town.
She heard the mumbled word and felt the searing heat of her temper overwhelm her. “You black-hearted, unappreciative bastard. I flirt with death every day on those concrete stairs just to clean this filthy space, and be sure you get a little nourishment.” Continuing toward the door, she stopped short and looked back at him. “Don’t be surprised if one day I decide it just isn’t worth it.” Glancing down at the rejected oatmeal, she smirked and said, “Bon appetit.”
“You’re an ugly woman, Lucretia,” he muttered, “and someday someone’s going to put an end to your reign of terror in this inn. And, God, I hope I’m alive when it happens.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, old man,” she said with a sinister shine to her eyes.
“Lucretia, one last request,” he said with feigned innocence. Then as each word tumbled from his lips, his face contorted into a sinister mask of hate. “Be a sport and trip on the stairs and die!”
Unmoved by his venomous words, she said, “Papa, as I remember you were always partial to soup, weren’t you? Well, for lunch I have a surprise for you. A nice bowl of cold, watery soup. No crackers, though. Bad for you, you know. Too much sodium.”
When she banged out the door, the old man angrily pushed the tray away, letting it clatter to the floor. The watery oatmeal made a mess that looked as if someone had just been sick.
All at once a sudden weakness washed over him, and he clutched at the arms of his chair. He fought it, knowing what had caused it. His outburst at Lucretia. Lately when he overexerted himself, spells of dizziness would hit him. He knew what would come next. If he didn’t get proper nourishment, he would begin blacking out. For short periods at first, then he would become too weak to lift himself into his chair. Before long someone would come down and find nothing but bones in his bed.
Maybe he should look forward to the blessed day when he would be ushered out of this world. He would be free then. Free from Lucretia, from this torture. He didn’t know how much longer he could last. In the last fifteen years the only thing that had kept him alive was a steel determination and what little food he’d been able to salvage from the slop she had brought him. Even though he still had all his hair and teeth, he’d lost so much weight he was little more than a skeleton. His thoughts traveled back to the night of his accident when he heard urgent whispers just outside his door.
“Ms. Van Dare, I’m a surgeon and I know what I’m talking about,” the doctor whispered in the hush of the cavernous old mansion. “If he doesn’t have this operation he’ll never walk again.”
The old man could hear the whispers, but they made no sense, just tiny wisps of words made with moving lips and lashing tongues that haunted his dreams. Even though he was weak and full of medication, a word every now and then would get through. It was very disjointed, but he seemed to remember hearing something about a twisted spine. He tried, but he couldn’t seem to move, or open his eyes. His mouth worked, trying to say something, to call out, but somehow he couldn’t get past the darkness that surrounded him.
“He hates knives,” Lucretia told the doctor.
“But it’ll give him back partial use of his legs. And with therapy, he’ll work his way up to a walker, maybe even a cane.”
“I’m sorry, but he insists,” Lucretia had said. “I tried, but … well, he’s my father. I can’t go against him.”
“But this is insane. Maybe I could talk to him. He’ll listen….”
“No!” Lucretia said too quickly. “No, he’s already given me strict instructions, and I won’t have him hounded.”
“Hounded … I don’t....” The doctor’s words faded as the lingering shadows seemed to make her thin face mutate into something hideous. “Well … I....” He cleared his throat and tried to smile. “As long as you’re sure.”
“I’m very sure,” she said, putting out her thin, spidery hand. “Thank you, Doctor, we’ll call you when we need you.”
“Yes,” he muttered, realizing he was being dismissed. “Well, I’ll--” he hesitated, “--I’ll be getting along.”
The old man had thought then that nothing worse could happen to him, but now he knew he was wrong. Back then he’d had a nurse to take care of him. The woman had made sure he had good meals and exercise. And even though he was trapped in his wheelchair, he could get around the house with the aid of the elevator and ramps that had been installed. It was during that time that he decided to turn the old mansion into an inn. Even though he didn’t need the money, he’d always been an active man, and needed something to fill his time. He’d been advised to hire someone to run it for him, but decided he’d try to run it from his wheelchair before making that decision. It turned out to be just the distraction he needed to take his mind off his disability. He met many fine people who stayed at the inn year after year, had made many friends, and since he was now able to take care of himself, he discharged his nurse.
To the outside world the Van Dare family was a prosperous, well-liked, normal family. But if one bothered to look just beneath the surface, they would hear the rattle of many skeletons.
* * * *
Lucretia remembered when her world began to crack. Her father’s booming voice had begun cutting into her head like an ice pick. Her days were filled with him barking out orders. She was no longer his daughter, but a servant, and noth
ing she did was right. She’d even observed, or had she imagined, her father molesting Julita, seeing his hand steal beneath her dress every time the child crawled into his lap. Lucretia would literally leap from wherever she was and snatch Julita away. Lucretia imagined she heard voices in her head, in the shadows, swirling around her everywhere. The voices told her that her father was going to send her away. Immediately her mind went back to the dark night of her father’s accident. He had planned to put her away then, but she had beaten him.
And she would again.
She began sneaking around listening in on his phone conversations and heard him make an appointment for a consultation.
Surgery!
It couldn’t happen! She couldn’t let it happen! She envisioned him walking around on a cane snapping out orders, continuing the tyranny she knew as a child. Sure, he ordered her around now, but at least from the chair he was limited. She could get away from him … hide. But not if he gained control of his legs. His tyranny would become limitless.
She had to stop it!
That same night she pilfered around in his room while he was sleeping. She found notes, phone numbers, names. First she cancelled his appointment by telling the doctor in a breathy, sobbing voice that her father had taken very ill. She refused the doctor’s kind offer to come out and see him, saying that the illness wasn’t of the body, but the mind, and that he would be having private sessions with a therapist. She concluded by saying if there was any change, she would call.
The next morning she picked up the phone and called his friends and business associates and told them her father had taken a turn for the worse and couldn’t have visitors. When they questioned her as to when they could see him, she cut them off completely by telling them that she had plans to put him in a nursing home where he could get professional care. No, she hadn’t made a decision as to which one just yet, but she was looking into it, and would let them know as soon as that decision was made.
Carefully hanging up the phone she breathed a little easier. Now came the big job. Nervously approaching him, she told her father that the doctor had called to cancel the consultation until further notice. The news seemed to hit Garret hard. He slowly slid into a deep depression and Lucretia’s furtive act of taking the telephone out of his room went unnoticed. He stayed in his room, having no knowledge of the calls and visitors he had because they were deftly cut off by Lucretia, and eventually, one by one they quit calling, or coming by.
Garret Van Dare had been forgotten.
Barely alive, he would stare out of his window, not eating, not sleeping. The days, seasons, and years passed, and Lucretia was left with running the inn and trying to corral Julita’s youthful exuberance at the same time. To save a few steps she had a buzzer installed in his room, but quickly knew it was a mistake. Her father seemed to use the buzzer excessively. Time and again she tried to ignore the constant vibrating noise that grated on her nerves, but finally had to acknowledge it.
They were burdens, both of them. It was bad enough that she had to do everything now, but seeing to Julita’s and her father’s needs was getting to be more than she could handle. Day after day, serving him, cleaning up his messes. It grated on her nerves until the day came when she finally had all she could stand. The buzzer, loud and insistent, began its screeching sound. She jerked her head around and glared at the white box.
Bzzzzzzz....
bzzzzzzz… ]
bzzzzzzz!
She put her hands up to her ears, but still it came.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
Not being able to stand it one more minute, she hurried as fast as she could up to her father’s room, grabbed the little box and yanked the wire from out of the wall and threw it across the room and into the yard. With no one’s help, she grabbed his wheelchair and managed to hustle him down to the basement.
By this time Lucretia was a full-blown psychotic. With her father out of the way she had only Julita to worry about. She was still only a baby, so it should be easy enough to make her into anything Lucretia wanted her to be. She began to terrorize the child, beat her into submission. But as hard as she disciplined the child, Julita's beautiful face still haunted Lucretia's nightmares.
There was only one way to handle this problem.
She had a library full of books her father had compiled over the years, so she began reading up on certain drugs, mind-bending techniques, and became an expert. Then came the day when she decided to put it into practice. She experimented at first, measuring the amount of drugs she could give Julita. When she finally found the correct dosage, she drained the hypodermic into her arm while telling her the story of how a wild animal had gotten into her cradle and mangled her face.
It was only the beginning.
Lucretia knew Julita was no dummy, and would see nothing on her face to substantiate her words, so she removed all the mirrors from her room. This solved the problem only temporarily. She couldn’t keep Julita confined to her room, and she certainly couldn’t remove every mirror in the inn, so she spent days pacing, trying to decide what to do.
With nowhere else to turn, she began reading again and found the answer from a renown doctor of psychiatry, Dr. Kenneth M. Drury. She mumbled, scanning over all the big words and ramblings until it finally told her what she wanted to know. In essence it said that if the subject saw something, even if it wasn’t real, then the mind that had been manipulated, would fill in the details.
This was her answer.
On one of the occasions when she’d given Julita a hypodermic, she took a marker and crazily scratched the scars on Julita’s face that had healed long ago. Then she sewed her a mask and made her wear it, pounding into her head day after day how horrible her face was, and to show it would drive the guests away. She drummed into young Julita’s head that if that happened, then she would be forced to put her in an institution. Convincing her that she needed all the rooms for the guests, she made her a bed in the attic, telling her it would be a good hiding place where no one could find her.
This went on year after year until Julita was convinced she was a monster, and her sister was doing her a favor by not putting her away.
Then Lucretia began to face another problem.
Julita began to grow.
In Lucretia’s mind, the answer was simple. She dressed Julita in large, ugly, shapeless dresses that a small child might wear, and later began to bind up her breasts. In Lucretia’s mind she was still a baby. It was her practice to croon to her, hold her, feed her, rock her, and tuck her in at night, even though eventually the cute little legs soft with baby fat turned into the curvaceous legs of a teenager and dangled down beside Lucretia’s lap. Lucretia couldn’t stand to keep the girl prisoner and allowed Julita a certain amount of freedom to roam the mansion and play in the woods, but gave her strict instructions to stay away from the guests.
* * * *
Lucretia had turned into a loathsome thing that crept around the house talking to herself. Being in the basement, Garret could hear what went on upstairs, and sometimes he’d be awakened by thumps and tormented outcries deep into the night. He would lie in his bed, grasping at his ears, trying to keep out the sound of Julita crying out in pain. It was torture hearing her cries come wafting down through the ventilator. He pounded on his legs, trying to force feeling into them, but it was no use. He cried, cursing his disability, his wheelchair, and his inability to help his daughter.
And then there were the nights he would hear a strangled cry come from outside. He could only guess at what Lucretia was doing. He knew that a woman like Lucretia didn’t stop at ravaging little animals anymore. No, her prey was much larger, her victims, anyone who crossed her. And because of him, she had an inn full of people to feed her obsession … her bloody obsession.
Knowing Lucretia was getting worse, Garret was becoming desperate, so he tried leaving obscure notes on his tray, or making enough noise for someon
e to hear, but it did no good. When he had been bad,as she used to call it, she would punish him by going out into the woods and killing some small animal and serving it to him on his tray. Then she would stand just outside his door and hear him bellow with horror when he removed the cover and saw the little thing drenched in blood and staring up at him with dead eyes. He would push the tray away with a tormented howl, and the sound of the metal object hitting the floor would mingle with her maniacal laughter. Helpless tears would stream down his haggard face.
“See what you made me do?” she would hiss at him when she returned for the tray. “If not for you, this small animal would still be alive.”
He was usually so sickened with shock he couldn’t say anything and would turn his wheelchair away from her. If he was lucky she would leave him alone. But if she wasn’t through with him, she would jerk him around and make him stare into her crazy eyes that glittered with the darkness of hell.
Lucretia knew she was killing him, and carefully counted the days on her calendar. Each day was crossed off with big red smears of her favorite color … the color of blood.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shadoe felt himself enclosed in a comfortable haze of sleep until a cold wind blew over his body, ruffling his hair, and brushing a chilly kiss across his cheek. Shivering, he opened his eyes slowly. Seeing a forest of trees, he lifted his head, small twigs and dry leaves sticking to his face as he looked around.
What the hell? he thought as his clouded vision raked across the area where he’d slept. Suddenly remembering the night before, he froze, his eyes and mind taking on the clarity of a crystal ball. Jumping up, he whirled his body, trying to find the church he’d been in only hours before. The clearing was empty, shafts of early morning sun piercing through the thick foliage of the trees. Where was the church? The church was here. My God, am I going crazy? he asked himself as he quickly leaned his head over and raked his fingers through his hair. When he lowered them, his hands were full of twigs and leaves. He quickly threw them down and began running as fast as he could out of the clearing and down the path to the inn.
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