Darkling

by R. B. Chesterton

  I washed my hands and then glanced at my face in the mirror. Blood from her throat had bubbled onto my face. I washed it all away, trying hard not to think about what had happened.

  56

  The lawmen and crime-scene people worked around me, an object of their curiosity. If I returned their looks, they got very busy. They knew my grandmother had been murdered and that I’d found her in the last moments of her life. They didn’t know what to say to me, other than the “sorry for your loss” line that they were trained to repeat with varying degrees of sincerity.

  To my surprise, Jimmy Finch stayed at my side like a pit bull. He growled if anyone tried to ask me a question, though he had plenty of his own. He kept jotting things into his pocket notebook. And he kept insisting that I leave Cora’s house. Her blood was drying into the boards of the porch, and he refused to leave me by myself, though he was restless, pacing the floral-printed rug in the front room.

  The crime-scene techs packed up their gear. They’d found the knife I threw in the yard, and I’d explained that I found it in her lap and had slung it away without thinking.

  They’d also told me to come to the sheriff’s office to have my fingerprints taken and answer some questions. The sheriff, in a moment of compassion, told me to wait until the afternoon.

  “Mimi, let me take you to the Hendersons,” Finch said for the twentieth time. “Staying here won’t bring Cora back.”

  “No,” I told him. “I won’t go back to Belle Fleur. I can’t go there. I have things to do here.”

  “When you were talking with your grandmother, she saw someone in the yard. You have to tell the sheriff what Cora saw.” Finch stood over me as I sat in Cora’s wing chair in her front room.

  I knew what I had to do. Involving the sheriff wasn’t in my game plan. “I’ll talk to the sheriff later today.”

  “Mimi, you don’t have a choice in this. Tell him you were talking to Cora and she saw someone in her yard, someone she recognized.”

  “She didn’t tell me who it was.” I wasn’t about to say it was Erin, only not really Erin but a creature that had taken Erin’s features. I changed the subject. “Bob has to make funeral arrangements for Berta. I need to do the same for Cora. I wonder if Bob will let me bury her in the cemetery at Belle Fleur. She loved that place as much as any Desmarais or Henderson.”

  Finch sat down opposite me. “You’re in shock, Mimi. This is a terrible thing. Someone should watch out for you.”

  “There’s no one who fits that job description.” I didn’t mean to sound pitiful. “Look, I’m not going to do anything silly. I just want some time alone.” I pressed my knees together until my thighs ached. I wanted to jump and scream, to run and curse, to slug someone. Instead, I sat primly, giving the illusion of total control.

  “Oh, I think you’re a long way from being okay. I just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Let me have some time.” I looked out the window. They had taken Cora away in an ambulance, but the light was not flashing and there was no siren, because there was no hurry. The nester had come out of the woods and killed her in the time it took me to drive from Pascagoula to her home.

  “You can’t sit here. Alone.” Finch paced again. Stillness made him anxious. I eyed him with some annoyance. If he would only leave, I could take action. Until he drove away, I had to present a calm exterior, a young woman operating in a reasonable way, grieving but not emotionally frenzied.

  “I’ll go back to Belle Fleur later tonight. That’s where most of my things are, and Bob will need help with the children. Right now, I want some time to think. I want to think about Cora here, in this house, happy and laughing with me. I want to remember the times we shared together.”

  He squatted down so we were on eye level. “What are you up to, Mimi?”

  “I’m going to kill Annie.” I said it without emotion.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” He didn’t smile. “We have no proof she did this. No one was here when you got here. It could have been a burglar.”

  I stared into his eyes. “I know I can’t kill Annie. I want to, but I can’t. I’m going to do what’s necessary to bury my grandmother and find evidence to use against Annie.”

  He sighed. “It unnerves me that you aren’t crying.”

  “Because I’m a woman?” I almost laughed.

  “Because you’re not much more than a kid, even though you think you’re grown.” He patted his pocket for a cigarette. When he had the pack, he shook one out for me. “Women cry, but you’re hard as flint.”

  “I’ve lost everyone who ever loved me. If I start crying, I won’t stop. So I can’t. There are things that must be done, and I have to be alone to do them. Please, just go.” I accepted the light he offered. “I’m not going to have a breakdown. I’m not going to do anything rash.”

  “I know you aren’t telling me the truth about who Cora saw. It was Annie, wasn’t it? I can’t let this go, Mimi. I’m going to make certain the guilty party pays for this.”

  I wanted to tell him that wouldn’t be necessary, but if I did that, he would become suspicious. “Annie will pay. Why don’t you go up to Belle Fleur and talk to Bob? See if you can find out where Annie was this morning without upsetting Bob and the children.” I drew on the cigarette. “What Cora said she saw—it was Annie. In the edge of the woods. She did this, Mr. Finch. This time I’m going to prove it.”

  He stood up. “I’ll drop by Belle Fleur to pay my respects and see if I can talk to Annie alone. I’ll get more out of her than Bob. They’re going to want to know about Cora. What should I tell them?”

  I thought about it. “Tell them the police think it was someone trying to rob her.”

  “And you’re certain it wasn’t?”

  Finch’s doubt infuriated me, but I didn’t show it. “I told you what Cora said. That’s all I have to go on. But tell them we think it was a robber. Until the sheriff finds real evidence of Annie’s work, we should leave it at that.”

  Finch finally went to the door. He turned back and watched me for a long moment, but I kept my gaze fixed on the front window, which gave a view of the woods. I smoked the cigarette, ignoring the ash that fell to the floor.

  In my mind, I could see exactly what Cora had seen. The nester had stood right at the edge of the woods beside a magnolia that had weathered innumerable storms. The creature was close enough that it could probably hear Cora’s conversation with me. Superior in strength and speed to an old woman, it had felt no need to rush or hurry. It had slipped into the house while she wasn’t looking, selected a butcher knife from the kitchen, and then tricked her onto the front porch. Without a qualm, it had sliced her throat and pushed her into a rocker and left her to bleed out.

  I took another puff of the cigarette, aware that Finch was watching me. At last he left. He went slowly down the driveway, and I could see he was searching the woods from some sign that Annie had been there as I insisted. The only sign he would find would be the claw marks. Like everyone else, he would think they belonged to a dog or wild creature. They were half right. But it was the half-wrong part that had cost Andrew, Margo, Berta, and finally Cora their lives.

  Cora had wanted to tell me something. Something other than the fact that Annie was my sister, which I didn’t believe. It was impossible. It couldn’t be true. Why she would make up such a thing didn’t make sense to me.

  I got up and went to the bathroom where Cora’s blood still stained the washcloth and hand towel I’d used. The mirror gave me back my reflection. We were not related. Cora had made one last effort to bond us with a lie. But why did she care so much? My reflection gave me no answers, so I decided to investigate the house. The sheriff hadn’t bothered to look through Cora’s personal things. He’d assumed it was a burglary gone wrong, and I’d told him nothing of value appeared to be missing. Perhaps there was something I hadn’t discovered yet. Something Annie wanted.

  I’d lived in Cora’s house most of my life, but I’d never been
one to paw through the belongings of others. Now, though, I had to search before the sheriff realized Cora’s murder was not some random burglar and came back to look for reasons.

  Cora’s room held a vague scent of Evening in Paris, her favorite bath powder. I found it on her dresser and held it close to my face, drawing in her scent. Her dresser top contained a jewelry box, which I had investigated in the past. Nothing new was inside. The pearl necklace—that had come from Annie. The nester had put it around Cora’s throat as she was dying. I was positive of it. I was about to put the jewelry case back when I realized there was another drawer, a flat enclosure for documents or letters. A flimsy lock held it shut. I got a dinner knife from the kitchen and pried it open.

  A half dozen old photographs dropped onto my lap.

  The first one showed Belle Fleur, sparkling new in the sunlight. Men and women dressed in gardening clothes stood lined along the front porch. On the steps were Henri, Sigourney, and Chloe. It was a photo of Belle Fleur and the garden staff Henri hired for the fledgling perfume business.

  I studied the men and women, who seemed happy and proud. This must have been in the beginning, because Chloe was very young and the plants around the house were small. But why would Cora have this photograph of the gardening staff? Why had she never shown it to me?

  The next photograph was of Chloe, blooming with joy and caught sitting on the front steps. Her pose almost concealed her pregnancy. Almost. I flipped to the next photo and stopped. Sigourney, her hair perfectly coiled, stared back at me. A pearl necklace adorned her throat.

  The next photo was of a young woman I didn’t know, but it was of a similar time period. She wore the pearl necklace and she held an infant in her arms. Her smile was serene, and the baby was fat and happy, but I had no idea who these people were. I flipped it over and found the name Anna Nyman written in pencil. Anna was Cora’s grandmother, my great-great-grandmother. The baby’s name was Delphine.

  It was the final photo that stopped me. Sigourney wore the necklace, but this time I recognized her. It was the same photo I’d found in Annie’s room. Either Annie had left the photo here in Cora’s jewelry box, or she and Cora had a copy of the same photograph, circa 1860.

  It was impossible, but there it was.

  57

  I found nothing else of interest in Cora’s room. I remembered the book and went outside to retrieve it. The deputies had examined it but found nothing of interest. There had to be something, though. Cora had said there was more to tell me. More lies? More distortions of the truth? Perhaps the book she’d died with in her hand could tell me something new. If Annie was my sister—and I didn’t believe that for a moment—was there anything about my life that was real and true?

  At the edge of the porch, I picked up the book and went back inside. I knew the volume I held. It was a collection of fairy tales and poems. Cora had sometimes read to me at night when she put me to bed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t read on my own, but I loved the sound of her voice as I drifted off to sleep. I loved the fairy tales from around the world, “Wasilla, the Beautiful,” or “Little One Eye,” or “The Two Sisters.” There were poems, too. I flipped through the book and stopped at “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley. It was the poem Annie had recited to the Henderson children when she first arrived.

  I read the words and felt the chill of fear march along my skin. Goblins. Nesters. Most people would think that such creatures populated only the imagination of poets and writers, but I knew better.

  At the bottom of the poem, Cora had written something. It wasn’t her normal, clear script. “Secretary.” Just one word.

  In the front room was a small desk, an antique that Cora was exceptionally proud of. Cora had called it a lady’s secretary, a place where the woman of the house could sit to write out notes and pay bills, a small, feminine piece in contrast to a man’s desk. I went to it and opened the main drawer. An envelope with my name on it was on the top of a stack of papers.

  From the kitchen, I selected a knife. I went out to the front porch and sat on the steps where the light was strong, a reminder that the sun did shine, even in Coden. The note was dated only a few weeks earlier, November 17. A premonition must have prompted Cora to put her story in writing. Or more likely, the string of tragedies that had befallen the Hendersons reminded Cora of her own mortality.

  Mimi,

  “I’ve kept many secrets from you, waiting for the time I thought you could handle the truth about your past.

  I could almost hear her voice as I read.

  When your home burned and your parents were killed, you and your baby sister, Annie, survived. The trauma was so severe, I took you into my home because I didn’t trust anyone else to care for you. I’ve known your family for years. You are not my grandchild, but we share a bond much closer than blood.

  Something moved just out of sight in the woods. The wind fluttered the pages in my hand and I pulled my coat tighter around me. I couldn’t see anything, but I hoped it was the creature. I wanted it to come to me, to try to savage me. My free hand found the knife handle. It gave me a good bit of comfort as I returned to my reading.

  I wanted to tell you about your family in person. I know how difficult this will be for you to accept, how betrayed you’re going to feel. I thought each day that I had to tell you the truth, Mimi. But the time was never right. You seemed to forget about the fire, about the horror of how your parents died. When you first came to me, you woke up every night with terrible nightmares. After a few weeks, the nightmares stopped and you forgot. I couldn’t bring myself to remind you, to take you back to the horrible event. Not even for your own good. I was weak, and now you’ll learn the truth in the most brutal way.

  I knew your parents well. In fact, I helped raise your mother, Amanda Bosarge. She was a good person, kind and gentle. Your father, James, was a talented man, a painter. Amanda got pregnant with you, and she married James and left Coden. Back then, girls who got pregnant out of wedlock were scorned. I helped them find a house in Fort Bayou Bluff, just across the state line in Jackson County, Mississippi. They rented a little cottage, and they were very happy. You were born and you were the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. I couldn’t look at you without thinking of Chloe Desmarais.

  The name stopped me cold. Cora’s obsession with Belle Fleur went back to my birth. But why?

  Your family was secure and happy. James began to sell his work, and he built a studio in the garage beside the house. The years passed. Amanda got pregnant again, and Annie was born. You were almost ready to start school, and your parents thought you were a genius. You painted and drew the most fantastic pictures. Some of them were very dark, scary even. But you were a child who loved a ghost story more than anything else. I should know, I told you plenty.

  For the first five years of your life, Mimi, you enjoyed a perfect life. After Annie was born, things changed. Most children resent a new sibling, but with Annie, it went much deeper than that. Your mother was afraid you would hurt the new baby. You were extremely jealous. You drew pictures that showed Annie dead. No one could understand why, but from the moment Amanda brought her home from the hospital, you hated her. You said she was evil. Your words. “Annie is evil. She wants to hurt Mama.”

  We found a psychologist, but before you could make the first appointment with him, the house caught fire and Amanda and James died. The last thing they did was put Annie out a window to the ground. She made it to safety in the woods behind the house. You were found standing in the front yard in your nightgown, staring at the flames. You were in a deep, walking coma, and for months no one knew if you’d recover. You were seven. Annie, who was two, seemed less traumatized. Amanda had no family in the area, and James was from Buffalo, New York. None of his people even came for the funerals. So I took you and Annie. My intention was to raise you both as my granddaughters. But every time you saw Annie, you became hysterical, and Annie refused to speak. Child welfare wanted to put you into a mental institution.
But you were docile as long as Annie was not near you. It broke my heart, but I made a choice. I kept you with me, and Annie was put into a shelter home in Jackson and adopted by a family in Natchez from there.

  I never told you the truth, because I couldn’t hurt you. You’d lost so much, even your sister. But you never seemed to remember anything about the past. You accepted me as your grandmother and never asked a single question. I told you your parents had died in a fire, and that was true. But I never told you the truth.

  This part is very hard, Mimi. The fire chief believed you were in the garage, perhaps playing with matches. You were a child who investigated and explored. James smoked. Back then a lot of people did. His cigarettes and Zippo lighter were in the garage. The fire chief theorized that you knocked over paint thinner and accidentally set it on fire. The fact that you were outside the garage on the front lawn seemed to support that theory. No formal report was made—at my request. We both believed it would do no good to put that in the record of a child with emotional problems.

  My hand shook so hard, I had to stop reading. Cora believed I had set the fire that killed my parents. Though I didn’t remember James and Amanda—had no memory of anything Cora wrote about—I knew I hadn’t killed anyone. It was Annie. If I had hated her, even then, it was for cause. She was only a toddler at the time of the fire, but she was cunning. She learned things by osmosis, and I could see her in the converted garage, eyeing the Zippo, wanting the blue flame that leaped when the wheel was struck. If the fire was set deliberately, then it was by her hand, not mine. Yet once again, I received the blame for her actions.

  I could not remember the events Cora wrote about, yet I sensed the truth of her words. And it made sense that for me, the hatred of Annie went back much longer than our time at Belle Fleur.

  I had to finish the things Cora had written. I was almost to the end. I had to know.

  From that point, I kept up with Annie. I checked with her foster parents, and I waited for the opportunity to bring her home to Coden, to reunite her with you, her sister. I waited and planned for that day. When the Hendersons bought Belle Fleur, that was the perfect opportunity. I could bring you both home. Home to me, and home to the place that is your birthright. Belle Fleur.