Twisted River

by Kelsey Gietl

  Halfway up the walk sat a lone traveling case, and standing calmly to the side, Damaris watched the results of her handy work.

  The sound of his home crackling fell hollow as he stumbled forward. “Damaris, what have you done?” he gasped.

  She jerked, unable to conceal her surprise at his appearance. “You’re supposed to be at the studio.”

  “Why? So you can burn my house down?”

  “Our parents’ house,” she corrected then grinned as though she expected commendation for destroying the house their father built. Thinking on it, she probably did.

  More important matters first.

  “Where are my children?” he shouted. When she didn’t respond, an unfamiliar curse left his mouth, this time unmasked by any culinary reference.

  “Daddy?”

  Hugo blinked at Isa’s innocent voice. Her frightened eyes peered out from behind Damaris, tiny fingers clutching fabric while her father burned hotter than the fire. She had never seen him this way before. He didn’t even know he was capable of it.

  Then again two weeks ago he hadn’t deemed himself capable of smarting off to his mother-in-law or walloping Reuben either. He always taught his children to turn the other cheek.

  “Isa ...” He started towards her, but Damaris shifted the child farther behind her and raised a hand to halt his pace.

  This was his most loved sister. She helped their mother raise him while their father was away. She traveled the country with him, laughed with him at their sisters’ weddings, and mourned with him when their parents passed ... first one then the other. He was her Hugh, and she was his Mare. There wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for one another.

  Until she murdered his wife and set fire to his home.

  “Let her go.” He grabbed Isa’s arm, but Damaris held on tighter. He should have given it more thought when she insisted on always being the one to haul the studio’s delivery crates in from the alley. But why would he ever think she had a reason to keep herself in fighting shape? Damaris was only a fighter when it came to him, and even then, she always relented eventually.

  Until today.

  “Your house is burning,” she sneered.

  “I can see that. Can you tell me why?”

  Damaris tightened her grip until Isa whimpered. “You’re wasting precious time with questions, Hugh. Who knows how many minutes remain before the flames break into the upper bedrooms?” Gently she smoothed her free hand across Isa’s crimson curls with a thin smile. “Seems you have a decision to make. Which child do you love the most?”

  All the rage drained from Hugo like the Mississippi River water far below. He looked up at the second story windows. She couldn’t have trapped Henry and Molly in there, he thought. She wouldn’t be that truly twisted.

  “You could call my bluff,” Damaris said as though she heard his thoughts. She lifted the traveling case. “You could decide to not believe that I locked your precious angels inside. Or that I emptied our account of all the company’s assets and am now leaving you destitute. You could deny my candor as dishonesty, yet you would be unwise to do so.” She jerked Isa’s arm and Hugo lost his grip. In shock, he watched her back his youngest daughter towards the road.

  “You can keep the money, Mare, but why do you need her?”

  “I know you, Hugh. You won’t let anyone harm me as long as I have her.”

  “Daddy?” Isa asked timidly. “Why fire?”

  Damaris eased the girl against her side, her words switching to syrup. “Your daddy has behaved very badly, Isa dear. Unfortunately, bad people need to be punished.”

  “What about murderers?” Hugo asked. “Should they be punished?”

  His sister simply smiled.

  He swiveled between the house and his youngest daughter. The children weren’t in there. Damaris took them to her apartment or hid them in the carriage house. This was all a trick to get him killed. She would ditch Isa somewhere along the way and leave all three children without any parents.

  He needed Maggie. He needed her wits and her steam engine ferocity.

  “Why did you kill her? When?” He knew it was stupid to waste time with questions. Every second another flame climbed the wall. With each pop of ashen wood, they came one inch closer to the children he prayed were somewhere else. He crushed his fingers through his hair.

  Damaris took another step down the walk, and without deciding to, Hugo followed her. God help him, if this was his final moment to learn the truth, then he needed to learn it. It was exactly the choice Maggie would have made. Truth over decision without facts.

  “When?” he repeated.

  “The night before we left for Seattle. When you went to sleep at the hotel, I returned to the house.”

  “How did it happen?” Hugo held up a hand before Damaris could speak. “No details. Isa can’t know.”

  Damaris’s eyes flicked towards the river, and Hugo didn’t need her to say more. He doubled over and with his hands on his knees, struggled to restrain his horror. Emma hadn’t been able to swim, but even if she had, the Mississippi rarely spared its victims. She would have drowned quickly.

  Someone he loved didn’t deserve that end. No one did. Not even a murderer.

  His voice emerged as a man who lost years in a single moment—all his possible futures stolen because of a relation he trusted all his life. “What happened to you, Damaris? You were the tame sister, not some suffering lunatic.”

  Damaris slid back another pace, her expression nostalgic. “You always underestimated me, Hugh, just like Papa. I wasn’t like our sisters, not pretty or personable and could certainly never fetch a man with twelve thousand a year. I was plain ordinary Damaris. Good enough to be your assistant and follow on your travels, but when it came down to hard facts, there was always someone better. Emma. Maggie. The children.”

  She offered him a simple smile, full of nothing but the sweet sister she was all those years growing up together. “To me,” she said, “we were Tom and Huck. Frank and Jesse James. All I wanted was us and the world. If something stood in our way, I eliminated it.” She looked to the house. “It’s a shame, Hugh, the way this needs to end. You were always so nice to me. Although that was your downfall. You were always too kind to everyone.”

  Tentatively, she set the traveling case on the ground and extended a shaking hand. Her lips curved into a warm smile. “You can still come with me, Hugo. There’s so much world left to see.”

  He stared at her hand, at the glow on her face, and the warmth in her voice and had no idea who he was seeing. The sister he knew was lost.

  I thought Emma’s betrayal was the worst pain I could ever feel, he thought, but I was wrong. This is a thousand times worse.

  Hugo tilted his chin to meet his daughter’s frightened stare. Tears stained her cheeks. There was only one logical choice.

  “I’ll come for you, Isa,” he whispered.

  Barreling into the house, he launched himself towards the stairs, the scent of charred wood now mingling with that of fabric and furniture. Smoke eased from under the kitchen door like fog on the river, rising to wrap the upper level in a thin haze. It tingled his nostrils as he reached for the hook at the top of the stairs, already knowing the little metal key would be missing. Damaris’s intention was to destroy his life for attempting to ground her in St. Louis. The surest way to succeed in that was to harm his children.

  Panic threatening, he reached for the knob to Henry’s bedroom, mentally preparing to break down the door and instead stumbled when it swung inward unlocked.

  “Move outside!” he yelled.

  Molly and Henry looked up from where they sat cross-legged upon the bed, Henry’s toy cars lined up between them.

  “She’s gone then?” Henry asked. He glowered at the miniature Model T in his hand.

  Molly sniffed, her eyes red. “Aunt Damaris wouldn’t even let us say goodbye.” Her nose wrinkled at the smoke. “Smells bad. Did you burn dinner again?”

  “We need to go.
Now.” Yanking them both up, Hugo pulled them out of the room and down the stairs faster than Molly’s feet could carry her. She tripped on the last step, and he hefted her into his arms as she began to cry. For some unexplainable reason, the kitchen wall remained intact, sealing the flames from the hallway.

  “Come on, we need to phone for help.”

  That was when he heard screaming directly above him. His eyes rose with the sound of an awful banging that, thanks to Henry’s tantrums, he instantly recognized as fists against a bedroom door.

  It was then that Hugo finally heard his children’s earlier words. “Who else is here?”

  Molly’s tears fell harder, and Henry glared at his father. “Miss Margaret, of course. Aunt Damaris sent us to my room right before they started fighting.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Maggie couldn’t believe she allowed her emotions to run away with her. More so, she couldn’t understand how she allowed Damaris the upper hand so easily.

  She had planned everything out to retrieve her belongings without encountering any of them. Damaris answered when she rang on the telephone that morning. “Of course, I’ll take the children out. I certainly don’t want to see you.”

  But when Maggie knocked on the door that afternoon, Molly answered. Her wide eyes turned up in excitement, and it took all Maggie had to push the child off. “I’m sorry, Molly. I can’t stay.”

  Damaris appeared from the living room. “Figures. My brother has a knack for losing wives.”

  “You told me they wouldn’t be here.” Not waiting for a reply, Maggie hustled up the stairs only to encounter Henry on the landing.

  He didn’t say a word. The metal toy car he held folded into his fist.

  Blinking away hot tears, Maggie stepped around him and made for the master bedroom. It was exactly as she remembered, and she tried not to focus anywhere except the fruit crates piled with her belongings. What she hadn’t taken to England only filled two of them. Hugo even packed the tea tin he bought her for their wedding night.

  They never had a real wedding night.

  Maggie stumbled against the bedpost as someone shoved her through the doorway. Spinning, she saw Damaris pull the door shut and heard a key turn in the lock. She jiggled the handle to no avail. “Damaris!” she screamed. “Let me out!”

  The elder woman laughed. “You think you’re getting out of this? Not this time, darlin’.”

  With another scream and a slap to the door, Maggie sat on the bed she never once shared with her husband and ran her hands over the quilt seams. Hugo would be home eventually. He would unlock the door, and she could go home.

  Home ... where was that? Did she even have one anymore?

  Yes, she amended, of course she did—with Tena and Abigail. Keeping her daughter was hopefully one good decision in the midst of too many bad choices. She had to believe Dr. Schweitzer was right, and someday she would understand why she did it.

  It wasn’t until smoke started to seep through the floorboards that she realized Damaris’s intentions were far darker than instigating a row between her brother and his former wife. The grey wisps filtered up near the wall behind the writing desk, twisting past the windows towards the ceiling. A putrid odor followed shortly after—the scent of life about to burn down around her.

  Spinning, she pounded on the bedroom door, yanked at the handle, kicked at the grimed and worn hinges until her toes went numb. “Damaris! You can’t leave me in here! Damaris!” No response and the spare key was stored in Hugo’s study. She would never get out this way.

  Dashing to the window, she unhooked the latch and shoved. It only raised its usual five inches, not nearly enough for her to squeeze through if she dared. She was still two floors up and liable to break both her legs if she were to jump. Were the children still in the house? She couldn’t climb back up the stairs or run for help on broken legs.

  Yanking open the dresser drawers, she rummaged through each one. If she couldn’t find another key, there might be something able to jimmy the lock. But her search quickly came up fruitless.

  “Beans and Bacon!” shouted a voice from the hallway.

  “Hugo! Thank goodness.” Running back to the door, she yanked on the handle in vain. “It was Damaris. She locked me in here.”

  “I know. She also murdered Emma.”

  “Emma? But—are you certain?” After so many weeks of unbelievable events, this one shouldn’t have surprised her. Damaris told her once that life was like a game at the fair. From that first round of thievery at Charles’s funeral, the witch had shown every card in her hand. Why did no one bother to look?

  “We can discuss it later,” he said gently. “Now, I need you to move as far from the door as you can.”

  “Tell me how to take the hinge pins out of the door.”

  “They’re too old and they’re not coming out. Now back away.”

  “Do you have the key?”

  “No, but I have a means to open the door.”

  “Where are the children?”

  “Safe. Now please, Maggie, just do as I ask.”

  A breeze whipped up outside, thankfully drawing the smoke through the window, but also apparently drawing the fire. She pressed herself into the far corner and the wall shook when something slammed against it.

  “Hugo?” she cried. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” he grunted. “I have an ax.” Another slam against the wood, another groan. The wall trembled with the impact, although the door appeared intact.

  To her right, the curtains caught flame. “Hugo, hurry!” She promised Tena she would never leave her again. She needed to keep that promise.

  The next strike resulted in a crack to the wood, but not enough to push it open. He struck again. “When I find Damaris, I’ll slap her senseless. I was so angry I actually used language in front of Isa.” His next swing fell short, and the ax dropped to the floor with a metallic clunk. Between the smoke and the strain, his breathing had become labored.

  Another hit of metal against wood, not nearly as strong as the one that preceded it.

  He would never crack through that door in time. If Reuben were here, perhaps, but Hugo simply wasn’t built for it.

  The room’s heat intensified as the fire finished with the curtains and clawed at the window frame. She imagined the garden below with its little shoots pushing through the soil. Come June there would be a multitude of blooms from bulbs chosen especially by Molly. She wondered if her stepdaughters would forget the classifications she taught them. She wondered if they would forget her.

  Abigail was only four months old; she wouldn’t remember she ever had a mother.

  Maggie pressed both hands to her mouth to stifle a sob and the effort momentarily blackened her vision. She couldn’t use more air; her head was already fuzzy with the fumes filling the room. But what good would conservation of air do now?

  She pressed her cheek to the wallpaper. Across the room, the flames finally caught the ceiling and started to spread.

  “Remember the day we married?” Hugo asked. Maggie nodded; it was all she could manage. He would finally leave when he realized it was all he could do. She slid to the floor, her eyelids heavy. Her head hurt and someone’s breathing sounded too ragged. The thrum of ax swings beat in time to the blood pulsing in her ears.

  Hugo continued speaking. She wanted to commend him for such clarity in his voice. If she were out there trying to save him instead, she doubted she could remain so calm. “Even in black,” he said, “you were beautiful. Given the chance, I would marry you all over again.”

  Given the chance? They were out of chances. Her fingers landed on the scuffed toe of Hugo’s boots and she smiled. Everything about him had always been a little tattered. Wherever she was headed, she hoped she remembered him.

  “Maggie?” Hugo’s tone was suddenly intense. “Maggie, keep talking so I know you’re still with me.”

  What was he on about? Words only landed them in unfortunate situations. Talking wasn’t
so important. Sleep was important. Her attention drifted. What was that orange glow? Why was the room so warm? St. Louis certainly was a distressingly hot city. Too much brick, not enough trees.

  The banging stopped. “Maggie?”

  She meant to answer with something important, maybe that she loved him or maybe that she had been wrong to leave, but darkness tugged her onward, and she no longer felt the need. She had found a quite comfortable place curled up on the floor.

  Her eyes slid closed.

  She would tell him in the morning.

  ~~~

  Hugo lowered the ax and drew short shallow breaths. The wood around the door had splintered, the knob bent at an odd angle, and he feared he had done more damage than good. “Maggie?” he called again.

  No answer.

  “Maggie?”

  Still nothing. Even the soiled shirt tied over his mouth and nose could no longer keep out the smoke rising in the stairwell and creeping under the bedroom door. How much worse it must be inside.

  Drawing on every ounce of strength, he managed to drive his compact frame with enough force to split the door’s mutilated wood. With a final kick, it finally swung inward, and his arms raised against the oncoming wave of heat. Tiny scraps of seared wallpaper and curtain danced by in the breeze from the window. That air might have been the only saving grace from the thick smoke filling the room.

  Beside the wardrobe, Maggie lay silent.

  He fell to his knees and pressed a hand to her lips, thankful to feel strong, although too rapid, breathing.

  “Maggie, wake up.” He jerked her shoulder. No response and he didn’t have time for a second attempt. With a groan, he hooked his arms under hers and dragged her towards the door only to waste seconds when her boot hooked the frame. Pushing it aside, he pulled her into the hallway and ran straight into his son.