“You think I’m infected with some dark event that happened in that house?”
“I know it sounds improbable, even fantastical, but I’ve seen it happen. I’ve witnessed how unresolved issues from the past can corrupt a person.” My actual experience was limited, but I’d read extensively and conversed with Madam Petalungro and Reginald, who’d seen far more than I had.
“How? How does it happen?”
She asked a question I couldn’t answer, and certainly not as the clock ran down on my allotted time to convince her to leave Bryce. “I’ll explain on the way to Montgomery. Reginald is outside, searching for Joanne Pence. If he finds her, we’ll take her with us.”
She sighed, and the stiffness of her shoulders relaxed. “I know you want to help me, that you’ve endangered yourself to break in here to talk to me. You’re trying to help my friend, too. I thank you. It’s just . . . I can’t go anywhere with David. What if he’s driving and I have another fit and try to harm him? I could cause a wreck and kill both of us.”
Her fear was well founded and perfectly reasonable. I also had a solution. “Reginald has Zelda’s car. You can ride with us. David can take the backseat. You’ll be between me and Reginald. David will be safe.”
“He wanted to stay here with me, but Nurse Brady made him leave. She said he’d upset me and that he wasn’t allowed to visit again. She was going to call my mother. I convinced her not to, but she warned that if he came on the hospital property again, she’d have him arrested and call Mama. He should never have come here. It’ll only make trouble for him and for me. I can’t marry him. I can’t do that, fearing I might turn on him again. His refusal to accept that only makes it worse for me.” Her voice broke. “I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt him. I love him.”
“That’s not going to happen, because Reginald and I are going to figure out what’s going on at Roswell House.”
“Do you think you really can?”
I saw the burning hope in her eyes. Camilla wanted a cure. She loved David enough to take whatever surgery brought—with the slim hope of coming through the operation with some part of herself left. “I do. I didn’t know at first, but now I believe we can help. But you have to cooperate. Let’s go before someone comes to check on you.”
She stepped into the hallway. When she glanced over her shoulder, I knew she had decided to trust me. “What about my things?”
“We’ll send for them. Or once this is all behind you, David will buy you new things.”
“You’re right.”
For the first time since I’d met her, I saw a real smile, one that almost broke my heart. She’d been willing to sacrifice so much—without complaint. Now I saw what she might be like without the shadow of illness over her. Whatever doubts I’d had about the course of action I’d taken, they evaporated. Camilla’s smile was worth all the risk.
“Let’s go.” I grabbed her hand, and we ran down the hall. In the areas where the dead slumped together, I ignored them. As we entered the office and closed the door, I heard them in the lobby.
The sound of their tapping came to me. Tap, tap, tap. I didn’t know what it meant, and I had to get Camilla out the window and off the hospital grounds. “The car is at the end of the drive. I’m going to hand some things to you. Then run. Run as fast as you can to the car. Blink the lights four times. That’s a signal to get Reginald back to the car.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.” I had one more thing to do. Something truly illegal. But it was now or never. “Just a minute and I’ll help you out the window.”
I turned on the office light once more to go through some files. As I moved to sit in the desk chair, I saw a long, slender needle with a beautifully crafted pearl-and-gold design on the end.
It was a hat pin, and a unique one. It hadn’t been in the chair earlier when I’d been in the office. Someone had left it there for me. A sign or symbol I needed to know. I didn’t have time to study it, so I stuck it through the placket of my dress and started pulling the files I needed.
When I had them stacked, I assisted Camilla up onto the window ledge. It wasn’t much of a drop, but I held my breath as she slid over and hit the ground with a soft grunt. “Take these.” I’d grabbed up the files on Connie Shelton, Joanne Pence, Cheryl Lawrence, and a few other young women whose names the young woman in the business office had mentioned when Reginald was charming her.
“You can’t steal patient files.” Camilla was horrified.
“If you want to find your friend Joanne, I have to. Take them.” I pushed them through the window and into her arms. “Run! Don’t look back. If you’re caught, I’ll take all the blame.”
She cradled the files in her arms and began to run across the lawn. The clouds had thickened, and the lightning had moved on top of us. A jagged flash of a four-pronged bolt struck not far away. In the resulting explosion of light and crack of thunder, Camilla shied like a Thoroughbred, but she didn’t scream and kept running. The dead girls lined the driveway, invisible to her eyes.
I clambered out the window and hit the ground running, my shoes in my hands. As the storm finally broke and an icy rain pelted me, I prayed that Reginald was in the car, ready to drive. We hadn’t bothered with the fake release we’d forged. We’d abducted a mental patient—and patient records—from the hospital. I wondered if we’d be stopped at a roadblock on our way home. Anything was possible.
The lights of the car blinked on and off four times. Camilla had made it safely. I hoped Reginald had something to tell us about Joanne when he got back to the coupe, but we couldn’t linger in Tuscaloosa.
As I neared the car, someone ran out of the trees that lined the driveway. I prepared for a fight, then realized it was Reginald. He intersected me and took my elbow to speed me along. “Hurry,” he said. “There’s no sign of the Pence girl, but Perkins is on the hospital grounds.”
“How do you know?” I asked, thoroughly winded. “He’s supposed to be on his way back from Vienna.”
“He’s here. I saw him and the other doctors in one of the outbuildings. They were in a heated conversation. He must have come back early—if he was ever gone at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Rain, mingled with hail, bounced off the car’s roof and hood as we caught our breath inside. Reginald put the car in gear and coasted, lights out, away from the hospital. At any moment I expected an alarm to sound. Visions of police officers—pistols drawn, swarming the car—made me grip the door until my knuckles ached. I wanted to beg Reginald to press the gas pedal to the floor and get away, but he had the right approach. We needed to leave without drawing attention. In the rain and wind and storm, we were invisible if we didn’t turn on the lights.
“Mama is going to be furious.” Camilla’s teeth chattered in the front seat between Reginald and me.
“You’re almost eighteen,” I told her. “You’re entitled to your own life.” If she didn’t break free of Maude, she would be a prisoner in Montgomery far more than she was in Bryce.
“Yes. Too bad Mama doesn’t feel that way.” She clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap, the most unladylike expression of anxiety she would allow herself.
“If you love David, you owe it to him and yourself to fight for that love.” Reginald turned on the car lights and drove faster, taking us east again down the long road that would be even more hazardous in the event of flooding. We were caught in a tunnel of rain and darkness, with only the puny headlights to illuminate our immediate path. After my experience with the dead in Bryce, it was discomfiting.
“What do you know about Roswell House?” I asked Camilla.
“Like all old houses, it’s reputed to be haunted. I’ve told you what I know.”
“Before you went with David, had you ever gone inside?”
She shook her head. “No. My friends and I only walked around the grounds, scaring ourselves silly. We didn’t dare go inside.”
“And did you see anything
? Ghosts, shadows, impressions of something sinister?”
“I’ve thought about this a lot lately.” She pushed her wet hair out of her face as the car’s Kingston heater blew hot. Still, I shivered. It was strange to be cold in July, but the storm had brought icy rain, and we were wet in the moving vehicle. I thanked Scott Fitzgerald for adding the luxury of the heater to his vehicle. Camilla cleared her throat. “I have felt something there, something that tugs at me. But I only ever felt it when David took me. When I got out of the car, I had a sense we were being watched, and not by the workmen and carpenters.” She stopped and looked at us. “I know . . . I must be going mad.”
“Not at all,” Reginald said. “Think back and tell us. Any small detail might help.”
“Okay.” She inhaled. “The beauty of the house captured my heart, but inside . . .”
We waited, letting her take her time.
“There’s something sinister there. I didn’t want to remember, but there are some things . . . the last time, when I was alone in the kitchen, there was this pressure on my chest, as if something were forcing its way beneath my ribs and sternum. It’s the last thing I remember.” She swallowed. “I know I have to go back there if you’re to help me, but what if I can’t go inside? What if I simply can’t make myself do it? I’m terrified that I’ll lose who I am.”
“No one will make you,” I assured her. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. Just try. That’s all we ask.”
Reginald handed me his cigarette case. “Butt me,” he requested.
I lit a cigarette for him and handed it over, and one for Camilla, too. She shook her head. “They make me cough. Zelda and Tallulah laugh at me. I’m pathetic at being a modern woman.”
I inhaled and began to cough. I tossed the cigarette out the window into the muddy street. “I’m not very good at it either.”
“Ladies, we need to make one stop.” The rain had slackened and was now more mist than shower. Reginald pulled up in front of the hotel where we’d stayed last time we were there. It was three o’clock in the morning, and even the train station was dark and empty. “Wait here. I’ll be back with David.”
“He can’t come with us.” Camilla grew agitated. “I can’t be with him.”
“But he must,” Reginald said calmly. “It will help us prove our theory. If you can ride with him and nothing happens, then it will help clarity the point that your affliction is tied to Roswell House. Remember, when he visited you at Bryce, you were just fine. Right?”
She nodded, wiping away tears. “I love him so much. I just—”
Reginald ran into the lobby. Five minutes later, he signaled from the door that David was on the way. Ten minutes later, David put his luggage in the back and climbed in the backseat.
“Thank God,” he said, leaning forward to kiss Camilla’s cheek. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
I couldn’t make that promise, but I certainly hoped it was true. We set off into the wet night. The bulk of the storm had passed us, moving to the east. Lightning flashed in the distance as we drove toward it. I thought of the Mary Shelley story and the monster, brought to life by lightning, and his aching need to be loved. I’d read much more into Shelley’s story than a simple monster tale. The desire for love was basic to humans, and the shame of it was that Camilla had become convinced she was monstrous—a danger to the man who loved her. We had to change that, or she would forever be doomed to live outside of love.
Two hours into the drive, Reginald pulled over to switch places. Camilla was asleep and didn’t wake as David stretched his legs and talked quietly with Reginald while he smoked. I felt battered and abused, and paced beside the car to loosen my muscles. I got behind the wheel, and Reginald slipped into the passenger seat next to Camilla, allowing her to slump against him. She was so dead asleep she barely stirred.
I pulled onto the road, aware of the dangerous driving conditions. It wasn’t long before the trip assumed a rhythm—Camilla’s light breathing, David’s soft snoring in the backseat, and Reginald’s shifting about. I would drive until I grew too weary, and then we would switch up again.
Beside me, Camilla awoke. She sat up, and I could almost feel her blush at her sudden closeness to Reginald.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better. Stronger.” She sat upright. “I can drive.”
It was a tempting offer, but I declined. “You rest. We’ll take care of the preparations. Tonight will be difficult for you, and you’ll need all of your strength.”
“Thank you for bringing me. For bringing David. Maybe it really is the house . . .”
“I firmly believe that’s the case.” Camilla was reluctant to enter Roswell, and so was I. Something powerful inhabited the place. I thought of the female form in the window, surrounded by buzzing and dying flies. Carrion, decay, waste, and death drew flies. This entity was not some lost spirit unsure of how to shift from the living to the spirit world. It was something that had managed to dig into Roswell House and find a plump host. Ejecting it would require force and skill. “Thinking back, are you sure there’s no family link or friendship with those who owned or lived on the property?”
She shook her head. “The last to live there was Mr. Herman, who was a friend of my mother’s. He would stop at our house some afternoons to talk with Mama.”
“I’ve been told he was a kind man. When did he visit?”
“I was very young. I remember because he would bring me a Squirrel Nut Zippers candy bar, or sometimes Hershey’s Kisses. He would tell me to sit on the porch and enjoy the candy while he talked with my mother.”
Camilla seemed totally unaware of the possible implications of her innocent memory. “What a wonderful treat for a little girl.”
“He liked me. He said I was a special girl and that one day I would be a princess.” She choked a little on the last word. “I didn’t have a lot of dreams like that. Mama didn’t believe in dreams, but he encouraged me to think of great things. He told me not to tell her. It was our secret.”
Was it possible that Maude Granger and Herman Roswell, an old bachelor who lived alone in the splendor of Roswell House, had had an affair? A lot of sharp angles came into focus. “Did he ever mention the Roswell curse to you?” It was a long shot.
“No. But then he wouldn’t have. He said children should live in joy and happiness, and that there was plenty of misery waiting for me when I grew up.”
Herman Roswell sounded kind and smart, but as to why he had been so generous with Maude and Jefferson Granger’s little girl . . . well, I had my suspicions. The question was whether to voice them.
“The curse supposedly follows the females of the Roswell family. Is it possible you’re a Roswell?”
She inhaled sharply. “You think he’s my father?”
“Is it possible?” I repeated.
She started to say no but thought better. “I can’t say. I’ve often wondered if there was ever a time Mama loved my father. She is so cold and aloof around him.”
I had begun to unravel what might be at the root of Camilla’s problems. If she were a Roswell—
“Do you think I carry the Roswell curse?”
“I don’t even know what the curse is, but Reginald and I will find out.”
The road spun beneath us. As we put Tuscaloosa far behind, I started to relax a little. Perhaps we wouldn’t be arrested at a roadblock. We might make it to Montgomery and be able to hide Camilla and our role in her abduction. Maybe. If our luck held.
The sky above the tree line lightened, and the first pink of dawn gave me renewed hope. We would resolve this. We would save Camilla, and she would have her Prince Charming and a fairy-tale ending. It hadn’t happened for me, but it would salve my wound at the brutal loss of my soldier husband if I could help another.
“This presence you felt in the house,” I began. “Did you get a sense of age or gender?” I was thinking of the dead twin girls and the fly woman. Were they the entities preying on Ca
milla? Were they the embodiment of the curse?
“I didn’t.”
“Did anyone ever mention the death of twin girls in the house?”
At first Camilla didn’t answer, but then she began to make a strange gasping sound.
“Camilla? Are you okay?” I glanced at her, and she was clearly in distress, but I couldn’t look away from the road for long.
“What is it?” Reginald was wide-awake now.
Camilla lifted a hand to point. “They’ve found us.”
A long, dark sedan blocked the entire road. Two men stood beside it, staring into our headlights. Someone had learned of Camilla’s escape and meant to stop us.
I thought I recognized one of the men, but as I wrenched the wheel, the headlight moved off him. Mud grabbed at the car tires as I attempted to move to the right of the sedan. The car careened into the soft shoulder on the right, and the dirt grabbed at the tires, trying to wrest the wheel out of my grip.
“Brake!” Reginald threw out an arm to brace Camilla.
I slammed on the brakes. David tumbled to the floor in the back, and the car slewed dangerously. I turned the wheel, trying to follow the wild spinning of the car. Just when I thought impact was unavoidable, we ran through the ditch on the right side, and the coupe managed to climb back onto the road. I’d smashed my chest against the steering wheel, and Reginald and Camilla had bounced about the front seat and dash. I could only hope David, on the floor in the back, was not seriously harmed.
“Faster!” Reginald said. He knelt on the seat and leaned back to check on David. “He’s fine. Drive!”
I checked the rearview mirror, but the road behind us was dark. I wanted to stop and check the car, to see if I’d damaged it, but when I started to slow, Reginald touched my shoulder. “Keep going. As fast as you can. There’s no time to stop.”
“What if a tire’s damaged?” I remembered all too well Uncle Brett’s tragic accident that had almost killed Reginald and given our enemies the chance to take my uncle hostage. If we kept running hard on a damaged wheel, we ran the risk of a serious wreck. Our only advantage, though, was our limited lead and the fact that Zelda’s sports coupe, if undamaged, might outrun the bigger, heavier sedan. Reginald was right. We had to press forward as quickly as possible.
The House of Memory (Pluto's Snitch Book 2) Page 21