“Do you think I should go?” I asked Lauren.
“What, are you kidding me? Damn straight I think you should go. You’ve talked forever about wanting to get past those estate gates. Now they’re handing it to you, and you’re asking if you should go?”
She was right. I’d have to book a plane—
“They’ll handle all your travel arrangements, by the way,” Lauren added.
I told her to give them my address. The official invite arrived by courier the next day. There was a card in a foil-lined envelope, first-class round-trip plane tickets, and a little handwritten note about how they’d love to see me. The note was signed “Madelyn.”
As in, Madelyn Wilmont, one of the wealthiest women on the planet, and the basis for the matriarch in The Rich Are Different. I’d made her older in my book—in real life she was only forty, not fifty-something. I’d imagined what it would be like to meet her, get to know her…be her.
Five years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated. But five years ago I was still married to Derek. Then I’d found Derek at the office Christmas party kissing his secretary nowhere near any mistletoe, and divorce had followed. I was just thankful we’d had no children to permanently fuck up and I was still young enough to conceivably find someone else.
Except…I hadn’t. I’d tried a few dates, but my confidence was shot. I felt middle-aged (at thirty-four), overweight, dowdy, despite the best clothes book royalties could buy. I knew rationally that I wasn’t, but…well, seeing your husband with his tongue halfway down the throat of a woman you never considered especially attractive apparently had some unexpected side effects.
So I’d buried myself in my work instead. It had paid off: I’d given up the celebrity pieces for EW and gone into novels. The first one, Paper Cuts, had been well reviewed and just barely successful enough that I was given a contract for a second book. That one had been The Rich Are Different, and it had scored big-time. The advance had provided a generous down payment on a house in Chicago’s suburbs. The movie option had allowed me to pay off the house. Lauren had joked with me about being rich enough to be different.
Of course, that’d been a year back. Since then my writing skills seemed to have migrated with my physical self-image. I spent too many days scrolling idly through social media instead of working on Book Number Three. My editor was concerned. Lauren was concerned. My ex-husband was…well, getting blow jobs from his secretary.
I spent too many hours telling myself I wasn’t a failure. I might have gotten lucky once, but I was incomplete, purposeless. Friends (all married) told me I needed a man. I scoffed, we laughed…and then I went back to the house, where I lived alone, and tried to tell myself it wasn’t like that at all.
Maybe a visit to the Wilmonts’ would reinvigorate me. What the hell. I wrote back to the email address on the card and told them I’d be delighted to come. Someone named Jasmine replied instantly and said she’d add my name to the guest list, plus a limo would be waiting for me at the airport. I’d stay overnight at the Wilmont estate and fly out again the next morning. No presents, please. The date was two weeks away.
I spent those fourteen days fussing and fretting—could I lose weight in two weeks? Should I change my hair color? What would I wear? Were they expecting me to be hipper and younger?
I shopped. I saw my hairstylist (but we stuck with my usual auburn). I didn’t really lose any weight.
Of course, I read up more on the Wilmonts, but I knew most of it. They stuck pretty much to themselves; no reality TV show for them, no trashy affairs with rock stars or DUI busts. They were rarely photographed in public, but when they were, they were beautiful. Given how much money they had, how could they have been anything else? Lennox had the sort of boyish, broad face and floppy dark hair that could have earned him willing women even if he hadn’t been rich. Madelyn was sleek and serious, like a Maserati in human form.
Their wealth had always been something of a mystery. Way back in the 1840s, a Wilmont ancestor had migrated here from the Old World to grow tobacco and cotton. He’d already been well off, but he’d made even more money in America, mainly because he’d also invested in the slave trade, and their assets had continued to accrue. Madelyn was married to a man named Alan Ashton; rumors circulated that he spent most of his time in a wing of the family mansion, drunk and enjoying the company of Prince Valium. They had one son, Grant, who should be sixteen by now, but he hadn’t been photographed in public since infancy. Lennox had never married. Their father, Harris the Third, still ran the family corporation, but he’d spent most of his life living in New York. Their mother had died young of cancer. There were no other siblings.
The big day arrived. I took so long making last-minute decisions, changing outfits over and over, that I nearly missed my flight. I tried to relax in my spacious first-class seat, but I was tense and distracted.
I got off the plane with my bulging carry-on (ridiculous, I know, for an overnight stay) and when the escalators spilled me out into the baggage claim, I saw a man holding a sign with my name printed on it.
I stopped for a second, there at the bottom of the escalators, staring, as other passengers bumped into me. The man holding the sign was at least seven feet tall, with a bulky, stooped frame. A cap was pulled low over his eyes; flat, sand-hued hair spilled out from under it. He wore oversized sunglasses, leaving me to imagine what color his eyes must be, and an overcoat that was too heavy for the southern warmth. For a second I considered turning around, or taking a cab out to the Wilmont estate…but then he saw me and dropped the sign.
Well, I thought, he’s probably great security.
I stepped forward, slowly. He reached one massive paw (his large pink hand had stubby fingers) out and, wordlessly, took my bag. He turned and headed out of the baggage claim. With no other real choice left, I followed.
His limo was parked curbside. He opened the rear door for me, and I was glad to be separated from him by the sheet of glass between the driver and the rear passenger area.
We headed away from the airport. At least he was a cautious driver. I tried not to look at the back of his massive head, square and furry beneath the cap.
It took about forty minutes to reach the Wilmont estate. We left the freeway and got on a two-lane blacktop that wound through scenic hills and lush, wooded valleys before coming to a private drive that began with a guard booth and gate. He waved to whoever was in the booth; as we passed it, I tried to peer through the glass of the enclosure to see who was inside, but it was tinted, opaque.
It was late afternoon as we rolled onto the Wilmonts’ private grounds. The sun was at the horizon, its long rays now silhouetting trees and outbuildings with golden auras. The driver slowed, moving at no more than ten miles per hour. I was wondering why when I saw something running through the trees maybe one hundred feet to the right. It was difficult to see clearly, as it darted in and out of shadow and sight, but I saw enough to know its movements weren’t right—it ran on two legs but loped as if it was off-balance, flailing too-long arms wildly. I couldn’t make out color or facial features, nor even guess at what it could have been. It was so improbable that I wondered if it was some sort of puppet or illusion.
I started to say something to the driver, knock on the glass between us and point, but then the strange runner vanished and the house came into view.
It was even more impressive in person than it looked in the photographs and videos I’d seen. It lolled among the trees like a gigantic animal at rest, the upper-floor windows bright with the last of the sun while lights glowed warmly from the lower rooms. The drive curved around before the double-door entrance, and we pulled to a stop there. The taciturn driver opened my door, took my bag and set it down at the top of the steps leading to the doors, then returned to the limo and drove off.
I heard music coming from somewhere nearby—live, jazzy—and smelled food cooking. I was just climbing the steps to ring when the door opened. Madelyn Wilmont smiled down at me.
I
wasn’t prepared for how stunning she was in person. She looked far younger than forty, with the sort of perfect casual elegance that only wealth can provide. She extended a welcoming hand to me, and I took it, surprised at its heat. “Hello, Sara, it’s so lovely to meet you. I’m Madelyn.”
A few of the reviewers of The Rich Are Different had praised its “sharp-tongued voice,” while others had decried it as “needlessly verbose.” Neither quality surfaced now; when faced with Madelyn Wilmont’s effortless poise, I felt like a single leaf of wilted spinach, small and inadequate. I just grasped her hand and smiled.
She turned to indicate the entrance. “We’ve got a room ready for you—I thought you might like to relax a bit before joining the party. It doesn’t really start for another hour, anyway.”
I started to reach for my bag, but Madelyn flicked a slender wrist. “Oh, no, dear—I’ll have that brought up to you. The stairs to the second floor are quite a climb, even without a heavy bag.” She turned and strode into the house. I forgot about my bag, following.
I tried not to stop and gape at the things we passed—delicate vases and furnishings that were probably invaluable, shelves of leather-bound books behind glass doors—but it was the art that staggered me. It ran the gamut from modern to Pre-Raphaelite. I found myself literally frozen before one large canvas in the style of Italian late Baroque. It was a landscape—classical ruins atop a hillside beneath a gloomy sky—but it was the figures in the image that caught my attention. At first glance they’d merely looked like dancers, or revelers, but upon closer inspection they were revealed as not entirely human—a leering face was topped by subtle horns, a bent torso perched atop shaggy goat legs. It was haunting, something out of a dream.
“Ah, I see you’ve found our Magnasco.”
I saw Madelyn watching me, and I realized I’d been unaware I’d even stopped. “I’m sorry, who is it?”
“Alessandro Magnasco. He’s one of our favorites.”
Something about the way she said “our”—some implication of possession, perhaps—raised a few more unspoken questions. I forced myself to turn away from the painting, smiling. “I’m not familiar with Magnasco. This is fascinating, though.”
“Not many people know him.”
I looked at the painting again, my attention drawn to a figure loping across a clearing before a collection of cracked and tilted columns. Something about the figure…saturnine, long arms swinging, legs bent the wrong way—
“Shall we…?”
I jerked around, on the verge of a question, but broke off as Madelyn continued on up the stairs. We’d just reached the second-floor landing when a voice from below called up, “So, that’s Lennox’s package?”
A man stood at the bottom of the staircase, looking up at us; he was middle-aged, balding, dressed in polo shirt and khakis, holding a drink in one hand. He swirled the contents of the glass, the ice inside tinkling.
Madelyn stopped, turning slowly, her gaze icy. “Alan, meet Sara Peck. Sara, this is my husband, Alan.”
He saluted with the drink. I was just opening my mouth to greet him when he blurted out, “We’d introduce you to our charming so-called son, Grant, but the little freak’s out running loose somewhere—”
Madelyn cut him off, firmly but not loudly, a technique she’d probably honed from frequent use. “Alan! I’m sure there must still be a few bottles of gin out back that you haven’t drunk up yet.”
Alan smirked, started to amble off. “Of course. Good luck, Miss Peck. Oh, and by the way, dearest—this is vodka.”
He vanished through a doorway, and Madelyn’s shoulders sagged. “My apologies for that, Sara. My husband…well, he’s developed an unfortunate tendency to overmedicate…”
“No apologies necessary, Madelyn. I understand.” Which wasn’t entirely true—I didn’t understand how a father could call his son a “little freak” and make the crack about “running loose somewhere.”
Madelyn led me to a bedroom on the second floor that was roughly twice the size of my first apartment. “I thought you might enjoy the Gold Room,” she said, with just a slight twist of sarcasm.
The room was furnished in tasteful gold and white, and I didn’t have to ask if the finishes were real. I stepped to the spacious windows and looked out onto the rear of the Wilmont estate. Just below, dance floors had been set up around an Olympic-size pool; a band played in one corner, people milled, chefs cooked at stations tucked in among marble statues and trimmed hedges. “Thank you, I’m sure I will.” I turned to face her and saw that she waited in the doorway, apparently expecting my question. “I have to confess, though, that I’m not quite sure why I’m here.”
She smiled, laughed slightly, then said, “You’re Lennox’s birthday surprise. He’s been a fan ever since he read your book, and he’s been dying to meet you.”
“Oh.” A flutter circled my stomach. I was a “birthday surprise”? Was I expected, perhaps, to change into a bikini and pop out of a giant cake?
Madelyn must have seen something in my expression, because her own smile faded. “Sara, my brother and I are very close. And I’m sure you’ll find him quite charming.” She backed away, reaching for the door. “I’ll have your bag brought right up. I’m really so happy to have you here.”
She stepped out, closing the door behind her.
As I used the bathroom (a little in awe of the real gold fixtures), my anxiety ramped up. What was expected of me? Why did the bit about Madelyn and her brother being “very close” sound like a jealous wife’s warning? What if I didn’t fit the picture Lennox had of the author of The Rich Are Different?
As I stepped out of the bathroom, I was heading for my purse to get a Xanax when a knock came at my door. I steeled myself, expecting the limo driver, and pulled the door open.
Lennox Wilmont stood there, my bag grasped in one hand. When he saw me, his handsome face was split by a grin that made him look younger. “Oh my God, you really are Sara Peck!” He dropped the bag and stepped toward me, and for a second I expected him to fling his arms around me…but then he grasped one of my hands instead, the picture of youthful enthusiasm. “When Madelyn told me you were the guest in the Gold Room, I didn’t believe it. I am such a fan!”
Lennox was everything I’d read: seemingly genuine, warm, magnetic…and very hot. Literally—his hand felt almost like it was scorching mine. I realized I was blushing, but I forced myself not to turn away. Lennox saw it and laughed, but it was out of delight, not derision. He was so beautiful it was hard to look at him. “Happy birthday,” I finally said, and even that came out too soft.
He released my hand, and part of me was sorry. “Thanks, but to tell you the truth—I hate these things. Maddie always wants to throw them, but I never feel quite comfortable among all those people.”
“Really? That surprises me.”
Lennox arched his eyebrows and gave me a half-smile. “Well, Ms. Peck, I hope I can show you some other surprises, too.”
“Sara, please.”
He nodded. “Sara.”
We stood there for a moment, uncomfortable in that way that only two people who are very attracted to each other can be. Finally Lennox waved at my bag. “Would you like a few minutes to change, or…?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks. Should we go down to join your party?”
“Only if you want to. You know what I’d rather do?”
“What?”
“Show you the Beltane Room.”
Now, that was an interesting invitation. The Beltane Room was one of the most mysterious parts of the Wilmont estate. It appeared in side mentions in family histories, the name apparently being derived from a three-day-long party that was held there in 1920, starting on the evening of April 30—Walpurgisnacht, or Beltane in the old Celtic calendar. No one knew exactly what had happened at the party, or at least if they did they hadn’t talked; they also hadn’t mentioned what was in the room.
I said, “How did you know I was going to ask to see it?”
We exited the Gold Room and turned left heading out, away from the main staircase. “We’ll take the servants’ stairs so Maddie won’t see us,” he said.
He led me down the hall, through a doorway, down a narrow spiral staircase, and through a utility room. Opening another door there, he indicated more stairs leading down. “It’s in the basement.” He waved me ahead and glanced around to see if we’d been spotted.
I headed down the stairs and waited for him at the bottom. Around me was a utilitarian hallway, like something you might find beneath a hotel. He joined me, and I followed him to one end, where he used a key to unlock an unmarked door. He reached inside, flipped a light switch, and bowed. “The Beltane Room, m’lady.”
I stepped past him—and froze.
The room was large—unexpectedly so—and lit by two huge chandeliers overhead. It contained low divans, all upholstered in decadent velvets and brocades, and tables holding crystal decanters.
But the walls were the real attention-getter. They were covered with art—not framed paintings, but a mural painted right on the walls. Lennox pulled me to the left so I stood in front of a re-creation—or was it a continuation?—of the Magnasco painting I’d admired earlier. “Start here and follow it around.”
The work looked like a hurried version of the Italian classicist; it was less perfect, more rushed, but similar in theme, with gods and nymphs cavorting among ruins.
“You’ve heard of the Beltane party that took place here in 1920…? Well, what you probably haven’t heard is that one of the guests was a well-known artist who took three days to paint this. The other guests—who included famous actors, writers, and at least one newspaper mogul—drank bootleg liquor and smoked hashish and spent the three days here just watching him work. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
Dark Screams, Volume 6 Page 2