Legacy

by Cochran, Molly

  I couldn’t answer. I just cried into her lacy chest that smelled of lavender and comfort and home. This was my home, with her and Aunt Agnes and people who were like me. This was where I belonged, and it was crazy to think I could live anywhere else.

  “Katherine, we’re going home now,” my father said.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!” I spat, still hanging on to Gram. “I don’t care—”

  “Darling!” With her usual impeccable timing, Mim launched herself into my father’s arms, her breath reeking of alcohol thinly disguised by mints.

  “Go with your father,” Gram whispered, gently disentangling my arms from her. “You must.”

  “Hello, ladies,” Mim said brightly. “Tragedy about the fire, isn’t it?”

  Dad and Aunt Agnes both closed their eyes in exasperation at the same moment.

  “Er . . . Katherine and I were about to leave for home,” he said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Mim said. “As soon as I meet whoever lives here. It’s company policy. When it’s a big disaster, Wonderland donates blankets and things, but this doesn’t look like much of anything.”

  Agnes gave her a cold stare. Gram fanned herself with a handkerchief.

  “Madison,” Dad said softly, “these are the women whose house caught fire.”

  “Oh, my God, how terrible,” she gushed, not missing a beat. “It must be horrific to see your life go up in a blaze.”

  “That was hardly the case,” Agnes said, but Mim apparently didn’t hear her.

  “How can I help? More to the point, how can Wonderland help? Of course, we’ll provide a hotel room for starters. A caring company doesn’t let its neighbors live on the street.”

  “We were never in danger of that,” Gram said drily.

  “Do you need blankets? Towels?”

  “I assure you, Miss Mimson, we are quite capable of surviving this without the aid of Wonderland.” Agnes said the store’s name as if she were speaking about used condoms. Then she took Gram’s arm and led her away. My great-grandmother turned back to look at me, her face sadder than I’d ever seen it.

  “Well, how was I to know?” Mim asked belligerently. “This place is like a circus.” She gestured broadly at the assembled crowd. “At least I made it here before the news crew left.”

  “Thank God for that,” I said. My father narrowed his eyes at me, but Mim wasn’t paying attention.

  “You know, the people here are weird,” she added in a whisper. “Do you remember that horrible groundbreaking ceremony?” she asked as she put her arm around me. “The whole place was like one big mudhole. I actually lost my shoe in it. Ugh!” Then she laughed, high and tinkling.

  Good thing I was already a pariah, since the other most despised individual in Old Town had just put her arm around me. To everyone watching, I was Madam Mim’s junior buddy, going off to her lair with her after possibly setting fire to my great-grandmother’s home. To make things worse, my father had given my extremely respectable relatives the impression that I was some kind of sweating, rutting harlot before slapping me in public. Worst of all, the person I loved had been beaten so badly that the paramedic wanted to file a police report about it, and I wasn’t even allowed to see him.

  It had been the worst single hour of my life.

  I shrugged off Mim’s arm. Instantly she transferred her affections to my father, leaning on his shoulder, clasping his hand as if they were taking a stroll in the park.

  “Please, Madison,” he muttered, trying to slide her off him.

  “Oh, don’t be so stuffy. It’s good that they see me as human.”

  He stopped in his tracks, astonished. “Has it ever possibly occurred to you that not everything I do, think, feel, or say is about you?”

  She let go of his hand. “Well, if you’re going to be that way about it . . .”

  Clenching his jaw, Dad dragged me over to the car, leaving Mim behind on the sidewalk. “Get in,” he said, holding open the door.

  “What if I don’t? Are you going to hit me again?”

  He sighed. “Katherine, please . . .” He let the sentence drop.

  I looked him in the eye. “I hate you,” I said levelly.

  He didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he said, “I can’t help that.” Then he got in the driver’s side and waited.

  CHAPTER

  •

  THIRTY

  AHRIMAN

  Back at Mim’s house, I noticed that both wine bottles had been cleared away, and no cigarette butts or ashes were in sight. She could get it together when she needed to. Then I stomped upstairs and slammed the door to my room.

  To make things even worse, it was my birthday. Earlier, I kept thinking that Dad was waiting for dinner to say Happy Birthday or give me a card or something, or maybe even that he and Mim were planning to take me out somewhere. In the past, sometimes Dad would take me to a restaurant. Of course, I’d had to remind him for about a week ahead of time that my birthday was coming. I guess I should have reminded him this year.

  I started pushing—a calendar, a wicker picture frame, some books. The calendar slapped against the wall, and the books all crashed into each other in midair. But as soon as I could harness my breathing, things got to be more fun.

  I tuned the radio to a classical station that was playing the overture to Carmen, and began to play. Pushing books was like juggling balls: Three in the air, then four, all twirling in formation. The calendar fanned into a disk, whirring away in a corner. The picture in its frame just kind of zoomed back and forth.

  I was so into the whole mini-extravaganza that I almost didn’t hear the perfunctory knock before my dad bombed in. I had to drop everything where it was, causing a deafening crash.

  “What was that?” he shouted.

  “The bed must have hit the wall,” I said, turning off the music.

  He looked around. There were piles of books on the floor, an overturned chair, two lamps lying on their sides, my wicker mirror and hamper which had been do-si-do-ing around one another, my hairbrush (it had been air-conducting to the music) and a scattering of tissues that had been making patterns in the air. Even the radio itself was buried in one of the pillows on the bed.

  “This room is a mess,” he said.

  “I’ll clean it.”

  He just stood there, looking out of place and uncomfortable. My anger had dissipated with the pushing. “Okay,” I said, resigned. “What can I do for you, Dad?”

  He cleared off a little spot and sat down on the edge of my bed. “I’m sorry I hit you,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “You were rude about Madison.”

  “Yes, I was.” But truthful.

  “And I was rude about you.”

  That threw me. “Are you apologizing or something?” I asked.

  “Something,” he said. “Not apologizing, exactly.”

  “Oh.”

  “Except for hitting you. That was wrong. I’m apologizing for that.”

  “You already did.”

  “Yes, well . . . But the other . . .”

  “You mean my opinion that your girlfriend’s a ho?”

  He was going to come back at me, but stopped himself. “No. I meant your running off to see that boy.”

  “I didn’t run off to see him. He was there, in the ambulance. Peter’s my friend, and he was hurt—”

  “He’s more than a friend, Katy.”

  I looked out the window. “Okay.” Point ceded.

  “And you know where that was going, that day on the beach, don’t you?”

  I sighed loudly. “Look, how long am I going to have to—”

  “Let’s not have that argument again. He’s the brother of the child your mother tried to kill.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said.

  I bit my lip. “Sure, Dad,” I said.

  “You don’t under
stand. This town . . . I just want to forget everything that happened here.”

  “I have forgotten,” I said.

  “Well, I haven’t!” He paced. “Look, you may not believe me, but I do care about you, Katherine. Or Katy, whatever you want to be called.”

  I crossed my arms. “Right. What’s-her-name is really broken up about how much you care about her.”

  With a swat, he sent the radio flying across the room. It smashed against the wall. “I’m not going to tolerate that kind of attitude from you.”

  I looked at the broken pieces of my radio. It had been pink, like everything else in the room, but designed to look like a retro forties radio. I’d liked it, and now it was destroyed, like everything else that had mattered to me.

  “I’m taking you out of that school.”

  He’d gone right for the big guns. “Please, Dad,” I whispered.

  “I don’t like the direction your life has taken. Those women—”

  “Those women are my relatives, Dad.” My voice was barely audible, even to myself.

  He clenched his jaw. “Believe me, if you knew what they were—”

  “I do. It’s you who don’t know what they are, because you’ve never given them the chance, the same way you never give anyone—”

  “That’s enough.” He stood up.

  “Please, Dad,” I begged. “Please don’t . . .” I spoke softly, trying not to sound hysterical, trying not to antagonize him. Because really, I wanted to scream and hit him, slap him harder than he’d slapped me. I wanted to tell him that I’d never had anything in my life until I came here, and now that I finally had a reason to wake up in the morning, he was taking it away from me.

  I knew I had to bring my feelings under control, but it was hard. In a corner, some of the debris stirred. The cord to the radio snaked out, its plug questing toward my father.

  “What’s that?” he asked, startled. The plug dropped with a clink. “A mouse? Good God, Katherine, this room is so filthy, you’re drawing vermin. I suppose your dorm room is in the same condition.”

  “No, Dad. And there are no—”

  “You were never slovenly before you came here. You were never antagonistic or defiant. You were certainly never promiscuous . . .”

  “She was never alive,” Mim said from the doorway.

  Dad rolled his eyes. “Maybe you’d better take a rest, Madison,” he said with undisguised contempt, the way you’d talk to a drunk. The way I’d talked to her after dinner, I realized, suddenly feeling ashamed and bad for her. She’d been trying to help.

  “I’m not the one who needs a rest . . . Harrison,” she said pointedly. “You do. And so does this unending punishment.”

  Dad squinted his eyes closed, as if someone had just squirted lemon juice in them. “I beg your pardon?” he said slowly. “I was under the impression that I was having a private—repeat private—conversation with my daughter.”

  “Then you were mistaken, darling, because this is my—repeat my—house.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Let me assure you, in that case, that can be quickly remedied—”

  “Sit down, Harrison,” she commanded.

  He sat.

  “Katy is your daughter, and you’re responsible for her welfare. But this perpetual imprisonment, humiliating her in front of people who are important to her, slapping her in public, and withdrawing her from school are not justifiable consequences for what she’s done.”

  “You don’t know what she’s done.”

  “She hurt your feelings. She made new friends. She fell in love. She stopped needing you.”

  Dad looked outraged.

  “She’s growing up. Or trying to. And you need to back off.”

  Slowly, but fast enough so I could see the change, the outrage turned to pure astonishment. I’m sure no one had ever spoken to my father that way.

  “As for you,” she said, pointing an acrylic fingernail at me, “this room is inexcusable.” Her head swiveled toward the corner. “Who broke that radio?”

  She looked accusingly at my father. He looked at his nails.

  “It cost fifty dollars,” she said. “You’ll pay me.”

  Dad nodded, almost imperceptibly. He was always fair about money.

  “And you’ll clean it up,” she said to me.

  “Okay,” I answered meekly.

  “And whether or not she stays in school here is not a decision you’ll be making tonight,” she said to my father. “So get out of this room, Harrison. You’ve both said enough for one day. I need a cigarette.” Then she opened the door wider and made this subtle but extremely intimidating facial expression that propelled Dad off my bed.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, I suppose a little cooling off might be in order,” he said. “But the next time I come into this room, it had better be clean, and I mean spotless.”

  Mim’s eyes were the last thing I saw before the door closed behind them both. Eyes that made it perfectly clear who was in charge. Jeez, some people don’t even need magic.

  I got up and started to straighten up the room. Manually. I didn’t trust myself enough to use magic under the circumstances.

  I picked up the pieces of the radio and put them in the wastebasket. I hung the mirror and set up the two fallen lamps. Among last term’s textbooks, I discovered Peter’s old notebook, with his instructions for the binding spell. I don’t know how it ended up with my stuff, but I was glad to have it. It was like having a little bit of him with me.

  I finished cleaning my room around midnight. No one came to inspect it. By the time everything was finished, I was so tired that all I could manage was to take off my shoes before I lay down on the bed.

  And let myself think about Peter. Peter, sitting in the back of the ambulance, trying to cover the marks on his back. Those terrible marks . . . They’d even scared the paramedic. It was as if he’d been whipped . . . I curled up with his notebook pressed tightly against my chest and slowly drifted off to sleep.

  Listen to reason, Peter. You’ll find it’s the only way. Your father did.

  “My father’s dead. You killed him.”

  We? Surely even you must know that isn’t true. Your father died of fright. A scared rabbit, dying the same way he’d lived. In fear.

  What’s going on, I thought from somewhere deep in my mind. Got to wake up, got to wake . . .

  Don’t you remember? You were six. Old enough to recall. He brought you and your brother to Hattie’s after he’d killed your mother . . .

  “No! You’re a liar! You—”

  We have no reason to lie. None at all.

  “My mother had cancer.”

  Yes. But she died of suffocation. A pillow. Painless, really. A favor, just as you’d be doing your brother a favor . . .

  Got to wake up. This has to be a nightmare. It has to be.

  Peter arching backward. Welts like snakes on his back, drawing blood. He closes his mouth against the pain.

  She was dying anyway. The pillow over her face was a mercy.

  Peter closes his eyes. He can’t bear to look at its face, its eyes shining with mirth.

  Yes. A mercy. The boy is an idiot. An inadequate vessel.

  Peter stands up, his hands balled into fists.

  You know it’s true. His mind is worthless. A life not worth living.

  “I’ll kill you, I swear . . .”

  A swift pain in his gut makes him double over.

  You can’t kill us. You can’t even harm us.

  Peter bites his own hand to keep himself silent.

  But you can kill Eric. It would be a mercy.

  “You know nothing.” Peter rasps. “You have no form. You have no brain.”

  We have your brain, Peter. Yours, or anyone else whose thoughts we wish to engage. And we have this form. See? We’re smiling.

  Peter turns away, disgusted.

  Don’t you like this body? Then give us another.

  Peter winces in pain.

 
; Call for her. We’d rather have Hattie, anyway. No offense, but she’s much more powerful than you. You’re barely magical at all. And barely a man.

  “Then leave me alone.”

  Now you’re offended. We did not mean that you are of no value, Peter. You come from a powerful family. You’ll have your own wealth one day. And you’re a magician, the first of the Shaws to admit it. You’ll do great things, Peter Shaw, and we’ll help you. Isn’t that tempting? We’re not offering you money or influence—you’ll acquire those things on your own. But what would you like to do with those things? Feed the hungry? Heal the sick? Bring water to a drought-ravaged country? You can do that, Peter, and more. We will give you everything you need. Free us from this vessel, and we will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

  Peter is still. So, so still. I want to reach him. I want to hold him.

  Or do your desires reach elsewhere? You have a fine, strong body. Your little girlfriend certainly thinks so. Tell us her name again?

  “No.”

  That’s right, it’s Katy. Of course. Would you like us to pay her a visit?

  “You can’t. You can’t leave this room.”

  You forget, Peter. We can do anything. This aspect of us—this tame being you’re talking with—is no more than a fraction of what we are. We are vast beyond your comprehension.

  We are the Darkness.

  Peter sobs. “Katy,” he says, trying to fill his mind with something beautiful. “Katy . . . Katy . . . Katy . . . Katy . . . .”

  I woke up breathing hard. Dully, I looked at the notebook still cradled in the crook of my arm. Peter’s notebook. Peter’s essence, speaking to me.

  I staggered out of bed, my sweat-soaked clothes already feeing clammy and cold, and slipped into my sneakers. There was no mistaking: That was not a dream. It was a message.

  From the Darkness itself.

  Slipping out the back door, I got my bicycle from the garage and headed toward Peter’s. I didn’t understand exactly what was happening to him, but I knew that whatever it was, he wasn’t going to go through it alone anymore.

  I found the house without much difficulty. It was a small bungalow in a part of town that probably used to be nicer than it was now. Much of the peeling paint had been covered over by roses, pale pink and yellow and red roses that looked black in the bright moonlight, all climbing up tall trellises that made the house look as if it were caged.