Charlotte’s Story

by Benedict, Laura

  “Go upstairs, upstairs, Mommy.”

  But how could I? Upstairs, upstairs was her name for the third floor. There was no upstairs to go to out here. I looked over my shoulder at the house.

  “Come with me. Don’t stay here, baby.”

  Eva stared past me toward the house and, in that moment, I saw how she might have looked as an adult: favoring Press only slightly, with delicate cheekbones and a curve to her brow that spoke not just of intelligence, but of cheerfulness too. She was my daughter, and would always be my daughter. Press might not have treasured her the way he should have, might even have stopped thinking of her, but I would never stop.

  As the dream faded, I felt my consciousness returning, the pain returning, and I fought it as hard as I could.

  Someone was moving in the bedroom. I heard the faint clinking of china in the direction of the bedside table.

  “I’m sorry I disturbed you, Miss Charlotte.”

  Marlene did look sorry, but was otherwise her collected sensible self. With the cooling of the weather, she had switched to a long-sleeved black dress. In the darkness of the room, her pale head and hands seemed almost disembodied. But she was, indeed, whole and human.

  I clutched her knobby wrist.

  “Don’t lock me in here, Marlene. Please, don’t. I need to see Michael.” My headache had lessened some, but the words still hurt coming out. I could almost see them, dark green and sharp, glinting in the faint moonlight.

  I could also see the surprise on her face. “Lock you in? Why would anyone do that?”

  Embarrassed by my panic, I let go of her wrist. “Where’s Terrance?”

  “Mr. Preston said he thought that you’d prefer that I serve you while you’re ill.” She hesitated. “Shall I bring you some soup? I’ve brought more tisane. It’s chamomile and valerian, for your nerves.”

  In that moment I might have wept but for my desire to see Michael. I felt terribly alone.

  I whispered. “Marlene, please help me out to the telephone. I have to call someone.”

  She seemed not to have heard me as she poured tea into the cup on the bedside table. “I’ll be right back up with some soup and crackers for you, unless you think you could eat something more.”

  “The telephone. Please.” I tried to sit upright. My head still hurt, but I felt like I might be able to get out of bed. Before I did anything else, I needed to use the bathroom.

  “I’ll tell Mr. Preston you’re awake. I’ll be back in a few minutes with your soup, but you can ring if you need anything else.”

  She started out of the room with the tray that held the teapot and water pitcher.

  “Why won’t you help me use the telephone? Help me, Marlene.” Now tears threatened, welling in my eyes.

  She stopped and turned. Her words were kind but held no apology.

  “Mr. Preston had the upstairs, hall, and kitchen telephones removed, Miss Charlotte. There’s only the one in the library now.”

  “What about Michael? Have you seen him? Is he with Shelley?”

  “I’m sorry. You’ll have to ask Mr. Preston.”

  When she was gone, I sat in the waning light, wanting to leave the room but somehow afraid of what I would find. Olivia’s room was like a kind of island in the house. Michael was out there. Somewhere. But I had to be strong to find him.

  Chapter 39

  More than a Bastard

  I didn’t have to wait long for Press. It was he who brought my soup and crackers, looking like a contrite, caring husband. Such a superb actor. His actions were completely unironic: the way he closed the door, softly, with his elbow, as though he didn’t wish to disturb me, the solicitous let’s turn on a small light, it’s so dark you might spill your soup and how is your head? Better?

  My husband. My jailer. Though I had not heard a key in the lock, as Marlene had promised. He knew only too well that I would not leave without Michael.

  Jack had given me an injection against the pain, whispering that I shouldn’t make a scene in front of Holly and David, promising that it wouldn’t hurt me. The pain had, indeed, gone for a while. I didn’t know if he had called Press after David had first called him, or if David had called Press directly. But I knew it didn’t matter. I was lost. Michael was lost to me. Press had come into the Webbs’ living room with exclamations of gratitude to David and Holly, but he had approached me cautiously, as one might a violent child. Or a madwoman.

  I didn’t make a scene.

  Even when Press took Michael from my arms so Jack could tend to me, I didn’t protest. I knew no one would hear a word I had to say against Press. Really, what was there to say? He hadn’t injured me. There were no witnesses to his threats. He was a man who had lost a daughter, and his wife had gone a little mad with grief.

  By the time we got out to Jack’s car, I was shuffling with weariness brought on by the drugs, and I only just remember seeing Shelley’s anxious face in the passenger window of my sedan. The last thought I had before we drove away was that Michael would at least be taken care of on the way home.

  I hadn’t had the presence of mind to think that Press might take him from the house right away. I was too tired, too drugged to worry.

  I would be lying if I said I didn’t find the tiniest bit of solace being back in Bliss House. It wasn’t a good thing, but at least it was familiar. Better the devil you know.

  “I want to see Michael.”

  “What kind of greeting is that? Of course you want to see him, but you’re not in any shape to see him yet. You don’t think I would do anything to hurt him, do you? If so, you’re doing me a huge injustice, my love. Give me credit for at least a small amount of humanity.”

  I turned away. I hated looking at his smug, not-quite-handsome face. He looked very different to me now. Something about his eyes wasn’t right. I thought again about the jewel-handled knife. Was it still in my clothes? But if I killed him and he had done something with Michael, then I might never find Michael again.

  “I hope you’re ready for the memorial tonight. There won’t be a lot of people, but you know almost everyone. They’ll understand, of course, if you’re not yourself.” He set the tray on the side of the bed. The smell of the soup made me salivate. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.

  “I know you must be hungry.”

  The soup was too compelling. Turning my head, I saw it was Marlene’s vegetable soup. Beside it, she had put very thin slices of her special rye bread on one of the Minton dragon plates.

  Unable to bear looking at him, or at the food, I turned over again to face the short wall with the dresser and jewelry box.

  “Go away. You’re a bastard.”

  “Something more than a bastard, my love. Much more.”

  I felt him move away from the bed.

  “You might as well eat. You’re only hurting yourself.”

  “Should I just assume you’ve drugged the food?”

  When he laughed, he sounded so satisfied. Genuinely amused.

  “Assume whatever you like. Would it really matter? You may be a martyr, but no one sets out to like pain, Charlotte. Pain is an acquired taste. If I were you, I wouldn’t work too hard to acquire it. You’re likely to get what you want, and I don’t think it really suits you. You’re not as fragile as you think you are. I think you’ve held up very well, considering that you killed your own daughter. Not many women could survive that.”

  Quickly turning over so that it felt as though knives were shooting through my head, I flung the steaming soup bowl at him, and watched with satisfaction as the carrots and potatoes and bits of celery tumbled down his shirtfront.

  “I didn’t kill her, and we both know it.”

  Press didn’t move, didn’t change expression.

  “You’ve shamed yourself, Charlotte. Remember that.”

  Chapter 40

  A Clever Trick

  “Go upstairs, upstairs, Mommy.”

  Even with Press’s threats, I couldn’t get Eva’s words
out of my head. She meant for me to confront Press in the theater, I was certain. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do, but I decided I would know when I went inside. Above my head, I could hear people walking around. Voices in the hall, bright laughter on the stairs that echoed in the dome and filled Bliss House with an air of celebration. For the first time in years, there were people invited upstairs and into the theater.

  “You know almost everyone,” Press had said.

  Yes, I would be there.

  Aching, and lightheaded from hunger—I hadn’t trusted the soup, but had retrieved the bread from the floor—I went to the wardrobe and found the costume that Press had provided. It was, indeed, a Brunhild costume, complete with a braided gold corset and flowing ivory skirt. Resting on the floor of the wardrobe was a kind of helmet decorated on either side with eagles’ feathers. A molded half-face mask lay beside it. So like Press. I could imagine how the others looked. Press loved a masquerade, but he was never who he pretended to be.

  Pushing the ridiculous costume aside, I found a clean pair of loose wool slacks and took a tunic sweater from the drawer. My progress was slow as I washed and dressed. The anniversary clock on the mantel chimed ten-thirty. I found my coat, dirty and torn (I must have looked quite strange to the Webbs), lying over a chair, and transferred its contents into my sweater pockets. I didn’t know what was going to happen—if I would find Michael with Press, or somewhere in the house. I was acting completely on my faith in a dream, and in my dead daughter.

  When I reached the third floor, I started for the closed theater doors. Above me, the dome was alive with bright stars as it was every night. I could hear music, not loud but strange and foreign, coming from the theater. Press had had new chandeliers hung inside, but the light showing beneath the door was as gold and wavering as firelight. Even in the gallery the air was pungent with sharply scented incense that was nothing like what Father Aaron burned at church on high holy days.

  I reached for the handle of one of the doors, but I heard light, running footsteps behind me. Unmistakably Eva’s footsteps.

  “Eva.” I whispered her name. “Eva, come back.”

  The footsteps paused for a moment, then continued up and down the other side of the gallery in front of the ballroom, getting louder and louder, heavier and more frantic. Eva, running until she was exhausted. How many times had I watched her run from the nursery door to the back stairs, or around the gallery on a rainy day? Sinking onto one of the tall armchairs resting along the wall when she got tired. I sensed that she had stopped at the armchair outside the ballroom, perhaps to rest. But then the running began again, footfalls thundering until I had to cover my ears. Certain that everyone else in the house must be hearing it too, I ran across the gallery to where I thought she was.

  “Eva. Stop.”

  Finally, as I stood in front of the ballroom doors, they did stop. I could feel Eva—or something—breathing heavily beside me.

  Did she want me to go into the ballroom? I put my hand on the inset handle of one of the doors. As I slid it open, it rumbled lazily in its overhead track.

  I’ve never been able to explain what I did—or rather didn’t—see that night. It might have been the result of some drug or unconscious hypnosis. What I mean to say is that what I’d seen in the ballroom prior to that day must have been the result of some trick or enchantment.

  The room in which I’d played with Michael just a few days before now looked exactly as it had before I’d had it painted. There were the same hundreds—or maybe thousands—of delicate Japanese women and gruff-looking men painted onto the walls. I groped for the button light switch and pressed it. A few of the wall sconces came on, and I saw the glint of light on the metal rings attached to the ceiling.

  Shocked, I spun around to look out to the hallway. Nothing there had changed. But when I looked again, I knew I wasn’t deceived. The room had not changed. There was no faint odor of paint, not a single drop cloth or tool on the floor. Something brushed past me and I heard the footsteps again, running, running, running, playful.

  I was, I confess, afraid, despite the presence of my daughter. Nothing was right, and my mind raced for an explanation. Stepping into the room, I could no longer hear the music from across the gallery, so deep was the quiet of the windowless ballroom. It was another trick of this house, which had enchanted me for so many years, hiding its true nature, hiding the true nature of my husband.

  Standing in the unchanged room, I suddenly understood that I had been seeing only what I had wanted to see. The house, the strange man I’d “hired” to paint—they had all been just what I wanted. What had Michael seen when he was in the room with me? How had the house affected him?

  Looking out the doors, I saw the railing from which Michael Searle had hanged himself. He’d committed suicide rather than live with what his father and Terrance had done to Olivia. Done to him. Surely I hadn’t invented that.

  It was what my own mother had chosen, rather than live with me.

  What sort of person was I, really?

  “Help me. Someone help. Please.”

  The voice came from inside the ballroom. I turned around but didn’t see anyone.

  But it hadn’t been a ghostly sort of voice, and it was coming from the fireplace. Afraid, but also afraid not to respond, I went to the fireplace and saw that the flowered panel beside it was a few inches out of place.

  “Who’s there? Please, help me.”

  It was J.C.’s voice. The sound of it was so piteous that any animosity I had for her was completely overwhelmed. I couldn’t ignore her—and hadn’t Eva led me to find her?

  Between the two of us, we got the stubborn panel open.

  The woman who stumbled out of the hidden passage was nothing like the woman who had swanned into Bliss House the previous week, her clothes perfect, her confidence intimidating and annoying. Now her skirt and blouse were torn and stained brown with—dear God, it was blood. One of her eyes squinted shut, a mass of purple and black bruising. The other was blood-red, the cheek below it dramatically swollen as though badly broken. When I instinctively reached out to steady her, she flinched but didn’t turn away.

  “There are rooms down there. He’s an animal.” Her shoulders hunched, her voice was a raw whisper. “It’s not Press anymore. Whatever he is, he’s going to kill me. Do you understand? We have to get away from here. I told you! Didn’t I tell you? And you wouldn’t listen, Charlotte!” She began to weep. Great, heaving sobs.

  “Were you hiding? What’s in there?” Later she would describe the strange warren of rooms far beneath the house. I didn’t want to see them, but I eventually did.

  Choking on her sobs, J.C. sank to the floor. I was going to have to get her to a hospital, but I couldn’t let Press know that I had seen her.

  I had to think of Michael first.

  Whatever I did to help her might lead to Press punishing me by keeping Michael from me forever. I knew it was a selfish thought, but I couldn’t help myself.

  The sobbing suddenly abated, and she gripped my arm with fingers whose nails were torn and filthy with dirt and blood. “He told me about Eva. It wasn’t you, Charlotte. He thinks he’s going to kill me, so he told me.”

  “Told you? What did he tell you?” I knelt beside her on the floor. “Tell me about Eva!” I took her by the shoulders. If her head hadn’t turned a fraction of an inch, looking past me, transfixed, I might have shaken her.

  I swung around.

  Terrance.

  Chapter 41

  Roses

  “Hello, stranger.”

  I heard Rachel’s voice but could only see her in my peripheral vision. Turning my head, slowly, I knew I should be afraid, knew I should be moved to action, but I couldn’t make myself do anything. My breath was short and I had the horrible feeling that I might die at any moment.

  Press and Terrance and a man in a rubber clown mask had led us into the theater. I hadn’t seen Rachel at first, but there were several other women, al
l also wearing bizarre masks: a rabbit, a man’s mustached face (though the body below was decidedly female), a mouse, even a pig. Jack, with his silver-blond hair, was Mercury, silver wings like layered sickle blades protruding from his back. The other men were costumed as well. I was sure that the man in the featureless black gauze mask was Hugh Walters, the sheriff. Press had fitted himself with a dark mustache and tidy oiled beard. It, along with the oxblood Victorian waistcoat, proclaimed him to be Faust. When he was close enough for me to whisper, I told him he looked like a fool.

  Once the doors were closed behind us, I had recklessly announced that they should look at J.C. to see what kind of man had brought them all here.

  When everyone stopped to stare at us, I realized how many of them were scantily dressed. Two women, wearing only masks and swathes of pastel tulle on their rather robust bodies, had been interrupted while dancing to the waltz playing on the stereo. A Pulcinella, his blousy pants loosened, his member exposed, had turned away from a shepherdess seated on a lounge in front of one of the room’s tall windows.

  The realization of what was happening—what had been happening—among these people, under the thin guise of play readings and literary conversation and, now, a funeral memorial, swept over me.

  I had been the fool.

  Someone laughed and the party resumed. Press held my arm, and Jack grabbed my elbow to hold me still and stuck me with a needle. Within a few agonizing minutes in which I swore at Press, calling him names I didn’t even remember knowing, I was drowsy, but fought sleep as hard as I could.

  When I woke, it was to Rachel’s voice.

  I lay on a cushioned table or platform of some kind, and my head was raised so that I had a view of the transformed room: the thick carpets and plush velvet curtains. There were modern lamps, standing and on tables, and a number of candelabra filled with lighted candles that smoked faintly in the big room. I smelled burning wax and perfume. Rachel’s My Sin, but there were other scents as well. Laughter and murmuring voices came to me from all directions. Above my head were the theater’s new twin chandeliers. All was comfort, richness. The refinished paneled walls had a silken glow. It should have been beautiful. But it was not. It was pure evil.