The Roses Academy- the Entire Collection

by Tara Brown

  I leave the room the way it is. I leave my stuff where it is. I leave Andy still wanting me. The way I leave every boy, well, the ones I don’t eat by accident. I wish, for just today, it could be different. I wish I was a normal girl and I could stay with him.

  My feet start the journey out of the room and down the hall before my heart is ready. I leave through the back door and run until I reach my truck. I sit inside and wait for the tears to hit.

  I don’t want to go back home. I don’t understand why she needs me and why, after all this time, the voices are back. It's been weeks of them.

  I start the truck and drive. It's gonna take me days. Days I can spend talking myself out of going.

  Days I can spend rehashing every detail. Every moment I spent making the wrong choices, murdering my entire family except my one aunt who apparently needs me. I owe her that, don't I?

  It ain't her that drives me forward though. It's every moment I spent loving something too much. Wanting something too much. Something I still want, if I'm honest with myself. I don’t like being honest with myself. I look at the rearview and shake my head.

  The drive takes me four nights. The icy whispers keep me company. They seem excited by the drive home. They seem excited by the prospect of going back. They are alone in that.

  My brain tries to talk me out of it, but I don’t let it. I sense it, somewhere deep inside me, I need to go home. It’s a funny feeling I can't explain. The return of the icy whispers is part of it.

  When we pass the sign for Baton Rouge, I feel sick. I experience everything I felt before. All my emotions come barreling back, forcing a panic attack.

  I make the turn but nothing looks the same. The freeways are a new development in this part of the world, but everything is different. I think I'm lost.

  My stomach is in knots. I drive gawking at it all, lost in thought and direction. I turn off when I see a road I recognize the name of. The memories of running through the fields and the open space don’t match what I see. The thriving metropolis feels as if something unholy has occurred. My town is gone. My place where I felt safe and played is overly developed. Every part of America has had development, but for some reason, I imagined Baton Rouge would remain untouched. Folks would still be arguing about women wearing pants, over sweet tea on the porch.

  I turn onto River Road and drive slowly. The old plantations are still there, but they seem as though they’ll be torn down any moment or someone is charging admission prices for tourists to see inside. Sleep in the bed of the dead. Louisiana is full of ghosts. I should know. I'm one of them.

  I’m worried sick, wondering if Hurricane Katrina ruined anything along the riverbanks. I watched the footage of New Orleans and died a little inside for our beautiful state. But I was in London, far removed from the suffering of my people.

  I wonder what my house looks like. Will it be ruined as well? Or worse, will there by people lining up to pay to sleep in my bed.

  I glance at the passenger seat and smile bitterly. “Shoot, y'all should've stayed at the house and haunted it. We'd be rich as preachers of the Pentecost.” I don’t know if the icy voices can hear me, but I notice suddenly my accent is stronger. I have never been able to pick up the languages or accents of the many places I've been. The many places I've run to. Always fearing his breath is at the back of my neck. It ain't never been him I was scared of, well, not once I changed. It was always me and my love for him. My unnatural love. He killed my whole family and still my heart wanted him. But he filled that full of poison too so it was unnatural like him.

  The old farm next door to my house is refurbished and brand-new looking. It’s in better shape than it was forty-eight years ago.

  My driveway, half a mile down the road, however, is a different story. The trees that made an oak alley up the drive to my house have bent over completely. Their twisting and gnarled branches suggest they're trying to keep people out. I stop the truck and jump out.

  The moment my feet touch the ground, the icy whispers surround me like a twister.

  Home, Lorelei. Home.

  I shiver from the breath of the dead greeting me. It ain't like I'm alive, but it makes my skin crawl.

  I walk to the sign hanging sideways on the broken iron fence.

  Huntington Plantation.

  Not much of a plantation anymore. The vines and bushes have burst through the iron gates and fences. They creep through onto the street. They're either trying to get out or drag something or someone back in. Either way, they scare the dickens out of me. The driveway does too. The bent and leaning trees are a mess. Several of them are down across the driveway. I get back in the truck and park it on the side of the road. I pull my coat around me and walk back to the sign, wondering if my truck will be there in the morning. Things look run-down and frightening here.

  My boots crunch on the rocks. The driveway is gravel, just like it was before. Daddy wanted to have it paved. We had argued about it. I was bent on having a swimming pool, like Angie had. He laughed and told me we lived on the river, and if I needed to get wet, I could go swim out back. I remember being upset. I never woulda swam in that filthy old river. I still couldn’t and ain't no filthy gator gonna eat me now.

  Emotions take my breath. If I had a heartbeat, it would be wild and insane. Instead, it's broken and my feet don’t want to take any more steps. They freeze mid step. The grounds are destroyed. Everything is in ruin.

  I break into a run. My aunt needs me. What if she's inside and trapped, and the icy whispers have been trying to get me to come and save her? My boots meet the ground with force. I'm still the fastest runner. It's how I've stayed alive. My strong thighs have saved me more than once, running when I sensed him nearby.

  I climb the front steps and burst through the front door, stunned by what greets me.

  My ancient old aunt is sitting in the large chair in the foyer. The chair my momma bought. It's moldy and dank inside.

  She smiles at me. She has to be over one hundred years old. I still see her as she was before though.

  “Auntie Tessa?” I ask softly.

  She smiles back. “You came for sweet tea.”

  I'm lost.

  Not only lost in how the house has come to this, but also how half a century has passed and I have not come home to help. I have left her to rot with the old house.

  Guilt fills me, making my nerves worse. How did fifty years ruin something so beautiful and strong? Louisiana is known for taking back a house when it wants it to become part of the mystery and magic. From the look of it, Aunt Tessa and the house have had a rough fifty years.

  She stands with difficulty and shuffles over to me in her slippers. She puts one of her hands out and takes mine.

  Her voice is cracked and old. “You look good, my dear. Good like her. She looks good too. You always was such a pretty young thing. Pretty as a peach.”

  She pulls me to the kitchen. I gag when I smell it.

  The decay is everywhere.

  Water drips and leaks from the walls. The ceiling has a hole in it and I can hear animals moving in the other rooms. Scratching and digging. Vines and trees have taken over the walls.

  I shiver.

  I did this.

  The left wing is gone. The end of that side has been boarded off.

  I did this.

  A lump forms in my throat. I fan my face and take deep breaths.

  The kitchen is tilted like it's sinking in the back. There are no lights on anywhere.

  “Is there power?” I ask.

  She looks at me and giggles like an insane schoolgirl.

  I squeeze her hand. Is she alive? Is she the icy whispers? Have they finally gotten me here to kill me? Can I die?

  We walk through the dark and crooked halls to the back deck. She walks through. The French doors are gone. Everything is gone. Boards cover windows but only some of them. The rest are just open.

  Everything feels like a Charles Dickens tale.

  Aunt Tessa is wearing an ol
d nightgown instead of a tattered wedding dress but the effect is the same.

  The cold air inside the house is creepy. It’s thick and heavy like the Southern air, but it also takes my breath away it's so cold.

  It’s not normal cold. I lived in the Rockies in Canada and never ever felt the cold of that place. Here, I'm gripping my jacket to me and nearly shivering.

  The cold here is death and haunting.

  Tessa giggles. “She ain't very happy with you. She needed you.”

  I'm about to meet my maker. I know it.

  The back porch is overgrown and in ruin. My boot goes through a board before we finally get to the back steps.

  She pulls me and as I realize our destination, my skin crawls.

  I pull back. “Let's just go back to the house and I'll get you some sweet tea, Aunty. The porch swing didn't seem too bad.”

  She doesn’t let go. She is fiercely strong for an old lady. She is strong and incessant.

  The pillars aren’t all standing and lilacs and magnolias have grown up and out of control. The oaks and willows are mangled.

  “Hurricanes have ruined it, but I remember it the way it was when he built it,” she whispers.

  My daddy.

  My daddy who built it for the parties and dances we always had. He was going to replace the floor the summer after my wedding.

  A sob escapes my chest. The tears are building. As we climb the stairs, I gaze around and am thrown right back into it all. I feel and see the memories coming to life.

  Whit's hands on me. The music swaying the people. The heat of the night air and the warmth of the scotch in my belly.

  I drop to my knees and cry.

  It's the second time I've cried in the near-fifty years I've been gone.

  The dark tears rain down my face. Tessa is dancing alone, waltzing and humming a song in amongst the overhanging branches and old man's beard.

  I'm rocking back and forth with my hands over my face. I'm covering the devil's tears.

  I did this. I did it all. The ruin and decay is as gloomy and filthy as my tears are. As my heart is.

  His breath is on me. My heart breaks all over again. The hand that swipes at Daddy’s throat, making his blood spray across the foyer haunts me. The love I had for him. It's still there. It has never left me. I can't kill it no matter how hard I try. It's unnatural like him. It always was.

  I don’t react the right way. I never seem to get it right. Something about the blood he made me drink, keeps my pain from me.

  I did this.

  I did it all.

  The icy whispers blow past my neck. I ignore them.

  Ice pools at my feet in a bright white light and when I look up, a beautiful woman stands before me. She glows in the dark and when I focus, I see Tessa waltzing alone, right through the woman.

  She is my ghost. She is identical to my momma, and yet it's not her. Her face is not harsh and cruel.

  I prepare for her to end my pain. End my life.

  She holds her white frighteningly wispy hands out to me. “I tried to warn you. I done tried to warn you, Lorelei. What in Sam hell did you think I was trying to say?”

  Her Southern voice is familiar. Her country accent is familiar but her lips don’t move properly with the words that come out.

  Her long blonde hair flows around her ghostly white face. She is my age, if that. She is beautiful and tragic. Her voice is the one I have always heard.

  Her white dress floats around her. She floats just as I imagined the ghostly whispers would. I'm paralyzed. I wish I had Bunny. I wish Grandmamma were here.

  “Lorelei, how many times did I try to warn you? They been here before. She knows them and I tried to warn you.” She shakes her head back and forth. Her eyes are angry, disappointed maybe.

  She puts her twitchy white hands on her hips. “Don’t give me that look, child. I done told you. I done told you a hundred times if I told you once. She's evil and now that you come back, Lorelei, she's gonna be coming for you.”

  She turns into wind and blows past me, through me.

  I shiver and watch Aunt Tessa waltz and hum.

  Chapter 10

  The stairs just barely hold my body weight. The hallway upstairs is the same. Everything upstairs looks like it did the day I ran. The day they all died.

  Only now it’s creepy and shadowy and rotten.

  I step into my sister's room and feel sickening guilt flood me.

  “Don't look so sad, Lorelei.”

  I spin and gasp.

  It's Emily but she is dressed like the lady from the governor's party. She’s in a white pantsuit and short dark hair, but her face is something I will never forget. I might pass out, if that is even possible. I don't know that it isn’t but maybe I’ll be the first passing out vampire.

  She takes a step toward me. The boards of the hall creak under her weight.

  “Impossible,” I mouth.

  She doesn’t float like the ghost in the garden. She is solid and makes the dust in the night's air swirl around her.

  Her face twists. “You don’t look happy to see me, Lorelei.”

  I scream—loud.

  I'm not the bravest undead thing. I mostly run. A lot.

  She puts a hand over my mouth. It's cold but it's there. Her throat is white and creamy. Just as it was before their hands cut it and her blood sprayed the wall and me.

  A whimper continues from my lips but she has them muffled.

  “Dear sweet God, you still are the prettiest girl in all Louisiana,” she says.

  “Emily?” I ask but her hand muffles my words.

  She nods. She doesn’t smile. Her blue eyes are the same but they're older. She hasn’t aged a day. She’s beautiful.

  She cocks an eyebrow at me. “I will bet you all the termites in this old hovel, we're thinking the same thing right now.”

  She drops her hands and I put a finger out to poke her cheek. She laughs. She still doesn’t look happy to see me. She ain't the same as before.

  “How? Are you like me?” I ask, flabbergasted.

  She rolls her eyes. “How can you be such a smart girl and yet so dumb, Lorelei? Bad taste in men, bad taste in friends, and bad taste in clothes. What are you wearing now?”

  I eye my tight black skinny jeans and denim jean jacket. My biker boots really complete the look, well to me they do.

  “What about you? You're dressed like you belong in the sixties.” My words sound like we are still sisters and it's been a week apart. Not both dead and undead and forty-eight years separated.

  Her eyes flash. “I'm still in the sixties, Lorelei. I never left. I never leave.”

  I'm lost. “What are you?”

  She laughs bitterly again. “A ghost. Dang, girl, what do I look like, the goddamned tour guide?”

  I flinch at her cussing and shake my head. “The scary woman in the white nightgown in the garden is a ghost. She looks like a ghost. You look real.”

  She shakes her head and walks into her room. She lies back on the bed and dust flies everywhere. “We can choose the form we take in our own home. This ain't her home. She's from Blackwater Bayou. She appears real there and here she looks like a ghost. If I were able to go visit her there, I would look like the ghost.”

  “Momma was from Blackwater. Was that Momma?”

  Emily laughs again. “No, silly. That was her twin sister, Maria. That was our dear auntie Maria.” She is speaking to me like I should know it all, but I don’t. I'm completely confused.

  “She looks like Momma.”

  Emily stands and swipes a hand across the dresser. The things on there go flying everywhere. Smashing. Dust clouds the air but through it I see her angry face. “I SAID TWIN, DUMMY! HOW ARE YOU SO STUPID, LORELEI? MOMMA HAD A TWIN SISTER WE NEVER KNEW ABOUT! OBVIOUSLY!” She sits back on the bed and sighs.

  I'm shaking along with the panels in the wall that tremble under the force of her anger.

  She looks at me and is sweet again. “I missed you some bad.
I tried to come and find you, but I can't leave the house, not like Maria. I know what a chickenshit you always was, so I wished I could go looking like the grim reaper's bride and scare the snot out of you. Anyway, Maria had a hard time tracking you down.”

  I look around at the disgusting mess. “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “Momma did something to this old shack to make it so I can't leave. She learned she had to do that after Aunt Maria haunted your ass for nineteen years. Little did she know, Momma was coming for me and not you at all.” Her eyes focus on me and I see the light that flickers in there, unnatural light. “Where were you?”

  My lips tremble. “I moved a lot. Saw the places I imagined you would want to see.”

  She stands and stares into my eyes. “You look the same. Can I see them?” She focuses on my lips.

  I nod and open my mouth. My fangs drop. I wince every time. It always pinches.

  She touches one. “Sharp.”

  I nod again.

  “Wipe your face. You look like a horror show. All fangs and black tears.”

  “With what?” I glance around the room and start to laugh.

  She seems angry again. She watches me lose my mind and starts laughing with me.

  I turn and walk out of the room. I walk to my door and turn the knob.

  She whispers and it echoes off the walls, “You don’t want to go in there.”

  I glimpse back at her and push the door open.

  The smell is unbearable.

  It hits like fog, wet and heavy.

  The room is destroyed. My bed is broken as is my dresser. My clothes are all over the place, rotting into the carpet. There is a hole in the ceiling where branches and vines are climbing through.

  My French doors are ripped off and smashed on the floor.

  My chest burns when I see it.

  Blood is smeared across the walls. I don’t know whose it is but I know Emily did this. She destroyed my room.

  I glance back at her and know what I have done to her.

  Pain fills her eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Me either.”

  She rushes me and wraps her arms around me. Her squeeze is intense. She sobs a dry cry into my neck. I wrap myself around her.