Bloodroots

by Richie Tankersley Cusick

Skyler's eyes darted to the old woman's face, then slid away.

  "Eat up, child," Miss Rose said softly. "You need some meat on your bones."

  The awkward moment had passed. Miss Rose picked up a spoon and slowly stirred her coffee, her gaze still on Olivia, pensive.

  "There are only two things I require, and we should get along splendidly."

  "Yes," Olivia nodded, her hands out of sight, twisting in her lap. "Whatever you like, Miss Devereaux."

  "As I said before, the goings-on of this household are private and sacred. All necessities are delivered, and all financial matters are handled by my lawyer through correspondence. I don't expect you'll see much of anyone else outside, but if and when you do, you are never to mention anything about this house or those who live in it."

  "Yes. I understand."

  "And secondly," Miss Rose said. She stared at Olivia for so long that the girl began to grow uneasy. "Secondly," she repeated almost in a whisper.

  Olivia took the initiative. "And what would that be?"

  Her grandmother's eyes fell on her, kind and gentle. "Why, to do what's expected of you, child, that's all.

  Richie Tankeisley Cnsick

  Just. . ." The faded eyes went over Olivia in one final appraisal, and a smile flitted across the thin lips. "Do what's expected of you."

  Olivia could hardly swallow. She forced a deep breath into her lungs and tried to smile. "I'll do my best, Miss Devereaux."

  "Yes." The old woman's smile widened. "I'm very sure that you will."

  She stood up, but as Olivia started to rise, Miss Rose waved her back in her chair. "Please . . . finish your breakfast. When you're through, Yoly will show you what needs to be done, and I'll ask her to find you some different clothes. But in the meantime—"

  "I'll be more than happy to keep her company," Skyler said easily. "After all, we wouldn't want her feeling neglected on her first day here."

  "Aren't you the thoughtful one," Miss Rose said, casting him a sidelong glance. "And now, if you'll excuse me—"

  "Thank you, Miss Devereaux." Olivia looked up as the woman started past her. "I really can't thank you enough."

  "Why, there's no need to thank me, child."

  Miss Rose paused beside Olivia's chair and rested one blue-veined hand lightly on the girl's head.

  "Believe me," she said softly, "you'll definitely earn your keep."

  For the second time Olivia watched as the old woman's eyes shifted to Skyler's.

  Only this time she could swear that a secret smile passed between them.

  Richie Tankeisley Cusick

  tried to get in. The world outside was a hazy mass of dripping moss and greenery—cedars and oaks, elephant ears, camellias, pines, and yucca plants. Olivia's gaze moved along the wall... to the sideboard . . . the glass-fronted cabinets full of old china and silver and candlesticks—across the table, where it stopped.

  Just opposite the chair where Miss Rose had been sitting, a place had obviously been set and cleared away. The faint imprint of a plate was still evident on the cloth, along with a damp telltale circle where a glass had rested. As Olivia stared, she noticed the linen napkin folded on the tablecloth . . . folded in the same hasty way as the one upstairs by the empty hearth in the child's bedroom. 'Jesse's been in here . . . making crumbs . . . using the fire because he can't ever stay warm . . ." Glancing around quickly, Olivia brought her eyes back to Skyler.

  "You don't trust me," he said, as if the probability didn't bother him in the least.

  "I was just noticing . . . someone else must have already eaten before I came in."

  Skyler followed the direction of her stare and answered without hesitation. "What can I say . . . we're always hungry around here."

  "Then why weren't you having breakfast just now?"

  "I have . . . peculiar eating habits." The eyebrow arched, and he crossed his arms comfortably over his chest. He had a way of looking secretly amused at everything, and Olivia had the feeling that he was laughing at her now, though his face was carefully composed.

  "Then . . . do a lot of people work here?" she asked.

  "Not a lot. Some."

  "Do you work here?"

  A pause. A nod. "Yes. You could say that."

  "Doing what?"

  He leaned toward her and rested his elbows on the table. "What do you think?"

  She tried not to meet his eyes, but she couldn't help it. In the revealing light of day he looked only mildly sinister, as compared to the way he'd looked last night in the dark. If anything, he appeared younger, almost boyish now in his dirty jeans and torn T-shirt; she guessed him to be in his early twenties. From the way he was slouched in his chair she could also tell that he was taller than she'd remembered, and his fingers, slowly caressing his coffee cup, were long and slender and tan.

  "You work outside," Olivia said quietly.

  His lips slid into a closed smile. "What a clever girl you are. Tell me more."

  "I don't know any more." She glanced reluctantly into his green eyes, into his narrow face. Even without the distortion of flickering shadows, she could still see the cunning there, the sharp watchfulness, though it was tempered now by an almost mischievous grin.

  "Then I'll tell you. I take care of the grounds."

  "Not very well, from what I've seen," she said before she thought, but he only chuckled.

  "Miss Rose wants it that way. I do what I can do."

  "And you've been here a long time?"

  He reached into his shirt poqket and withdrew a crushed pack of cigarettes. "Sometimes it seems like forever."

  Olivia nodded, redirecting her gaze out the windows. "It's strange, isn't it. It really does feel as though time has stopped here."

  Skyler cast her a sidelong glance. "Smoke?"

  "No. So it's you and Miss Devereaux and—"

  "Miss Rose," he corrected. "We all call her Miss Rose."

  "And Yoly and Helen," Olivia finished. Since she didn't want anyone to know she'd been eavesdropping on certain conversations around the house, she couldn't very well ask Skyler to identify the two other voices she'd heard. To her surprise, he told her about one anyway.

  "And Mathilde," Skyler added. "She cooks and helps Yoly."

  "With what?" Olivia looked around in dismay. From what she'd witnessed so far, it was inconceivable to think that someone actually tried to clean the house.

  Skyler read her expression immediately, and his answer was curt. "Miss Rose likes it this way."

  Olivia waited for him to go on, but instead he struck a match and held it to the cigarette dangling between his lips. He blew out a long, thin stream of smoke. There was something so calculated about his movements that she felt herself shiver.

  "Cold?" Skyler asked, only he hadn't been looking at her, and she wondered how he knew. Quickly she busied herself with her food.

  "No. Actually I'm getting rather hot." She bit her lip as a half smile flickered on his face, but he let the remark go by.

  "Mathilde won't like you," he said casually. "Just a friendly warning."

  "No?" Olivia thought a moment, still remembering that sultry French accent in the room upstairs. "Why not? She doesn't even know me."

  "She doesn't like anybody, and she won't want to know you." Skyler took the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and inspected it with narrowed

  eyes. After a drawn-out moment, his eyes slid to Olivia's face, and he cocked his head. "Maybe you won't have to work with her. Maybe you can work with me instead."

  Olivia found that prospect disturbing and immediately got the subject back on track. "So there's no one else in the house? Just you five?"

  His expression never changed. His eyes remained on her face. "Why?"

  "I just wondered . . ." Her mind whirled. "Because of what happened last night in my room."

  "Ah." Skyler nodded. "Yes. The attack."

  "It was something," she insisted. "Someone—"

  "But not me." Again that hidden amusement that made
her feel angrily flustered and confused. "If it'd been me . . ." He took a long drag on his cigarette, then let his breath out . . . slowly . . . slowly ... "I wouldn't have stopped at your thigh."

  Olivia looked quickly at her plate, refusing to give him the satisfaction of embarrassing her.

  "And I thought I heard someone on the balcony last night," she said evenly. "Just outside my room."

  The eyebrow raised in interest. He gave an almost imperceptible nod. "The house does have a past. A lot of tragedies can happen in a century or so."

  "So what are you saying? That there are ghosts?"

  He did smile then, a slow show of humor that moved his shoulders in a silent laugh. "Ghosts would be the least of your worries." With one quick movement he stubbed out his cigarette on the rim of his plate. "Come on."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Don't you want me to show you around?" With a grin, Skyler opened the French doors and slipped outside, leaving her no choice but to follow.

  They stepped out onto the veranda, onto old, worn bricks sunk to ground level. Ferns and lichen had taken over the crevices, and climbing roses clung tenaciously to parts of the house, as if their vines and scarlet flowers were the only things holding the walls and columns in place. Weeds stood nearly knee high, and the lawns were an impossible snarl of unkempt trees and flowers and shrubbery. The air was warm and wet, and ponderous gray clouds hung in sheets around the house.

  "It's so dark out here." Olivia huddled near the doorway, reluctant to leave the comforting light of the dining room.

  "It's always dark," Skyler murmured. "Even when the sun's out. .. even on the brightest day. Look ..."

  Uneasily she did so, at the trees clawing the walls, the honeysuckle and wisteria draping the rails and columns, the moss cascading from the huge serpentine limbs of the oaks.

  "The place just. . . disappears." Skyler walked a few feet ahead, and his voice was an eerie echo in the mist. "Swallowed up. Whole and alive. Even at noon, it's dark at Devereaux House. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? If it's really here at all?"

  Olivia pressed back against the wall, forcing calm into her voice. "Is this what you wanted me to see?"

  He cast a quick look back over his shoulder. "No. This way."

  She watched uncertainly as he headed off through the weeds. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to turn around or wait, she trailed him around the corner of the house. Drizzle clung to her like clammy skin. She tried to wipe it from her face with the back of her sleeve, but it stuck there. Skyler paused

  in the backyard and swept one arm in the direction of the outbuildings she'd noticed earlier from the upstairs gallery.

  "A lot of the original buildings are still standing. That's the kitchen there. And the smokehouse behind it. We still use it to preserve our meat. The other one was used for the overseer's office. Farther back are the slave cabins . . . and what's left of the stables and carriage house."

  She nodded, gazing off toward the other side of the house. "What's over there? Behind all those trees?"

  "The gardens. And past there's the bayou—it winds clear off around behind the plantation. Not a place you'd like to get. . . stuck in." A slow smile started across his face, but he turned and walked on.

  "Where are we going now?" Olivia called after him.

  "You'll see."

  She hesitated, then unwillingly followed him again. They walked quite a long way this time, along a worn path that wound through weeds and woods, among scattered outbuildings, and then angled off sharply across a short, stubbled field. The ground began to feel wet and soggy underfoot, and within minutes Olivia spotted a wide band of sluggish brown water overhung by mossy trees and pocked with stagnant pools of green scum. Skyler clambered down the embankment and came out onto a narrow wooden pier. There were several boats tied there, and he held out his hand to her.

  Olivia stopped, watching him uncertainly. His lips were pressed together in a smile, and he looked up at her calmly.

  "Where are we going?" she demanded.

  His smile never wavered. "It's a surprise."

  As she gazed into his eyes and felt herself take a cautious step toward him, she somehow forced herself to stop.

  "No," she said. "Not until you tell me what we're doing."

  Something flickered in his face. Olivia never saw him move back up onto the embankment—suddenly he was just there, pressing her tightly back against a tree, and she could feel his strength, his warmth, along the whole front of her body.

  "Come on." His voice was low, calm. "There's someone I want you to meet. That's all."

  "What are you doing, Skyler?"

  It was a woman who spoke angrily from the path behind them, and as Skyler whirled around, a pair of hands snatched Olivia before she could even move.

  The woman was surprisingly, frighteningly strong.

  As Olivia struggled, the woman's hold tightened, and her black, black eyes pierced Olivia with their coldness. Her full red skirt hung to her ankles, the torn fabric as dirty as her bare feet. A thin peasant blouse fell loosely off her shoulders, revealing most of her full, ripe breasts, and her black hair rippled to her tiny waist. She had skin the color of caramel, and a strange, exotic face, and Olivia knew at once that this was the woman she'd heard arguing with Skyler in the child's empty bedroom upstairs. As Olivia continued to stare back at her, something seemed to move around the woman's neck, buried deep, deep in the tangled mass of her thick hair.

  "So . . ." the woman hissed. Her eyes flashed like daggers between Olivia and Skyler, who was now looking rather bored and standing off to one side.

  But Olivia couldn't stop staring at the woman's neck, and suddenly, to her horror, she saw a huge

  black snake uncoil itself and begin to slide down one of the woman's arms straight toward her. Frantically, Olivia tried to break loose. She felt the grip on her arms tighten painfully, and then without warning, Skyler's arms were around her, pulling her away. Olivia was shaking all over. For a brief moment, Skyler held her against his chest, but then abruptly released her again, his expression half amused, half annoyed.

  "Looking for me?" He turned to the woman, his voice smooth. "Olivia, I don't think you've had the pleasure—the rare and wonderful pleasure—of meeting Mathilde."

  He was standing just behind Olivia now. She felt him move slightly against her back, felt him rest one arm upon her shoulder, felt his fingers trailing slowly down her spine. She shivered, confused, not wanting him to touch her, not wanting him to let her go.

  "Mathilde, this is Olivia," Skyler said. "She's going to be . . . working with us."

  Again Olivia felt his hand move slowly up the length of her back, and in spite of herself, she took a quick intake of breath. He looked down at her with a lazy smile.

  "It's about the girl," Mathilde snapped, ignoring the introductions. "That half-wit—"

  "Helen," he corrected her patiently. "She has a name, you know. It's Helen—"

  "Well, she's gone."

  "Gone—" His voice went abruptly hard. "What do you mean—she can't be gone." His arms slid away, and he squeezed Olivia's shoulders once, briefly, as he started toward Mathilde. "She has to be around here somewhere. Yoly just took her to her room. She can't have gotten far—"

  In one fluid movement Mathilde slid up against him, one leg rubbing slowly along his thigh. "I told you," she murmured, sounding smug and pleased, "I told you there'd be trouble once she found the dead one—"

  "Shut up, Mathilde. You're much too talkative this morning."

  Skyler pushed Mathilde away, and they hurried out of sight, leaving Olivia behind. A cold feeling of unease settled in her stomach, and she stood for a moment staring off across the bayou, staring down at the rickety little dock.

  "I told you there'd be trouble once she found the dead one.. ."

  Mathilde's words hung in the sticky air, and Olivia leaned back against the tree again, thinking. She recalled the conversation she'd overheard last night outside the
dining room—the voices, urgent and upset. The gentle tone of the man she hadn't yet seen, discussing some kind of accident. "Helen found her . . . she must have fallen . . ." And then Miss Rose's reply: "Fallen . . . or jumped?"

  And there were other things about that peculiar conversation . . . things that hadn't made any sense to her then, that were certainly none of her business— things that had faded from her memory during the strange course of the night. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the exact words, but they seemed to be just out of mind's reach. In frustration she concentrated instead on the stranger's voice ... his soft Southern drawl ... the way he'd sounded so concerned . . . and suddenly she heard him speaking again, like a soft, sad ghost— "She never realized what was happening to her."

  The sound of the water brought her back sharply to

  the present. Olivia glanced down at the pier and saw restless little waves lapping at the shoreline. Several trees overhanging the bayou began to rustle softly, as though something invisible had passed beneath them. She squinted her eyes, trying to see to the other side of the water, but the banks were so overgrown with brush and shadows almost anything could have been there without her knowing. She felt vulnerable standing there, surrounded by hundreds of hiding places. Rubbing goose bumps from her arms, Olivia went back to the house.

  There didn't seem to be anyone around. Pausing in the yard, Olivia looked up at the galleries, searching the rows of windows, hearing nothing. She went into the house, but when no one answered any of her knocks on the closed doors, she decided to search the rooms for herself.

  The main floor was laid out like the upstairs, three rooms on each side of a central corridor, only these hallway accesses were unlocked. Each set of three rooms also opened freely into one another and out onto the veranda that completely encircled the house. A shabby parlor lay at one front corner of the downstairs; directly behind that, between the parlor and the dining room, was a library in equally sorry shape, its shelved books warped from years of damp. Olivia slipped across the hall from the parlor and opened the double doors there, catching her breath at the sight that lay before her.

  It was the most beautiful room she had ever seen.

  A ballroom. Painted completely white.