Hallow House - Part One

by Jane Toombs

  "Not like Delores," Theola added. "Tabitha was poisoned."

  "By her own brew," Adele said firmly.

  Theola wasn't to be shut up. "They had to have a closed coffin because her face had turned quite black. But you could feel her gray witch eyes staring through the wood at you."

  "You are being very foolish, Theola," Adele told her.

  "I am not. How else did she know what had gone on between Boris and Alicia if she couldn't read minds? You were afraid of her, just as I was."

  "Stan Aarons believes she was a witch,' Vera put in. "I can't accept that."

  "He has read some of her journals," Adele admitted. "I think much of what he says is nonsense, but he believes in it."

  "He said gray eyes were witch eyes." Theola glanced at Johanna as she spoke.

  "That's nonsense," Vera cried, cuddling the baby closer.

  "Boris chose Tabitha for her breeding," Adele said. "I cannot help but believe the blood runs thin in some of those old families. Perhaps that was her problem. What I am certain of is that his bringing her to Hallow House, in the Valley of the Headless Ones, made her worse."

  "Vincent mentioned there was an Indian legend about the valley. Was there a tribe living here when Boris Gregory built the house?"

  "The Indians were afraid of this valley," Adele said. "Boris told us himself he was warned not to build on this spot because there were bones buried here, bones of people with no heads. Boris, of course, paid no attention, but did as he wished, as always."

  "He built Hallow House over a graveyard," Theola added, " because they did dig up old bones during the building. But no skulls. Quite possibly the Indian who danced in the rose garden was trying to appease the disturbed spirits of what may have been his ancestors."

  Adele nodded. "Tabitha wrote in her journal that this man set a curse on Hallow House, but Mr. Grosbeck, who looked at one of Tabitha's journals, says the local Indians would not have done anything of the sort."

  "Tabitha believed it, though, " Theola insisted. "She believed the spirits of the headless ones whispered to her. She wrote about it many times."

  "Didn't you tell me that Delores heard the whispers, too?" Vera asked, by now so caught up in these revelations that she didn't know what to believe.

  "Not exactly," Adele said. "She did tell me she was troubled by recurrent nightmares where someone whispered to her. This was before Johanna was born. Later she told me, 'He wants me to die, Aunt Adele. I'm so afraid sometimes.'"

  "Who wanted her to die?" Vera held her breath as she waited for the answer.

  "I asked her that and she told me I was getting deaf and misunderstood her. When there is nothing wrong with my ears. I may need glasses to read but I hear very well."

  "Delores had enough reason to have nightmares," Theola said. "As we both know well. To think she would use that room of Tabitha's...."

  "The wives are the ones who die," Adele warned. "Don't marry into the Gregory family."

  Vera looked from one to the other of the two old women, so much alike and wondered how much, if any of this she could believe. Their preoccupation with the past struck her as almost ghoul-like.

  As for marrying a Gregory, that would never happen. Glancing at Johanna, she saw the baby was half-asleep. "It's Johanna's bedtime," she said, rising from her chair.

  "Bring her back soon" Adele said.

  "Take good care of her," Theola added.

  Vera nodded agreement to both and said good night. Before going to the nursery, she went down to the kitchen to bring up a bottle in case Johanna woke during the night.

  "There you are," Irma said to her. "I made cocoa for everyone and sent yours up to your bedroom. Did you get it?"

  "I haven't been to my room yet, but thanks."

  "There's some oatmeal cookies, too, nice and raisiny."

  "I'm sure I'll enjoy them. Do you know if Vincent and Jose got back?"

  "Didn't hear the car nor see hide nor hair of neither."

  That meant she'd have to jam a chair under her doorknob tonight, Vera told herself. Locking the door wasn't good enough when you knew someone else had a key.

  Upstairs, Vera found the tray waiting outside her door. She unlocked the door, put the baby down, brought the tray in and set it on the stand beside her bed. She relocked the door before getting Johanna ready for bed.

  When she was sure the baby slept, she readied herself for the night before touching the tray. Underneath the cozy was the cocoa in a pot with a mug to pour it in and four of Irma's cookies on a gold-rimmed plate.

  Vera smiled. It had been a long time since she'd had the chance to read in bed with a delicious snack beside her. She unearthed The Good Earth by Pearl Buck from a dresser drawer, shoved a chair under the door knob and crawled under the covers.

  Her father had given her the book before he died, telling her it was very moving. Up until now she hadn't had time to read it.

  A book about China was just the thing to take her mind off Hallow House and the need to barricade her door against one of those who lived here.

  The cocoa was still warm, though somewhat sweet for her taste. She drank some of it with the cookies and soon the book slipped from her grasp and she snuggled down into the covers.

  A sound. A sound she knew in some corner of her mind she shouldn't be hearing. There was danger in that grating noise, a terrible danger. But she couldn't move, her limbs were too heavy with sleep and her eyes stayed sealed shut...

  She wasn't dreaming. Vera knew this with frightening certainty, but at the same time she felt caught in the same temporary paralysis a dream brings. She couldn't move or speak. She felt herself swaying, as though she was crossing the bay on a ferry during a day of choppy water. Yet she was aware she wasn't on a ferry, wasn't in San Francisco.

  The swaying stopped. Fear gripped her. Where was she? If only she could open her eyes. All was blackness, pressing close with suffocating intensity. It filled her lungs with a miasma of evil, seeming also to have weight, holding her in place so she couldn't move.

  Wrongness circulated through her. In vain she struggled to open her mouth, to call out. A baby's frightened wail cut across her rising panic.

  A name hung bright in her mind. Johanna. The baby was Johanna. She had to help her..

  With an immense effort of will, Vera opened her eyes. Flickering lights swelled and dimmed as she sought to focus. She was lying on her back, but not in her bed. Or even her bedroom. Where was she now with candles lit? She struggled to turn her heavy head and saw Johanna lying beside her, tangled in blankets, crying and kicking. How had they gotten wherever they were? Her mind worked sluggishly, her thoughts refusing to come clear.

  Vera managed to turn on her side, the movement taking forever because her arms and legs didn't seem to belong to her. After several futile tries, one of her hands grasped Johanna's blanket and she pulled the screaming baby toward her and held her close.

  "There, there," she mumbled with a tongue so thick the words came out slurred beyond recognition.

  She stared at the part of the room visible to her. A step rose in front of her, not really a step, more like a wide slab. On the wall behind it was a red hanging. Where was she? Holding the sobbing baby against her, she tried to think coherently.

  Not a slab. An altar. Candles lit. A church? St. Alexander's? Why was red hanging behind the altar? But somehow she knew it wasn't an altar and she wasn't in San Francisco. She'd left the city. To go where?

  To Hallow House. To take care of Johanna. The baby was here with her. Crying. But where in Hallow House were they? Why couldn't she sit up?

  A noise from behind made hair rise on her nape. Holding the baby to her, she inched over onto her back, her breath quickening to terrified gasps. What would she see when she turned?

  Her frightened gaze took in the rest of the room. Small. She could see a door. Black. A whimper caught in the back of her throat. The black door. She was on the other side of it. In Tabitha's room, the room where Delores....


  As she watched, the door began to swing open. She clutched at Johanna. A dark figure stood framed in the opening. The whimper in her throat rose to be lost in Johanna's wailing.

  Chapter 14

  "Oh my God!"

  A man's voice, Vera could tell. But whose? In the dimly lit room, with her eyes refusing to focus properly, she couldn't see who he was when he bent over her.

  She was unable to prevent him from lifting the baby away from her. When he started trying to pull her to her feet she resisted, a limp weight as much from being unable to help herself as on purpose.

  "What's happened to you?" he demanded.

  John's voice. Thank God.

  With effort she slurred the word, "Drugged," in a voice that didn't sound like her own.

  "Drugged?"

  She'd figured that much out and also how. "Cocoa," she managed to say.

  His tugs finally brought her to a sitting position, though she was forced to support herself with her hands.

  "Can you get up onto your feet?" he asked.

  She shook her head. With her head whirling, it was hard enough to remain sitting. She'd never felt so weak.

  "I can't manage you and Johanna at once," he said. "If you--"

  "Please," she begged, terror thrumming in her blood.

  She couldn't bear to be left alone in this room while he carried the baby to safety.

  John went to the door and shouted: "Stan! Vincent!" After what seemed forever, she heard Stan's voice. "What in the devil?"

  "Take the baby to the nursery," John ordered Stan. "Stay with her until I get there."

  As John was struggling to raise Vera to her feet, Sergei, wearing pajamas, came into the little room. "I heard you calling--" he began, then broke off to stare at Vera. "What's going on? Dad?"

  "Help me get Miss Morgan down to her bedroom," John ordered.

  With Sergei on one side of her and John on the other, Vera regained her feet and stumbled between them as they half carried her down the stairs and along the corridor to her bedroom.

  "Did you unlock the door and bring her up to that room?" Sergei asked his father.

  "Of course not!" John snapped.

  Vera's head was beginning to clear some and she was relieved to see Stan inside her room, holding a whimpering Johanna.

  As John took over from Sergei and eased her down onto her bed, she mumbled, "Bring me the baby."

  Stan handed her over with alacrity.

  "I'm grateful, Stan," John told him. "I'll talk to you in the morning. You, too, son. Thanks." He ushered them out and closed the door behind them.

  Vera's gaze followed his around the room. The tray with the cocoa was nowhere in sight. Whoever had drugged the cocoa had made sure to take all evidence away.

  Johanna's fussing escalated to a wail. About to ask John to fetch the bottle she'd left in the nursery, Vera paused. What if the formula had also been drugged?

  "Is Johanna all right?"

  Hitching herself into a sitting position against the pillows, she said, "The baby's hungry." The words came out without slurring and Vera thanked heaven she'd regained control of her voice.

  "I'm afraid to feed her the bottle I brought up earlier in case someone's tampered with it," she went on. Could you get an unopened bottle of dairy milk from the refrigerator? Irma usually leaves clean baby bottles draining on the sink board. Please pour the milk into a baby bottle and bring it back with you."

  "Of course."

  He returned with the bottle and Johanna sucked on the nipple eagerly, not minding that the milk was cold. Vera asked him to fetch her a clean diaper, which he did. Then he sat on the end of her bed watching her feed the baby.

  When Johanna was satisfied, Vera changed her diaper and told John where to put the wet one. Then she relaxed against the pillow, cuddling the baby.

  "What happened?" John asked, resuming his seat on her bed.

  "I don't know exactly. Irma told me she'd sent a tray of cocoa and cookies up to me. I was in talking to Adele and Theola at the time, so whoever brought it up found my door locked and left the tray outside the bedroom in the hall. I brought it in and , after Johanna was settled, ate the cookies and drank some of the cocoa. It was too sweet-- probably to cover the taste of whatever was added to it--so I didn't I drink it all. Then I fell asleep."

  "With the door locked?"

  "Oh, yes. And I'd also put a chair under the doorknob." They both glanced toward the door. Parallel scratches ran across the waxed oak flooring.

  John scowled. "Whoever has an extra key unlocked the door and managed to push the chair aside."

  "I should have heard the noise. I did hear something but the drug wouldn't let me wake up. Then I began to think I was on a ferry boat in rough waters..."

  "Somebody carried you upstairs."

  "But I'd have been a dead weight," she protested.

  He half-smiled. "You can't weigh much over a hundred pounds. If Sergei hadn't shown up I could have carried you down the stairs."

  Somehow she wished he had.

  "The next I remember," she went on hastily, "is hearing Johanna cry and struggling to wake up. I couldn't move, couldn't think."

  "I heard her crying. When she kept on and on I decided something was wrong. Then I realized the crying wasn't coming from the nursery but from the third floor and I...." His words trailed off, his face haggard.

  He was remembering what happened to Delores, Vera told herself. She reached and touched his hand.

  To her surprise, he grasped her hand with both of his, sending a thrill through her.

  "I knew if Johanna was in that damn room, so were you. You're so young, a lovely young woman, and I knew it was my fault if you'd come to grief. I couldn't bear to think of you up there in that hideous room."

  "You rescued me," she said. "I'll be fine tomorrow. Johanna's all right, too. You came in time."

  His hands caressed hers. "I can't understand how you got into that room--I thought I had the only key. It's not a simple skeleton key like yours."

  "There still could be another key." She freed her hand from his to shift Johanna, who was sliding off her lap.

  "This can't go on." John spoke vehemently.

  Vera blinked at him, her eyes heavy. Their still must be remnants of the drug in her system because she was more groggy than honestly sleepy. Much as she wished to keep John sitting with her, looking into her eyes and telling her he was concerned about her, she knew she couldn't manage to stay awake much longer. She yawned involuntarily.

  "Here, let me put Johanna in her crib." John lifted the sleeping baby and carried her into the nursery. When he came back, he brought the rocker. "I'll sit here until morning," he said. "Until Jose is awake to put on the new lock he got in town. Don't be afraid to go to sleep. I'll be right here."

  Vera smiled at him. She'd been wrong in saying she didn't trust anyone at Hallow House. She trusted John. Why had life been so cruel to this wonderful man? No one had treated her with such tenderness since her father died. But what she felt for John had nothing to do with affection for a father.

  Right or wrong, he'd become the man of her dreams.

  She'd never been attracted to men her own age, for the most part she found them callow and uninteresting. Or, on the other hand, pushing for liberties she had not intention of granting. John was different. He was wonderful.

  He reached and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. "Go to sleep," he murmured. "I won't let anything happen to you. Ever."

  She longed to continue looking at him, at the warmth in his brown eyes, she couldn't stay awake. As she drifted into sleep's embrace, her last thought was that Jose must have come back. Which meant Vincent had. Why hadn't he answered John's call as Stan had done?

  When Vera woke to daylight, the clock on the dresser told her it was nine. Late. Her gaze fixed on the rocker but it wasn't John she saw.

  "Good morning, dear," Theola said. "John brought the baby along to Adele to watch until you woke. He asked me to watch over
you."

  Vera rubbed her eyes. Her head ached, her mouth felt stuffed with cotton that had been soaked in some vile-tasting medicine and her stomach clenched when she thought of food. The drug was probably some kind of barbiturate, she decided.

  Surely Johanna would be all right with Adele until she could get herself washed and dressed. Neither of the old ladies could be guilty of shutting her into that room last night. The two of them together couldn't have possibly gotten her up the stairs.

  "Thank you, Theola," she said. "That was kind of you."

  Once the old woman hobbled away, Vera hurried through her toilet, dressed and hurried into the corridor still tucking her blouse into her skirt. She'd almost reached Adele's suite when she saw John was coming up the stairs with Jose behind him.

  "I'll see Jose get started with the lock and then I'm afraid I must leave," he said.

  "Leave?" she repeated.

  "If there was any way to postpone the San Francisco trip, I would. With the new lock in place you should be safe until my return." He reached out as though to touch her, then drew his hand back, glancing at Jose, who was making his way down the corridor toward her room.

  "You won't take any chances?" he asked. "You'll be careful?"

  Joy warmed her heart. He cared what happened to her. Nothing else mattered at that moment--not the danger or even Johanna. Nothing but John and the fact he was looking at her with more than ordinary concern.

  After the moment was over, she watched John head for the stairs. Leaving Jose removing the old lock, Vera wandered along the to Adele's door to retrieve the baby, her mind still on John.

  I've only known him three days, she thought. Can I be falling in love with him so soon? How can that be?

  Then she smiled, knowing it didn't matter how long she'd known him. Or even if he felt as she did. Though she hoped he did, at least a little.

  Theola opened the door to her knock. Aunt Adele was in the rocker, holding Johanna, who seemed no worse for the night's experience. When the baby caught sight of her she reached up her arms. "Mama," she babbled. "Mama."