Darkling

by R. B. Chesterton

  “Shut up and listen to the poem,” Erin said. “Don’t interrupt.”

  Annie’s intimate tone continued,

  “An’ all us other children, when the supper-things is done,

  we set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun.

  A-listnin’ to the witch-tales that Annie tells about,

  and the Goblins will git you—If you don’t watch out!”

  Donald and Erin squealed with pleasure. Like most children, they enjoyed a good ghost story, and this was one I recognized. While James Whitcomb Riley’s poem was scary, it wouldn’t leave Donald with nightmares.

  “Wunst there wuz a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers,

  an’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,

  his Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl …”

  Dramatic pause.

  “An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wuzn’t there at all!”

  I almost laughed as I imagined Donald’s face. Now that the focus was on a little boy disappearing, he wouldn’t be all that bold.

  “An’ they seeked him up the chimbly-flue,

  an’ ever’-wheres, I guess.

  But all they ever found wuz just his pants an’ roundabout.”

  Another pause.

  “An’ the Goblins’ll git you, if you don’t watch out!”

  Chill bumps marched along my arms. I stepped through the swinging door that led to the kitchen and both Donald and Erin squealed with fright. “Something wrong?” I asked with a grin.

  “You scared us!” Erin was delighted.

  “I’m really going to scare you if you don’t get your homework done,” I said, tapping her book. “You have a lot of reading to do.”

  “Why are they in school during the summer?” Annie asked. “Aren’t most children out?”

  “Because we’re homeschooled, we can learn all year,” Donald answered for me. “We don’t want Mimi to leave, and if she wasn’t teaching us, she wouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s right.” Erin leaned her head into my hip. I brushed my hand down her sleek blond hair. How was it possible that the entire family looked like some commercial for Sun-In?

  “I love learning,” Annie said. “Especially literature.”

  “Sounds to me like you have a pretty good memory. You were reciting, not reading.”

  She shrugged. “I love narrative poetry. That short poem tells a complete story.” She hesitated. “I love to tell stories. Sometimes I imagine what I tell comes true.” Something flickered across her face that stung me like a bee.

  “Then you must only tell good things,” I said. “We don’t want any goblins running around Belle Fleur.”

  “I’m afraid they’re already here,” she said, swinging her gaze out the window. “I’d be careful outside in the dark. All of you. There’s no telling what lurks on the grounds of Belle Fleur.”

  Erin squealed and Donald crowded up against my side. “You shouldn’t frighten the children, Annie.” She’d creeped me out, too, but I wasn’t going to show it.

  “I disagree, Mimi. Sometimes fear is the only thing that keeps you alive. There are goblins. You know that as well as I do.”

  “What goblins?” Donald asked.

  “Look what you’ve done.” I didn’t bother to hide my anger. “Belle Fleur is isolated enough. If you make the children believe in some foolishness about goblins, they’ll be prisoners in the house.” I held Donald close. “There aren’t any goblins. Annie is pulling your leg.”

  “Maybe not goblins.” Annie put the dishcloth in the sink. “Maybe something worse than goblins.”

  I was mad enough to punch her. “That’s enough, Annie. I’m sure Berta will want to have a word with you—after I speak with her.”

  “It was a joke.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and pushed open the back door. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. I’m going for a walk. See, I’m not afraid.”

  “But you already went for a walk.” Donald’s puzzled face revealed his incomprehension that anyone would walk in the dark for no good reason, especially after talking about goblins.

  “Maybe she’s smoking a cigarette,” Erin said, which told me that Margo was experimenting with tobacco—or worse. That Andrew Cargill, no telling what he’d gotten Margo into.

  “Nothing as wicked as a cigarette,” Annie said. “I won’t be long.”

  And then she was gone. I settled at the table and helped Donald outline a book report for The Case of the Missing Chums, a Hardy Boys mystery. Erin worked on percentages. The old clock above the stove ticked away the minutes. The house was too quiet.

  “Where’s Margo?” I asked. She sometimes did her studies in her room.

  “Upstairs. She’s mad.” Erin tapped her pencil against the page. “She went into Annie’s room and threw some of her clothes out the window. Mother caught her, and she’s grounded for the rest of the year, I think. Daddy had a talk with her about Andrew Cargill. She started crying. She said she was going to do what she wanted to do and no one was going to stop her. She told me to get out of the room. She said she’d make everyone sorry for the way we’d treated her.”

  I closed Donald’s book. “Let’s call it a day and get some sleep. We’ll finish the book report tomorrow.”

  “When will Annie return?”

  “I don’t know and right now, I don’t care,” I answered as I prodded him up the stairs in front of me. Erin followed behind.

  “Maybe a goblin will get her,” Erin said, and there was a hint of dark spite in her voice. I didn’t blame her. Annie had deliberately frightened them and then left.

  “Maybe,” I told her. “One thing for sure, we won’t be awake waiting to find out. If there are goblins out there, Annie can handle them.”

  We’d made it to the second floor landing, where the beautiful stained-glass window was muted by the darkness outside. Donald stopped and grabbed my arm. “What was that?”

  “What?” I’d barely gotten the word out when I heard something on the third floor. It sounded like a dog’s nails clicking on the hardwood.

  “Did you hear it?” Donald was truly frightened.

  “I did.” Erin took my other hand. “Let’s get Daddy.”

  The sound came again, and I imagined something running the length of the hallway beside the rug. Click, click, click—it moved down the hall. “I’ll check it out.”

  “No!” Donald held firm. “What if it’s a goblin?”

  That was enough to force my hand. Now I had to investigate or the children would be terrified. When Annie returned, I would have a discussion with her, for sure. “It’s not a goblin. More likely it’s Annie trying to scare us. She probably sneaked up the servants’ staircase to get ahead of us.”

  Together, the three of us crept up the stairs to the third floor. The minute we got to the top step, the noise stopped. I found the light switch and light flooded the hallway. The empty hallway.

  “What was it?” Erin asked.

  “I don’t know.” What I didn’t tell the children was that I saw strange claw marks—as if little sharpened dog paws had made them—beside the hall runner. The marks stopped at Annie’s door.

  “Will you tuck me in bed?” Donald asked.

  “Absolutely.” We headed back to the second floor, but I deliberately left the lights on. I didn’t know what tricks Annie had gotten up to on the third floor, but I intended to ask her about them.

  12

  Around me the house was unnaturally silent. The children were upstairs in bed. Donald had finally fallen asleep after I read to him for half an hour. Erin was in the room she shared with Margo. I remained downstairs in the kitchen, unable to relax enough to sleep.

  Annie had washed up the dishes, but I picked up a cloth to dry them and put them away. Bob had offered Berta a dishwasher, but she felt it was good for the children to have chores. The dishes were part of a master plan of instruction and responsibility.

  Once the drainboard was empty, I
took a seat at the table. The kitchen settled into a ticking silence, the clock my only companion. There was a TV in the family room, but it was seldom turned on, a fact I greatly admired. Margo was the only child who complained about the restricted TV hours. She had girlfriends who were deeply invested in Happy Days and The Six Million Dollar Man. Not watching made her feel excluded from her peers. It didn’t bother the other two children. Erin rode and Donald tramped the woods near the house.

  Unable to sit still, I went to the cupboard and began pulling out the dishes. I intended to organize them. Berta’s everyday dishes contained a border of colorful roosters on a white background and a cornucopia in the center of the plate. I loved the pattern and weight of each dish. When I had my own house and my family, I would have dishes like these. So many things at Belle Fleur perfectly reflected my taste.

  As I worked, I hummed “Take Me Home Country Roads,” thinking about the history of Belle Fleur. Cora’s hints at a darker past were more annoying than troublesome. The house felt like home to me. Berta didn’t ask me to do many of the chores I did; I enjoyed putting things to right. I could pretend it was my house—I was as beautiful as Berta with a family that loved me.

  I held a plate in one hand and a wet cloth in the other. When I went to the sink to rinse the cloth in hot water, I glanced out the window. Movement in the yard caught my attention. My first thought was deer. It was unusual to see one—the rednecks had hunted them to near extinction. But something large moved just on the edge of the woods, where the open lawn began but behind the first fringe of undergrowth.

  My reflection gazed back at me, a pale shadow of an image cast in the clean glass of the kitchen window. Beyond me, movement. Whatever it was crouched and ran. Furtive. I froze, knowing I was highlighted in the kitchen window and whatever was out there could see me far better than I could see it.

  For a split second it stepped out of the underbrush, almost as if it meant to be seen. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was look. Dark hair blowing in the breeze from the bay, she faced me. She lifted a hand and pointed. Right at me. And it seemed she smiled, but I couldn’t be certain. Hair obscured her face.

  Behind me the front door slammed with such force that I screamed. The plate went flying from my hand and crashed on the split-brick floor of the kitchen. I yelped with fear and surprise. Footsteps ran toward me and Bob appeared in the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong, Mimi?”

  “There’s someone in the yard.”

  “Who?” Bob went to the window and looked out. I knew the yard would be empty. “Who did you see?” Bob pressed. “Was it that Cargill boy?”

  “A girl.” I tried to organize my thoughts and words.

  “A girl?” Bob retrieved a flashlight. “Who was she?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Probably one of Margo’s freaky friends,” Erin said. She’d come down the stairs and stood in the kitchen doorway. Berta and Donald joined her. Annie, too, had come back in the house and was gathered with us.

  Bob opened the window and played the high beam of the flashlight across the lawn. Nothing. Not a trace. The woods that surrounded the yard seemed to absorb the light.

  “I don’t see anyone.”

  My heart ached, literally, from the jolt of pure adrenalin. I’d seen what I’d seen, but convincing the Hendersons would require evidence. I bent to clean up the broken plate. “I’m sorry, Berta.”

  “They’re everyday dishes,” she said easily. “Let me help.” She got the broom and a dustpan. “I heard the front door slam. Was someone outside?”

  “That was me,” Annie said. “The wind blew it out of my hand. I’m sorry.”

  “Where’s Margo?” Berta asked, suddenly realizing her eldest wasn’t caught up in the excitement.

  Without a word she handed the broom to Erin and started up the stairs. In a moment I heard an explosive, “Damn!”

  I knew then Margo was gone. She’d slipped the leash that Berta had been trying to train her to accept. Which might have explained the girl in the yard, had she been a tall blonde.

  “Was it Margo?” Bob asked. “Is she out there in the woods?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t tell him who had been in the woods, but it wasn’t Margo. Likely one of her friends she’d made arrangements with to pick her up. Margo was headed for a world of trouble.

  13

  By morning Berta was frantic with worry. The eldest Henderson child had not come home. As I anticipated, Margo’s behavior made Berta more determined to bring her daughter into line. Worry bred anger. Bob, too, was exasperated. While I suspected he’d taken up for Margo with her desire to see Andrew Cargill—in a very restricted way—now he could do nothing but back Berta’s play. Margo was well and truly screwed, and when she came home, she would spend the rest of her summer on restriction.

  I cooked breakfast for Erin and Donald, and we set out for town. I’d set up an interview with Si Bailey, as Cora had suggested, and Bob and Berta needed some privacy to determine how to handle Margo’s disappearing act. Berta was nearly sick with anxiety that something had happened to her child. Bob was merely angry. They had discussed calling the sheriff to report her gone, but Bob was reluctant to involve the law when he felt Margo would return on her own, and there was no indication she’d left unwillingly.

  Erin, Donald, and I piled in the station wagon. In the past, Margo would have driven. Berta and Bob had planned on giving her a car for her seventeenth birthday, but that was out the window now. Margo would be a passenger, or walking—Berta would never trust her with her own vehicle.

  Annie had opted to stay at Belle Fleur and wait with Berta. It was a job I didn’t envy her. The slow sweep of the minute hand around the clock face was not for me. I was relieved to be out of the house and headed to dig around the history of Coden.

  Si Bailey had agreed to let the children tape-record him as they asked questions about the Paradise Inn. I drove along Shore Road, hoping to see Margo headed home. She’d left on foot, which meant nothing. She was sixteen and some of her girlfriends had access to a vehicle. The most likely sequence of events involved her making arrangements for a friend to pick her up after she’d sneaked out of the house. If not a girlfriend, then Andrew Cargill. She would ride high on the feeling that she’d put one over on Bob and Berta—until she started to realize she had to go home. Then her actions would take on new shadings and fear would replace arrogance. Every child has moments of rebellion, and every child pays the price. Margo would be lucky to get out of her bedroom by the time she was nineteen.

  As familiar landmarks passed by the car window, my concern multiplied. Defying one’s parents and showing independence was one thing. Worrying them to the point they were frantic was nothing more than stupidity.

  We passed no one on the road. The shore was beautiful and isolated, except for the gulls and a nutria that ran in front of the tires, making me swerve dangerously. The damn thing stopped and tried to stare me down, the orange buckteeth glowing against the gray road. Nasty creature. It was nothing more than a giant rat. Still, I didn’t want to smash it. I didn’t like to harm any living thing.

  I even drove through town, hoping to see Andrew Cargill’s vehicle at the Esso station where he pumped gas and worked as a mechanic. The black mustang was nowhere to be seen. Had Margo and Andrew run across the state line to Lucedale, Mississippi, to get married? Surely they weren’t that foolish. Then again, Margo had an iron will. And she was spoiled. It never occurred to her that she could do something her daddy couldn’t fix for her.

  Marriage might be her first reality check.

  After driving around Beauchamps—with no sign of Margo—we went to Si’s house, an old Creole shotgun shaded by three majestic live oaks. The marsh grass whispered as we got out of the car into the oven of August heat. The door and windows of the house were opened wide for any trace of a breeze. Si seated us at the kitchen table and I listened with interest to the questions Erin and Donald as
ked.

  “Did movie stars really come to the Paradise?” Erin was smitten by the idea of famous people in her back yard.

  “They did, girl. And plenty of them. Gangsters, too. Back before the hurricane took out the Rolston, it was a hotbed of political intrigue and such. Then the Paradise came along and things cranked up again. Liquor and gunrunners, celebrities and public officials. They had a live band every Saturday night and the local folks turned out. I worked as a valet parking those fancy cars. Sometimes I slipped inside and had me a dance or two with a few of the pretty gals.”

  “With Cora?” I asked. I took his measure as he talked. He was in his seventies, still straight and tall. Trim. His face was freshly shaved, and his clothes pressed, though he’d been a widower for twenty years. After his wife Greta died, he’d never remarried. His words piqued my interest.

  “Your granny was one beauty,” Si said. “Like you, with her dark hair and fair skin. Those eyes with golden flecks. You could be a movie star yourself, Miss Mimi.”

  Erin giggled at my compliment. “Mimi is pretty. She could have any man around. That’s what Mama says.” She pushed the tape recorder closer to Si. “Tell us about the movie stars and big bands.”

  Si led us into a glamorous past where elegance ruled and Coden played host to the rich and famous. The minutes ticked by as he recounted the world of his youth.

  “That’s enough stories about the way things used to be.” Si shifted in his chair.

  “Do you know any stories about a young actress named Madeline?” Donald asked.

  “Not off hand.” Si checked his watch. “We should call it a day, I think.”

  “Are there any stories about Belle Fleur?” Erin asked.

  Si hesitated for the first time since we’d arrived. “Oh, there are some old tales. I wouldn’t put any stock in them. Cora told me you were interested in the old hotel, not Belle Fleur.”

  “The children are naturally curious about their home. We’ve had a little difficulty finding any written facts, so we’d like to hear your stories.”