The Unloved

by John Saul

  “I promise,” Julie said, snatching at the opportunity before her aunt had a chance to change her mind.

  Kerry waited in his car while Julie ran upstairs to find a towel, but as he sat beneath the blazing sun, he could sense Marguerite’s eyes still on him, almost feel the hostile vibrations emanating from her. At last Julie emerged from the house and jumped into the seat beside him. Kerry started the engine and drove quickly down the driveway to the road. When he spoke, his eyes stayed on the road, avoiding Julie. “Can I ask you something without you getting mad at me?”

  Julie glanced over at him, her eyes puzzled. “Sure,” she said. “Why should I get mad at you?”

  “I don’t know,” Kerry admitted. “It’s … well, it’s about your aunt.”

  “Aunt Marguerite? What about her?”

  “It’s the way she’s acting, I guess,” Kerry said, his face reddening slightly. “I mean—well, she always used to like me, but ever since I’ve been hanging around with you, it seems like she hates me. But I haven’t done anything.” Finally he looked over at her. “It just seems like she’s acting kind of weird, that’s all.”

  Julie suddenly remembered the incident yesterday on the third floor—the one that at first she’d thought was a dream. “I—I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “Sometimes she seems kind of strange to me, too, but then she seems to be just like anyone else.” Haltingly, she tried to tell Kerry what had happened the day before. “It was really weird,” she finished. “But I was so fogged out from the pills, I’m not even sure what really happened.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Kerry asked, slowing the car as they approached the causeway. “Did you talk to your dad about it?”

  “It didn’t seem like any big deal,” Julie replied, shrugging. “But I keep thinking about it, and I keep thinking about the way Aunt Marguerite acts when I’m dancing. She seems to think I should be a big star or something, and I don’t even want to be.”

  They saw a figure waving at them, and as Kerry brought the car to a halt, Jenny Mayhew ran up, panting. “I was just going out to your place,” she said, grinning at Julie. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Julie assured her. “But how come you didn’t stop in to see me after class yesterday?”

  Jenny’s grin faded and she suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Didn’t Marguerite tell you?” she asked.

  “Tell me what?”

  Jenny’s eyes dropped. “We didn’t stay for the whole class,” she said. “It was real hot, and Miss Marguerite was making us work real hard, and—well, Tammy-Jo got kind of mad, and we all went home early.” Her eyes met Julie’s once more. “That’s really why I was going out to your place,” she added. “To apologize to Marguerite.”

  “Apologize to her?” Kerry asked. “Why? If it was too hot up there, she should have sent you all home anyway.”

  Jenny shook her head. “Maybe she should. But she said we shouldn’t worry about the heat, and I guess she was right. If you want to dance, you can’t say you’re not going to do it just because it’s too hot!”

  Julie giggled. “But that’s what I just did,” she said. “She wanted me to practice my dancing, but I told her it was too hot and that I was supposed to take it easy.” She glanced at Kerry, then giggled again. “No wonder she was mad at you. Everybody left yesterday, then today you came and took me away from her too.”

  “I didn’t take you away from her,” Kerry protested. “For Christ’s sake, just because she’s your aunt doesn’t mean she owns you.”

  “Well, sometimes she acts like she owns me,” Julie replied. “She acts like she has my whole life planned out for me—”

  “Julie!” Jenny exclaimed. “That’s not true. She’s just proud of you ‘cause you dance better than any of the rest of us.”

  “But I don’t care,” Julie said, her voice taking on a note of exasperation. “Dancing’s fun, but it’s not my whole life. Sometimes Aunt Marguerite acts like it should be. In fact, that’s what Kerry and I were talking about just now.”

  Jenny frowned. “What are you talking about? You mean you’re going to quit too?”

  Julie realized she hadn’t really been thinking about that at all, but now she shrugged nonchalantly. “I might,” she said. “But so what if I do?”

  “But she counts on you,” Jenny told her. “She counts on all of us. I don’t really care about dancing either, but I love Miss Marguerite, and just having all of us around makes her so happy.”

  “Except for yesterday,” Julie reminded Jennifer. “It doesn’t sound like anyone was having a very good time.”

  Jenny’s eyes rolled scornfully. “Well, that was Tammy-Jo’s fault, not Miss Marguerite’s. For Heaven’s sake, they’d just found Mary-Beth the day before. Nobody was feeling very good. Maybe we shouldn’t have been having a lesson at all.” She stepped back from the car, but her eyes remained fixed on Julie. “And if you decide to quit going to her classes, I think you’re mean.”

  “I didn’t say I’d decided,” Julie protested. “I just said I was thinking about it, that’s all.”

  “Well, let me know when you make up your mind,” Jenny said, her eyes flashing angrily. “It’s starting to look like I’m going to be the only one left, isn’t it?”

  Before Julie could say anything else, her friend was gone, walking quickly up the road toward Sea Oaks.

  “Maybe we should go back,” Julie fretted as Kerry put the car back in gear. “I don’t want Jenny mad at me.”

  But Kerry shook his head. “She’ll be all right. Marguerite’s always been crazy about her.” He let the clutch out and started across the causeway. A few minutes later they were lying side by side on the beach bordering the channel. “Now, isn’t this better than spending the afternoon up in the ballroom?” Kerry asked.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Julie sighed. Then she sat up and stared out at the sea, a shiver running through her as she remembered what had happened two days ago. “But I’m still not going in the water. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to again.”

  Marguerite was sitting on the veranda in front of Sea Oaks, staring unseeingly out over the island. She shouldn’t have let Julie go off with Kerry Sanders like that, she thought. She should have kept her home, the way her own mother had tried to keep her home when she was Julie’s age. But she’d been like Julie, headstrong and willful, and look how she’d ended up. Her mother had tried to stop her, tried to save her, but she hadn’t listened—

  A figure was coming along the road from the causeway, and Marguerite stood up, taking a step forward. Pain shot out from her hip—the pain that had been throbbing for more than an hour now, ever since Julie had left. But now Julie was coming back.

  And she was alone!

  She moved across the veranda and down the steps to the lawn as the figure drew nearer.

  But it wasn’t Julie. It was Jennifer Mayhew.

  Marguerite’s hip sent a sharp, jabbing needle shooting down her right leg, and as she remembered what had happened in the ballroom yesterday, remembered the girls—her girls—running away from her, the fingers of her right hand began massaging her aching muscles.

  She turned away, starting back up the steps to the veranda.

  “Miss Marguerite?” Jenny called. “Miss Marguerite, wait!”

  Marguerite stopped, but stood where she was, her back still toward Jenny.

  “I—I came to apologize,” Jenny said, and the unhappiness in her voice made Marguerite turn around to look at her. Her eyes were glistening with tears. “I—well, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry I left with Tammy-Jo and Allison yesterday, and that even if Julie decides to quit, I won’t.”

  She ran forward and flung her arms around Marguerite. But Marguerite still didn’t move. “Julie?” she breathed. “What are you talking about?”

  Jenny tipped her face up. “I was just talking to her,” she said. “She was on her way to the beach with Kerry Sanders, and she said she was thinking about quitting dancing.”

  Margue
rite’s eyes glazed over, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “I’m sure you must be mistaken,” she said. “Julie won’t give up the dance. It means everything to her—everything.”

  “But she said—”

  Marguerite placed a gentle hand over Jenny’s mouth, cutting off her words. “I’ll talk to her,” she said. “When she comes home, I’ll talk to her, and I’m sure we can straighten out whatever’s wrong.” Then she smiled at Jenny. “But since you’re here, why don’t we go up to the ballroom. I can give you a lesson, just the two of us, to make up for yesterday.”

  Jenny blinked in surprise. A lesson now? But she didn’t have her leotard, or her shoes, or anything else she needed. “I—I don’t know,” she said. “I told Mom I’d be home—”

  “But you must,” Marguerite insisted. “You’ve come all this way, and I’m all alone. You mustn’t go right now.” Her voice took on a pleading note. “You mustn’t.”

  Jenny hesitated, and for the first time noticed something odd in Marguerite’s eyes. Though Marguerite was looking at her, Jenny had the strangest feeling that she wasn’t really seeing her.

  “Please,” Marguerite said. “Just for a little while.”

  There was a tone of pathos in Marguerite’s voice that twisted Jenny’s heart, and she mutely nodded.

  “Let me have your arm,” Marguerite said as she led Jenny into the cavernous stillness of the great house. “I’m afraid my hip’s a bit bad this morning.…”

  Her voice trailed off, and her right hand clutched at Jenny’s left arm, her fingers squeezing so hard Jenny winced in pain. They started up the stairs, moving slowly. At the second-floor landing Marguerite stopped to catch her breath.

  “M-Maybe you should have used the chair lift,” Jenny suggested, but Marguerite shook her head.

  “I’m not dead yet,” she said, her eyes taking on a look of almost grim determination. “And if I can’t walk, then I can’t even hope to dance, can I?” Renewing her grasp on Jenny Mayhew’s arm, she mounted the stairs toward the third floor.

  Ten minutes later Jenny knew she’d made a mistake. Ever since they’d come into the ballroom and Marguerite had put a scratchy record on the old phonograph, a growing sense of worry had begun to creep up on her.

  Marguerite’s eyes looked even stranger now, and instead of watching Jenny dance and gently correcting her when she made a mistake, Marguerite herself was dancing, moving stiffly around the room in a limping parody of a waltz, her arms held high, her head tipped back with her eyes closed, as if she were being held in the arms of an unseen partner.

  Finally, her unease growing into the beginnings of fear, she edged toward the door. Instantly Marguerite stopped dancing, and her eyes, glowing with a strange light, fixed on Jenny. “Don’t go,” she said. “You can’t go now.”

  Jenny’s heart began to race and she felt dizzy. “I—I have to,” she whispered. “I didn’t really come for a lesson today. I don’t have my shoes, or my leotard, or—”

  “But it doesn’t matter,” Marguerite said. “All that matters is that you dance.” She crossed the room, her right leg moving stiffly, her body twisting oddly with each step. “Dance with me,” she commanded, her hand grasping Jenny’s and pulling her out onto the floor. “Listen to the music, and dance.…”

  Clutching Jenny’s hand in her own, Marguerite forced herself into the first position of ballet, her unseen partner of a moment ago apparently forgotten now. “Position one!” she commanded, twisting her lame leg outward, the veins of her forehead standing out as she fought against the pain the movement caused in her malformed hip. “Turn your feet out, Marguerite! Out!”

  Jenny stared at Marguerite, stunned. What was happening? Didn’t Marguerite even know who she was?

  “Position two!” Marguerite demanded. Her arms came up, but her right leg, throbbing with pain now, refused to move.

  Jenny watched in horror as Marguerite battled against her own disfigured body. “Stop it,” she cried, her voice breaking as a sob rose up in her throat. “Please stop it, Miss Marguerite. What are you trying to do?”

  Marguerite’s hand snaked up, slashing across Jenny’s face. “Do not speak,” she hissed. “When I am teaching you, you will not speak!”

  Her voice had taken on a strangely familiar tone, but for a moment Jenny couldn’t place it. And then she remembered.

  How many times had she heard that voice echoing through this house, calling out, demanding, commanding? But it wasn’t Marguerite’s voice at all.

  It was her mother’s voice—Miss Helena’s voice—calling out to Marguerite, demanding her presence, commanding her every action. But now Miss Helena’s voice was coming out of Marguerite’s own throat.

  “No,” Jenny whimpered. “Oh, no …” She started toward the door. “I—I have to go,” she whispered. “I’m sorry …”

  “No!” Marguerite screamed. “You can’t go. Not now! You can’t leave me! I forbid it!”

  Her tears flowing now, Jenny fled from the ballroom, lurching toward the head of the stairs. And then, just as she got there, she heard Helena Devereaux’s voice once more, crackling out of Marguerite’s throat. “You won’t leave! I will not permit it!”

  At the same instant that the words slashed at her ears, she felt two hands against her back and a great weight, pushing her forward.

  She teetered for a moment, tried to grab for the banister, but missed.

  Then she was tumbling, plunging head first down the steep staircase.

  She hit the bottom, but the sound she heard—the last sound she would ever hear—was not that of her head striking the wooden floor of the landing.

  Instead, it was the sharp crack of her own neck breaking.

  CHAPTER 19

  “But I’m tellin’ you, Dad, that’s what she said. Isn’t it, Toby?” Jeff looked expectantly at his friend, as if Toby’s corroboration would convince his father. The three of them were sitting in the back booth at the drugstore. An uneaten hamburger sat limply in front of Jeff. “How come you won’t believe me?”

  Kevin shook his head tiredly. He’d already explained to Jeff three times that Emmaline Carr’s story was just too strange to be believed. Marguerite locked up in a hidden room in the basement? It was ludicrous! But what wasn’t ludicrous was the fear in Jeff’s eyes. “Look,” he said at last. “How’s this? We’ll all go out to the house, and I’ll ask your aunt about it.”

  Jeff’s jaw set stubbornly. “Toby won’t go out to our house anymore,” he announced. “He’s too scared of Aunt Marguerite. And I’m scared of her too.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Kevin insisted. “Your aunt loves you. She wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world.”

  “Yes, she would,” Jeff argued, his eyes stormy. “She’s only nice to me when you’re around. If I’m all by myself with her, she acts like she hates me.”

  Kevin took a deep breath, knowing that once Jeff had made up his mind, he wasn’t about to change it. “Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll tell you what—you go home with Toby for a while, and I’ll go out to the island by myself. I’ll have a talk with your aunt and see if I can find out where Ruby really is.”

  “Will you come and get me later on?” Jeff asked uncertainly.

  Kevin shook his head. “You managed to walk all the way out to Emmaline’s house. You can manage to walk back home.” He slid out of the booth and dropped twenty dollars on the table. “You guys can pay the bill out of that, and there’s enough left over for a movie. Okay?” The two boys, their eyes fastened on the ten dollar bill, bobbed their heads mutely. “And be home by supper time,” Kevin admonished his son. “By then I’ll have this all straightened out.”

  He strode out of the drugstore into the dusty heat of the afternoon. The clouds from the southeast were drifting over the village now, and the temperature seemed to have dropped a degree or two, but Kevin’s shirt still clung damply to his body as he climbed into his sister’s Chevy and started the engine.

  It’s the
heat, he decided as he crossed the causeway toward the island. The heat gets to people after a while, and they start imagining things. But a story about Marguerite being locked up down in the basement of Sea Oaks? Alone in the car, he shook his head.

  He found Marguerite sitting on the veranda, sipping a glass of lemonade. She smiled as he came up the steps, and when she rose to her feet, her limp was almost imperceptible.

  “Still getting better?” Kevin asked, and Marguerite nodded, her smile broadening.

  “I don’t know what it is.” She glanced up at the sky, then shrugged. “Usually it gets so much worse when a storm’s coming. But today it seems just fine. I suppose I should count my blessings, shouldn’t I?”

  Kevin’s brows arched. “I wish more people in this town would do that,” he observed. “Instead of making up stories about other people.”

  Marguerite’s smile faltered. “Making up stories? What sort of stories?”

  Kevin hesitated, wondering how to begin. “Well, Emmaline Carr, for one. It seems Jeff and Toby went out to see her today.”

  “E-Emmaline?” Marguerite said, with the trace of a stammer. “Why would they want to go out and see Emmaline? Everyone knows she’s strange in the head. Living in that shack, with no water or electricity …” Her voice trailed off and her head bobbed sympathetically. “Sometimes I feel so sorry for her,” she went on. “Except for Ruby, she doesn’t have anyone else in the world.”

  Kevin frowned. “But then Ruby doesn’t have anyone but Emmaline, does she?” he asked.

  Marguerite blinked. “I—why, I don’t know.…” Then her voice took on a note of impatience. “Kevin, what are you trying to get at? Did Emmaline say something to Jeff?”

  “I’m afraid she did,” Kevin replied. Slowly he repeated the story Jeff had told him a few minutes ago. As he spoke, the last traces of Marguerite’s smile disappeared and her eyes began to blaze with indignation.