“Are you going to charge her with the private detective’s death?”
Bob did care what happened to me. He did. I closed my eyes for just a second and savored the relief.
“I can’t say. The story she tells, it was accidental. She found her granny dying and came here. Finch came in on her unannounced. She reacted by emptying nine rounds at him. Three hit.”
“Once the children are on a plane, I’ll come and talk with Mimi. But we have to find Annie. She’s out there … somewhere.”
Good luck with that, I thought. She would be found when and if she desired.
Deputy Grange took my arm and lifted me to my feet. I’d never noticed he was beside me. I still held the manila envelope Finch had carried with the discovery of Annie’s past. I didn’t want anyone to ever know she was my sister.
Grange opened the back of a patrol car and assisted me inside, closing the door that had no handle. A screen separated the front from the back, which was nothing more than a prison. Ironic that I’d ended up as Chloe had, a prisoner on the grounds of Belle Fleur.
“Bob!” I slapped my palm against the window that wouldn’t roll down. “Bob.” I couldn’t leave without telling him goodbye. I had to warn him.
The sheriff gave a nod and Bob opened the back door so we could speak.
“Take care of the children,” I told him. “Don’t leave them alone in the house. Whatever you do, don’t find Annie.”
His hand touched my forehead. “You’re burning up with fever, Mimi. You’re sick.”
“Promise me! Promise me you’ll leave Belle Fleur tonight. Promise me! And don’t hunt for Annie. Let her go.”
“Everything will be okay.” He bent and kissed my forehead, a gentle fatherly kiss, and I knew I would never see him again.
The sheriff got behind the wheel, and the deputy in the passenger seat. They turned the car around and started down the drive.
I looked out the back window, watching Belle Fleur recede. The yellow paint looked sickly, the shutters bracketing dark, empty windows. Belle Fleur had returned to the empty mausoleum she had been before the Hendersons bought her.
I glanced up at the second floor. Donald and Erin stood in the window of her old room, the one she’d shared with Margo. She had her arm around her brother, and I thought for a moment what a luxury it would be to have a sibling who loved me, who cared what happened to me. Perhaps they would recover from this on some sunny stretch of California shore.
My gaze wandered to the third floor, and I uttered a cry of terror.
“What?” the sheriff demanded.
I didn’t answer. My entire focus on was the third floor window. Annie’s window. The nester was there. It wore Donald’s favorite red jacket. It stood in the window, a Zippo lighter in hand. It flicked open the top and spun the striker wheel that ignited a spark. Blue flames leapt. When the creature smiled, its sharpened teeth dripped with saliva.
“Mimi! What’s wrong?” The sheriff stopped the car and got out. He opened the back door and grabbed me because I was clawing at the back window. I had to get out, to get back to the house, to save the children.
“Mimi!” He grabbed me and got into the back seat with me, his big strong arms restraining me as I fought to escape. “Drive!” he ordered the deputy. “Get us the fuck out of here.”
61
AUGUST, 2013
That was forty years ago. My last glimpse of Belle Fleur was Bob in the yard beside emergency vehicles and Donald in the second-floor window, while above him the nester waited to catch him unaware.
Donald and Erin left that night for California. Bob closed down the house, disinterred Margo, and took the bodies of his wife and daughter away.
For nearly forty years, Belle Fleur has remained empty. The harsh coastal winds have blistered the paint until it curled and fell flaking from the boards. Shutters have blown away. Children, drawn by the lure of something dark and frightening, have broken windows, and rain has splashed onto the floors, once so beautifully waxed.
The stained-glass window of the Lady of Shalott remains amazingly intact. A jungle of trees has grown up around the house, and perhaps the branches have shielded the beautiful glass image. Or perhaps the house has protected itself. Throughout the years, several teenagers have been hurt on the property. One boy fell into an abandoned well and broke his neck. I heard the stories, because I made it my business to keep up with Coden and what transpired here.
Annie was never found. The sheriff searched, but to no avail. Eventually, I was released and no charges were brought against me. Cora’s murderer was never discovered, but Jimmy Finch, before he died, had alibied me. I could not have been in two places at once. I tried one time to tell the sheriff about Annie and her creatures. For my pains I was given a psychiatric examination and a week-long stay, at the county’s expense, in the mental ward of a Mobile hospital.
When I was released, I left the area. I made a new life, but I always kept an eye on Belle Fleur.
Cora had established a trust for Belle Fleur. Or I should say that the trust established several generations back still held. Bob gave up payments on Belle Fleur, and the house returned to the trust. To me. Many, many times I considered burning it down, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And now there’s a lovely family eager to move in. Belle Fleur is to be resurrected once more. Annie has come home.
Like it or not, I am linked to the house. To the past. To the horrors committed in the name of love.
And now I am back in Coden. My name today is Elaine Alcut. I’ve had more than a dozen names. As each one grows too painful, I change. It allows me the illusion that I have some control over who I am and my fate. Elaine is so much more refined than Mimi. Some would say I’ve grown into the name.
I’ve returned to Cora’s house, because it gives me easy access, through the woods, to the new family moving into Belle Fleur. Another architect, if you can believe it. I placed the ad for the sale of Belle Fleur in Architectural Digest. Scott McRay answered.
He looks like a young Lawrence Olivier, very polished and properly British. His wife won’t last two months. She reminds me of a delicate bloom. But the children are incredible. Twin girls, and a younger boy. I believe she calls them Madeline and Miranda. The boy is Scott, like his father.
I watch them because I know Annie has returned. I’ve seen her. A glimpse here, a movement at the corner of my eye. She hasn’t aged a lick, but then she was never quite human. She is still a teenager. Perhaps a tad older than the sixteen she was back in 1974. She looks to be more college-age now. Why am I not surprised? If I knew the name she was using, I’ll bet I could find her enrolled in the local university. Education major. Oh, she has a plan this time. One far better than the last one.
But I am watching. It is August, and I have come to the end of this story. I’ve written it down as Cora asked me to do in the final paragraphs of her letter to me. “Annie is your sister and you must love her.” Those were Cora’s words. I’d sooner nestle a snake at my bosom.
The papers Jimmy Finch found, the ones that linked me to Belle Fleur and the Damarais family, I destroyed. There is no record of my connection to Belle Fleur. I couldn’t afford it. This time I shall stop her. This time there will be an end to the horrors Sigourney set in motion so many decades ago.
As I wander through the woods, peeping through the dense foliage, I hear the sound of saws. This new family, Scott and Belinda McRay, are clearing the trees grown too close to the house. Talk in town is that he plans a grand renovation of Belle Fleur and the Paradise Inn.
I wonder if the McRay family knows the history of Belle Fleur. As I once told Donald Henderson, history is the road map of past mistakes. Learn it and avoid repetition.
Now I must walk to the road and make my way to the front door of Belle Fleur. A proper introduction is in order. Perhaps the McRay family will require a music instructor. I’m quite proficient at the piano.
THE END
Acknowledgments
Ghos
t stories and creepy tales were my first love as a reader, and it’s been a circuitous journey back to this dark terrain as a writer. My grandmother, a remarkable woman, often recounted Poe’s gothic tales to us grandchildren, all huddled beside her under a handmade quilt. The flames from the fireplace cast shadows in the high-ceilinged room, as her voice with a faint Swedish accent pulled us slowly into the realm of imagination.
She was a lover of literature and poetry, and she could bring us children to heel in a matter of moments with her rendition of “Little Orphant Annie,” James Whitcomb Riley’s chilling poem that is at the center of this tale.
My parents, both journalists, were also great storytellers, and with their tales came the added authority of supposed fact. “Did I ever tell you about the McDonald house where Highway 26 curves on the way to Central?” Real places populated by what was presented as real people. Or at least real dead people.
Sometimes late on a dusky summer evening my mother would load us and the neighborhood children into the car and drive us through the twilight to a haunted bridge where a love triangle had ended tragically, or a cemetery where a grief-crazed man dug up his dead child, only to find the grave empty.
I’ve always loved stories of ghosts and hauntings, and I’ve had an encounter or two with an entity from “the other side.” Luckily, none have left a physical mark on me, though I did prematurely gray.
There are many people who believed in this story, and they know who they are. Thank you, cheerleaders of the macabre. I also want to thank Ed Stackler and Suzann Ledbetter for helpful advice on shaping the story. And also a nod to Sarah Waters, whose wonderful book, The Little Stranger, reminded me that the tradition of scary tales is alive and well.
I want to thank my agent, Marian Young, for her many years of support. With The Darkling we have come full circle.
And I am thrilled to be publishing with Pegasus Books. My editor Maia Larson is a joy to work with. Incisive yet gentle. And the book cover so rocks. Many thanks to the artist Michael Fusco, who captured the spirit of my book.
To everyone who reads this story, I wish you the nerve-twitching chill that was such a pleasure of my childhood. The possibilities of what might be there, in the dark, feeds our imaginations.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by R. B. Chesterton
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
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Darkling Page 33