It emanated from the closet. He was sure. And he was petrified. He had not been fully inside that closet since the last time his brothers and Twynne had thrust him into it in the last gasp of their era of practical jokes. His reluctant feet slid along the polished boards around the perimeter of the rug until they stopped before the door itself. His hand tentatively fingered the brass knob as it shook and joggled beneath his tenuous hold. The fear in his heart governed his trembling hand as he fought with the tendons of his own fingers to close on the jittering and rattling knob, open the door, and expose the perpetrator of the hideous banging that had robbed him of the peace of sleep for weeks. But then he heard a noise behind him, and when he looked, he saw the apparition that had three times tenanted his library leaning over the slumbering form of Maude. Her ghostly hands encircled the child’s frail neck and moved their pale fingers now over her cheeks rendered colorless by the depth of repose.
Crossett bounded in a leap toward Maude’s bed. A parental protectiveness that flooded him on the level of instinct engined his assault. He swept at the pale apparition as it dissolved in his hands, and he fell on the still form of his daughter. Together they slid with the bedclothes and landed with a thud on the floor, taking with them a Queen Anne table with its priceless contents rolling dizzily over the rug and onto the wooden floor, meeting the baseboard with a crash.
Maude’s screams brought Anne to the child’s door. She flipped the switch to see Crossett huddling the screaming child in his arms, holding her far too tightly, batting at the air with a free hand.
“Stop!” she screamed herself, attempting to wrestle the child from him. “Let go, Crossett! Let go!”
He woke as from a dream, unable to get his immediate bearings, fuzzy, befuddled.
“Good God, Crossett, are you walking in your sleep now?” she demanded, cradling the weeping child. “Get hold of yourself! You’ve scared Maude to death! What on earth were you doing?”
“I saw her in here,” he babbled, “leaning over Maude! She was trying to strangle her, I tell you! Strangle her!” He looked around in confusion. “How did she get up here?”
“Whom are you talking about Crossett? You’re dreaming! I’ve told you that before! For God’s sake Crossett tell Dr. Frolich about it will you? You’re becoming a danger to us all!”
Crossett sat in a lump on the floor for some time listening to Maude’s whimper and Anne’s light soprano as she went through her entire repertoire of lullabies, until his own nerves were soothed.”
Tomorrow,” he said in a whisper, “we move Maude to the guest room.”
The hectic morning saw Maude moved lock, stock, and barrel to the guest room. Her room was then officially declared the new guest room, its radiators turned off, and door closed in honor of its transformed status. Maude’s old room with its numinous closet stood silent, cold, and sarcophagal.
And that was the way he wanted it, Crossett mused while Jake examined the mantel. He glanced at the tea table from Maude’s room, brought it to the library laden with fragments and slivers of Chinese Export broken the night before and which he had laid out earlier like an archeologist’s array of site findings. Later in the day he planned to begin the daunting task of gluing them together. Crossett was from a long line of gluers. His great aunt had been most practiced at the art, and from her he had learned this meticulous craft of patience. Her handiwork, which still adorned many a shelf and table at Winterhurst, had survived some of Barrow’s closest scrutiny. She had not believed in discarding such hapless victims of chance. She repaired them and then displayed them either in less prominent locations or on shelves far above eye level. For those heirlooms, all of whose shattered pieces she could not retrieve, she merely turned the fragmented sides to the wall and tested securely in Barrow’s unwritten law that no one dare touch any item in an estate home. Only she had known the extent to which Winterhurst’s china collection had been damaged. Speculating on the entirety of pieces perched on Winterhurst’s highest shelves was one of Crossett’s more peculiar pastimes.
He turned from the array of broken pieces as Jake stood back from the mantel.
“I’ll do the best I can,” Jake said woodenly, still edgy from his near-fall down the stairs and feeling, as usual, vaguely aggravated by Crossett’s aristocratic air. The splintering wrench of the wood being parted from the frame sent chills down Crossett’s spine as he moved toward Jake to signal him to stop. From one of the oldest homes of one of the most respected families in Barrow history, the mantel was one of Crossett’s prized pieces. He considered it something of a coup to have gotten it away from Wightefield. He had his social charm to thank for that, he had often thought. As he stepped up to Jake’s elbow, the mantel came off with one last squealing wrench.
“You should have been more careful,” Crossett said gruffly as he examined the fluted surface of the mantel. Then he turned to study the darkened, unpainted frame from top to bottom. Finally, he ran his hand over the entire area.
“Don’t understand,” he muttered. “She was trying to get it off. I know she was.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Crossett replied distractedly as he ran his fingers again over the rugged black surface. He did not know just what he had expected to find, but it was not this—it was not nothing. He got down on one knee.
“We’ll leave it off for a while. Just prop it up over there and be careful with it.” His voice was dictatorial, and he knew it. That would aggravate Jake, and he knew that, too. “It’s valuable.” Then he added, because he did not feel moved to resist temptation, “It came from Wightefield.”
“Wightefield?” Jake took the bait.
“Yes,” Crossett answered shortly, feeling better now that he knew someone else was going to feel at least nearly as frustrated as he did.
“How did you come by it?”
“Through Lamerie Wighte, of course.”
“Lamerie?”
“Yes, Lamerie. Your wife, Lamerie,” Crossett said indiscreetly. “We’ve known each other for a long time. I used to go with her to Wightefield now and again,” he continued as he crossed to his desk where he pulled out a cigarette. “We used to go all through the house. Fine house, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Jake said brusquely, baring his hostility. “It’s mine now.”
“You mean, it’s not in Lamerie’s name anymore?” Crossett asked just mildly enough to keep Jake’s interest.
“That’s something that’ll change very soon,” Jake replied confidently. “Then, Mr. Mainwaring, if you see anything you like in it,” he continued softly, “you’ll have to speak to me about it—that is, if you get in there. As my property there won’t be any trespassers.”
“You have problems with trespassers at Wightefield, Jake?” Crossett asked unruffled, lighting his cigarette.
“Speculators of silver and precious stones, you might say.”
“Sounds like a sunken treasure ship,” Crossett said disinterestedly.
“According to the stories in last week’s paper, you know quite a bit about Wightefield and what’s up there.”
Jake did not like Crossett’s name being connected with Wightefield, especially when the article mentioned only Lamerie and not himself.
A look of disgust reconfigured Crossett’s face. “Local propaganda,” he said shortly, propelling himself slightly away from the desk against which he had been leaning. He felt a sudden urgency of his own frustration at the mention of The Rambler’s latest article. “You said it yourself—stories.”
“Been up there lately?”
“Certainly not. That would be trespassing.”
“So it would.”
“Are you suggesting that I make a practice of going uninvited to Wightefield?” Crossett asked with a jerk of impatience and as well of anger.
“Sounds like you and Lamerie were pretty good friends.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Then the eyes of the two men met, and they came to understa
nd one another.
Chapter 9
“So you were great friends when you were young,” Jake rasped.
“That’s not at all what I said. I said we knew each other—we were friendly,” Lamerie said.
“Friendly enough to take trips to Wightefield together?”
“We went to Wightefield a few times, yes. Crossett Mainwaring is very knowledgeable about old houses. I needed help in trying to decide what to do with Wightefield.”
“It wasn’t even yours then!”
“But it was going to be and I knew all the problems my father had had!” She was beginning to raise her voice, she knew it, but she could not help herself. He never ultimately listened unless she raised her voice, and then it always backfired; the pattern was always the same. As usual he would have a concealed weapon, something hurtful, something to foster regret, something he had been saving, some mechanism by which to strip her naked and make her stand before him. What kind of a person did not merit even simple human decency? There was no nobility left in her that he had not already peeled like layers of skin to leave her exposed and raw and shivering with every breath of air that moved about her.
In the convoluted layers of his mind lay the weapon he had been holding back, and it had a name. Shadrack Hawkins. Ever since she had heard the name from his lips, she had coveted her own prior ignorance. Shadrack Hawkins was the hinge upon which they all turned and moved—Crossett, Jake, and herself. Somehow her association with both men seemed interminable, carved from an ancient stone by a timeless hand. Deep in the bowels of her being, she feared she had walked a thousand lives by their sides in different permutations of the same equation, seeking the answer to that equation beneath every rock of existence, every stone of mortality. And in between the lives? In between their souls met in another plane of the same continuum to skirt and prowl about one another in search of a familiar scent distinguishable only to whatever ethereal senses a soul possesses. As she faced Jake now, she knew in that next hiatus they would have to answer to one another for what would happen here next.
Jake stepped menacingly forward.
“Do you think you’re going to give Wightefield to Crossett Mainwaring?”
She was shocked. No matter what her relationship with Crossett, she had never considered such a thing, and his suggestion of it showed how little he understood her determination to keep the estate house and most especially from Jake himself. She had been discussing with Crossett for some time her alternatives in keeping Wightefield in her own name and protecting it from any claim Jake may lay to it. A surge of anger roiled up from the depths of her stomach. Jake’s incredible arrogance was every match for the bluest blood of Barrow, some of which was beginning to run hotly through Lamerie’s veins.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” she answered coldly, raising her head as she did so. “It was years ago. We all grew up together, more or less. Crossett was by no means the center of my attention. We all knew each other, where we lived, and each other’s parents. We went to school together, all of us—Twynne Forster and Benjamin Teilbright and John Beale and—“
“All men!” he erupted.
“—Sara Forster, Abigail Winston—“
“Has he been here?”
“What?”
“Has he been here?” he yelled.
“Has who been here?”
“Crossett Mainwaring!” He took another step closer to Lamerie.
Her mouth opened slightly but she could not make any sound come out. Her face lost its expression, as if a pale swath of fog had suddenly enveloped it and left it vacuous in its wake. It leeched the blue from her eyes, leaving them a flannel gray, her dark eyebrows standing out from the white of her face like two curves from a raven-tipped paintbrush.
“No,” she finally whispered.
“You’re a bastard daughter,” he hissed, taking several more steps closer until he stood not a foot from her, the warmth of his breath like a hot wind on the cold, clammy skin of her face. When the blow came, she barely felt it, only found herself face down on the unforgiving wood of the floor, gasping a little from the quickness of it, winded from the surprise. She did not turn her face up to watch the hideous contortions of his face as he spoke, to bare to him the massive welt that already stood raised on her cheek.
“Shadrack Hawkins—you remember that name, don’t you? Stayed on after the war looking for the necklace and silver of Wightefield your great-grandmother Lamerie hid from the Union soldiers? Killed your great-grandmother, raped your grandmother, just a child of twelve? Yes, you see I know the horrible family secret, the unmentionable Wighte humiliation. Well, she had a son. My grandfather. Yes, Lamerie, we have the same great-grandfather.” There was a pause. “That makes us cousins, doesn’t it?”
He moved closer.
“Some people call that incest. But not me. I need you for Wightefield. No one has figured it all out yet—the genteel Mainwarings—“ he spit the words out. “Another blemish! Christopher Mainwaring—in love with every slave that crossed his threshold. Why shouldn’t there be incest, too, among such respectable and respected families?” Suddenly, he laughed.
“Respectable! Hardly that!”
From the corner of her eye, she could see the steel-tipped toe of his work boots, close to her face. The palms of her hands lay flat against the cold grain of the wood.
How much hate can one soul carry from life to life, she thought. How many other spirits can it garner to itself in an effort to quell its own pain? She put her arm up before her face as he leaned down toward her, the yellow of his teeth glinting in the electric light, the crevices of his face throwing shadows among themselves. His grip lifted her to her feet and ushered her into the bedroom.
Now there would be four souls to hover and circle one another in the misty sphere of the next plane.
Chapter 10
Twynne stared pensively at the Chippendale dental molding of his ceiling. The smoke from his pipe was swathing his study in a fine white haze in the center of which sat a brooding Crossett, his elbows on his knees and a cigarette dangling languidly from his hand, sending a ribbon of a smoke signal to the billowing pipe on the other side of the room.
“Well,” Twynne said in a great sigh of a breath. The word hung in the air with the tobacco. Crossett returned the sigh along with another exhalation of smoke from his dwindling cigarette.
“Well,” Twynne began again more definitively. “It seems to me you have brought into your house fragments of other people’s lives.”
“What?” A look of disgust gripped the features of Crossett’s face. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Your mantel … and your wallpaper … and your chair railing and—“ Twynne directed his attention to Crossett. The long contemplation of the ceiling molding seemed to have yielded fruit.
“Tell me about the wallpaper in your bedroom.”
“You know about the wallpaper.”
“Refresh my memory,” Twynne returned reflectively studying Crossett now.
“It came from France,” Crossett began slowly. “Edward Teilbright brought it with him to the New World in 1765 and put it in his drawing room. He was cleaning his gun one day when it backfired and killed him.”
“He lived for several weeks afterward, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“In agony?”
“Yes.”
“And his wife three times attempted suicide and was three times saved by her slaves?”
“Yes.” Crossett was beginning to lift his head.
“She changed the name of the plantation from Teilbright Levels to … to…”
“Widow Grove.”
“Sad story.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Handsome wallpaper, Crossett. Mythological characters, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Pyramus and Thisbe, Apollo and Daphne, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Alpheus and Arethusa.”
“Tell me, why on earth did you put th
at in your bedroom?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re all star-crossed lovers, Crossett. The love affairs of every one of them ended in disaster.” Twynne leaned back again in his chair and muttered, “I always wondered why the devil you put it in your bedroom. Anyway,” he said, rousing himself, “tell me about the chair rail in the dining room. Farrington Hall?”
“Yes.”
“And, uh, how did you come by it?”
“You know exactly how I came by it! You were there!” Crossett said angrily. “What are you getting at?”
“You got it when the Herefords lost everything, including the chair railing,” Twynne said leaning forward again. “When they were wiped out by the Depression and World War II. They were forced to sell the whole 902 acres for a song and you cashed in, too, Crossett, didn’t you?”
“It was a good opportunity! The house went to rack and ruin as it was. If I hadn’t taken that railing, it would have just rotted and been lost forever. I saved a piece of history!”
“Very noble,” Twynne said softly. “And the molding in the hallway came from the Wetherton house when that family had finally succeeded in drinking itself into ruin. You took advantage of that opportunity, too.”
Crossett rose to his feet, anger stiffening his form misted by the smoky room. Twynne rose, too.
“But I’m not here to judge you, Crossett, and it’s true that it’s something of a practice to bring parts of houses to another house. Yes, yes,” he continued, waving Crossett to sit down. “Among antique buffs and experts in the decorative arts, it’s quite accepted. But think a moment, Crossett, of the particular parts you have brought to Winterhurst. Each one has a baleful of history behind it—pain, suffering, death, ruin. Those are powerful concepts.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, that you may have brought the pain and suffering along with the molding and wallpaper and—“He paused, leaving the thought hanging in the air with the pungent tobacco. “And the mantel.”
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