The Vanishing

by Wendy Webb

  Adrian was on his feet in a second. His mother folded herself into his arms, looking as tiny and fragile as a baby bird.

  “I haven’t so much as said her name in so many years,” she sputtered out, her shoulders shaking with the sobs that were overtaking her body. “Audra, my darling girl.”

  That same feeling of nausea growled in my stomach, threatening to bubble up. Who was Audra? And why did the very mention of her name cause my blood to run cold?

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  I’m sorry, my dear,” Mrs. Sinclair said to me, after blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. “This is not an easy story to tell.”

  She grasped my hand and squeezed it on her way back to her chair. She sunk into it and crossed her legs, and took a deep breath.

  “But I must tell it,” she went on. “I owe that to you. And to Audra. It is her story, too.”

  “Who is Audra, Mrs. Sinclair?” I asked as gently as I could. Saying her name out loud caused that same chill to run through me. My head was beginning to pound.

  She turned her eyes to her son.

  “Audra is my daughter,” Adrian said, swirling the ice in his Scotch, his eyes brimming with tears. “Was. She was my daughter.”

  I gasped. He had never once spoken of a daughter. He and his mother held each other’s gaze across the room. Drew was looking out the window into the darkness, sipping on his drink. Nobody was saying anything, as the fire crackled and snapped.

  “What happened to her?” I finally asked, knowing for certain I wouldn’t like the answer.

  “That, my dear, is the heart of this story.” Mrs. Sinclair sighed deeply.

  “Only when you’re ready, Mother,” Adrian said. “Take your time. It has been ten years. It can wait a bit longer.”

  In fact, if they were to ask me, it could wait forever. Suddenly, I wanted to hear no more of this story. “I can see this is upsetting you, Mrs. Sinclair,” I tried. “We can wait to talk about this another day.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Thank you for that, darling. But I have begun the tale, and shall continue the telling. It needs to be told and you need to hear it.

  “We were speaking about greed, and wanting more and more, despite having it all. It is a dangerous thing, my dear, unbridled ambition. It brings out the worst. It certainly did here, and in me.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “My novel about Seraphina was published to worldwide acclaim. Bestseller lists, millions of copies sold. I traveled all over the world doing readings and book signings. It was a wonderful, happy time, it really was.”

  She smiled at Adrian, who took over the tale when his mother’s voice faltered. “It was during this time, Julia, that I married a woman I had met at university. The lovely Katherine.” He smiled at the thought of her, a faraway look in his eyes. “After our honeymoon, I brought my new wife here, to Havenwood, to begin our life together. I had the affairs of this estate to run, my mother’s investment portfolio to manage, that sort of thing. She’s right; it was a happy time. Made all the happier by the news, about a year after we moved to Havenwood, that Katherine was expecting.”

  “I was over the moon about it,” Mrs. Sinclair said, beaming. “A grandchild!”

  “And there was no more doting a grandmother than Amaris Sinclair,” Adrian said, chuckling softly. “Audra was on horseback almost as soon as she could walk, courtesy of my mother. We had several Shetland ponies at that time, and little Audra couldn’t get enough of them. Do you remember, Mother?”

  “Seeing Audra go around and around in the field on the back of a pony is one of my most cherished memories,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “The look on her face—sheer joy. I try to think of that when the images of what came later haunt me.”

  Drew slid onto the couch next to me and crossed his legs. “Those are beautiful memories,” he said to Mrs. Sinclair. “I’d love to leave the story there, with wee Audra flying around the field on horseback.”

  “Indeed,” she said, nodding. “But we all know that’s not to be. The crux of this tale happened when our girl was just a child.”

  “Sing a song of sixpence / A pocket full of rye…”

  There it was again: a child’s voice singing softly in my ear. I snapped my head around toward the door, looking for the ghostly girl with the wispy blond hair. But nothing was there. And then it occurred to me: Was this Audra, come out to play?

  “Julia,” Mrs. Sinclair said, bringing me back into the room. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “I was just… thinking about how lovely the little girl must have been. That’s all.”

  “She was indeed,” she said, holding my gaze. “I was so busy doting on my granddaughter, I hadn’t written a novel for some time. There were a couple after Seraphina, as you know, but the fact was it was such a happy time around Havenwood during those years that I didn’t feel much like delving into the sorts of dark topics that were the hallmarks of my novels.”

  “Why didn’t you write about something else? A romance, maybe?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Oh, that’s not done. Nobody would want to read a happy story by Amaris Sinclair. No, my readers were looking for a good scare, and I was bound to give that to them. In fact, my publisher was pressuring me for a new novel. The problem was I couldn’t conjure it up, no matter how I tried. Those sorts of plots and characters just weren’t coming to me.”

  “It was about that time the letter surfaced,” Drew said.

  “The letter?” I asked.

  “The one you came across, in the back of the biography,” he said to me. “The letter from Seraphina to Andrew.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Sinclair looked at me, her eyes shining. “You’ve seen it?”

  “I have,” I said.

  She nodded. “You see, my dear, when I wrote the novel about Seraphina, all I knew—all history knew—about her last séance at Havenwood was that it went horribly wrong, people got hurt, and that it scared her enough to leave that life completely. So I embellished and took artistic license in the book. That’s because nobody knew exactly what happened that night, so I had to use my imagination. But when we got our hands on that letter and found out that something called the Devil’s Toy Box was the cause… What is it they say about ignorance?”

  Mrs. Sinclair cleared her throat and continued. “I had no idea what a Devil’s Toy Box was. Who did? But it sounded dark and horrible and frightening—perfect for one of my novels, don’t you think? The idea of it consumed me. Finally, I had a kernel around which to build a new novel. I contacted my publisher right away, and he was thrilled, to say the least. So I started working.”

  I furrowed my brow. “I don’t remember one of your novels dealing with a Devil’s Toy Box,” I said.

  She smiled and shook her head. “That’s because I never wrote it. As I said, I didn’t know the first thing about such a device. So, I began my research here at Havenwood, in the library. I didn’t come up with anything. I traveled back to Baltimore, to the same antiquarian bookstore where I found Seraphina’s biography years earlier. I knew it had a huge occult section with several first edition Poe novels, and the owner of the shop was quite an odd duck himself, so I thought if anybody would know about the Devil’s Toy Box, it would be him.

  “Over the course of one’s life, Julia, there are actions that pave the way for everything else that comes after, good or bad. Simple moments: Turning right instead of left on the street and running headlong into the man you’ll marry. Choosing a ham sandwich instead of soup at the deli and choking on it. Diving into a pool of water and cracking your head on the bottom, paralyzing yourself for life. One of those moments, for me, came when I walked across the threshold of that bookstore. That simple action changed my life forever, Julia. It changed Adrian’s life. And Audra’s. And Katherine’s. And, I’m sorry to say, yours. If I hadn’t gone into Ravenspoint Books that bleak and rainy afternoon, we’d all be doing something else right now. Adrian might be attending his daughter’s graduation.
I might be on a book tour, enjoying the success of another novel. And you, darling, you would have never come to Havenwood.”

  A dark thought hovered around me, then. I’d be dead. The worst thing ever to happen in the lives of the Sinclairs had saved my life. She told me it was tied to the reason she brought me here, and because of that, I wasn’t in my house in Chicago when it was set afire. If not for whatever tragedy unfolded all those years ago, I’d have burned along with all of my belongings. I could feel Adrian’s stare boring a hole in my skull, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Mrs. Sinclair shifted in her chair and took a sip of her drink before continuing.

  “Rain was drizzling down and fog hung in the air, and all of that gloom seemed to swirl inside the bookstore before I could close the door behind me. I’ll never forget those dusty shelves, books stacked haphazardly throughout, some on the floor here, some piled on a chair there. Cases were filled with ancient volumes, but there was no real order to things. Sixteenth-century Bibles sat next to first edition copies of The Raven next to original versions of Poor Richard’s Almanack. Papers were piled high behind the counter, and several resident cats prowled the shelves. I could never figure out if the store was a refuge for lovers of old books or the result of one madman’s lifelong collecting of random volumes.

  “That madman, the owner, a peculiar sort of man with wild gray hair that jutted out in all directions and little round glasses that were always perched on the end of his nose, was expecting me. I had called him months previously and asked him to keep his eye out for a box.

  “ ‘I think you’re going to like this very much,’ he said to me, shuffling into the back room. I waited for what seemed to be forever until he reemerged with a box in his hands. The sight of it made me gasp. It was slightly taller than it was wide, with a pyramid-shaped cover. It was crafted out of wood and covered with ancient symbols that had been burned into it—a pentagram, the signs of the zodiac, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and other symbols I didn’t recognize.

  “He slid the box across the counter, and as I grasped it for the first time, my hands burned, as though they were on fire.”

  Mrs. Sinclair’s eyes were shining and, I could swear, darkening as she spoke. I moved closer to Drew and took his hand.

  “I lifted up the cover and peered into the box. It was lined with mirrors, even the lid.

  “ ‘This is beautiful,’ I murmured, mesmerized by the illusion of infinity inside that box. It was as though it were a gateway to forever. Or the beyond.” She shook her head. “And in a way, I suppose that it was.

  “ ‘Beautiful and deadly,’ the man said to me. ‘You need to be very careful with it.’ He reached into the pocket of the threadbare gray cardigan he was wearing and produced a thin volume. ‘Read this before you even think about using that box,’ he told me. ‘It’s important.’ ”

  Mrs. Sinclair sighed. “Of course, I knew better. I was a famous horror novelist.” She let out a strangled laugh. “And so, I took the box, tucking the book into my purse, and left. And I brought that thing back to Havenwood, causing the ruin of us all.” She fished a handkerchief out of her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. Then she covered them with the handkerchief and let out a sob. She didn’t speak again for several minutes.

  “Were you thinking of using the box for inspiration for a novel?” I asked, hoping to bring her back from wherever she had gone.

  She shook her head. “Not only that.” She turned to her son. “Oh, Adrian,” she said, her voice wavering. “How can I continue the story? How can I possibly utter the words?”

  He crossed the room and perched on the ottoman in front of her chair, taking her hands. “You have begun, Mother,” he said, his voice soothing. “You must continue. I’ll be right here.” He looked at Drew and me. “And so will we all.”

  “Very well,” she said, taking a deep breath and shoring up her tattered nerves. “I might as well just finally say it. Admit it. We all went through it, everyone at this house, but we haven’t spoken of it since, and it’s time the truth was said aloud in the very room where it occurred.

  “I brought the box back into this house in order to conduct a séance, just like the one that sent Seraphina running away in fear.”

  My eyes grew wide, that same nausea reaching out from somewhere deep within me. “But why? Why would you do such a thing? Especially because you knew what happened to Seraphina! Somebody died that night; we know that now!”

  She nodded her head slowly. “Yes, of course you would have those questions. Anyone would. But not me. Because, darling, I was a famous horror novelist.” She drew out the words until they were almost nonsensical. “I had been called the female Edgar Allan Poe. My books were considered classics; they were part of the curricula of students worldwide. The problem was, darling, my readers were expecting another book from me, my publisher was demanding it, and I was out of ideas.”

  “So, you thought a séance would give you some ideas?” I asked, not wanting to believe what I was hearing.

  “Not just that, I’m afraid,” she said. “Remember, I had written some of the most frightening books of our time, imagined some of the most macabre scenarios and most demonic villains. I had been down every dark and lonely road known to man. I needed something fresh. Something real. My imagination was tapped out. I knew full well that the last séance Seraphina conducted here at Havenwood went horribly wrong; I knew full well it was because of the Devil’s Toy Box. I still sought it out and brought it into this house because I wanted to experience the horror of it. I needed to experience it. It’s like an addict, my dear, needing more and more of her drug of choice to feel the effects.”

  Her words hung in the air like fog, wafting around us. I held my breath, not knowing quite what to say next.

  “And so,” she went on, her eyes shining with tears, “I put the box on the table.” She gestured across the room to the round table behind the sofa near the windows. “That very table. And I waited for a few days, until the time was right. And then I announced to everyone that we were going to have a séance.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Adrian and Katherine, Drew, the staff, everyone at Havenwood at that time,” she said. “I didn’t invite outsiders, not knowing what would happen. Also, remember, this was supposed to be inspiration for a new book, and I didn’t want random people aware of that, either. So I decided it would just be family and household staff.”

  She took a sip of her drink and eyed her son. “Go on, Mother,” he said, smiling at her. “It will be all right.”

  She turned her gaze to me, then, her eyes looking like those of a frightened child.

  “We gathered around the table, Adrian, Marion, a few other staff members, and me. There were seven of us when we started, as I recall.”

  I shot Drew a look. “Not you?”

  He shook his head and opened his mouth to respond, but Mrs. Sinclair cut him off. “He was the only sensible one among us,” she said, smiling at him. “He knew about the power of the box and refused to participate. He tried to dissuade me from going ahead with it, but, of course, I knew better.”

  I could feel beads of perspiration form on my forehead. “But don’t you need a psychic for something like that?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry. “I mean, it’s not like the average person can conduct a séance.”

  “We did have a psychic here for the séance that night, my darling Julia,” Mrs. Sinclair said slowly, as though she were talking to a child. “Someone with a rare and special gift.” She caught Adrian’s eye, and he nodded his head, almost imperceptibly. And then she turned to me and spoke the most terrifying word I had ever heard.

  “You.”

  FORTY

  I looked from one to another of them in turn, my mouth agape, my mind scrambling in several directions at once, all gelling at the corner of “run” and “now.” But I was frozen with terror, unable to move.

  “That’s insane,” I said, my voice cra
cking. “You have to know what you’re saying is impossible.”

  Adrian and his mother exchanged fearful glances.

  “Darling, we know this is a shock,” Mrs. Sinclair said, rising from her chair and coming to kneel in front of me. Her voice was low and soothing. “We knew this conversation was ahead of us, but we had hoped it would be later, when you had gotten to know us and you’d fallen in love with Havenwood all over again. Frankly, we hoped you’d remember, all on your own. That just the mere act of being here would jog your memory.”

  “But there’s nothing to remember,” I said, drawing out the words. “I’ve never been here before. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not a psychic. Why would I come to lead a séance if I wasn’t a psychic?”

  Mrs. Sinclair smiled. “You wouldn’t.”

  Something about the way they were all looking at me, smiling nervous smiles, chilled me to the bone. I found my strength and pushed myself off the couch, taking a few backward steps toward the doorway.

  Adrian stood up quickly, as did Drew. Both men moved toward me. My hands flew up before me in a warning.

  “Don’t come any closer,” I hissed, not having the slightest idea what I’d do to back up that threat. But they stopped where they were nonetheless.

  “Please don’t leave,” Adrian said. “You’re in no danger here, Julia, even though it feels like you are.”

  “I don’t know who you think I am, or what you think this is, or why you asked me to come here,” I said, tears stinging at my eyes. “But you need to be perfectly clear on one thing: I am not the person you think I am. I have never been to Havenwood before. I have never met any of you before coming here. I have never conducted a séance and I don’t know anything about—”

  My stomach churned and seized with the same type of roiling nausea that had overtaken me that morning. I realized it had been threatening to bubble to the surface during this entire conversation. The room shimmered and swayed, and I felt my eyelids getting terribly heavy and my body succumbing to the force of it all.