City Infernal

by Edward Lee

  “Come on, I know you’ve always had a thing for me. It’s flattering.”

  She just stood there, dazed.

  “I’ve always had a thing for you too, but I’m sure you know that.”

  He’s lying, was her first thought. No one had ever had a “thing” for her, just Lissa, her vivacious alter-ego.

  But then the doubts slipped in.

  There were no precursory words or gestures, no testing of the waters. He was kissing her at once, and the only thing that shocked her was that she didn’t pull back. It never occurred to her to do so. The moment lit all of her fuses at the same time, longing that had percolated deep inside since puberty. Cassie could almost hear those fuses burning in the core of her soul. She returned the kiss with no reservation.

  What am I—

  Her skin tingled beneath her black-satin top; his skin, too, felt hot as her hands rubbed up and down his bare back. She didn’t flinch when he pushed the top up and shucked her breasts out of her bra—to the contrary, she was ravenous for more, to be touched more urgently, to be felt, to be wrapped up in him. When he grabbed her hand and pushed it down below his waist, she didn’t pull it away. She only stood higher on her tiptoes, to kiss him harder.

  His soft whisper warmed her ear. “You’re a virgin too, aren’t you? Like Lissa?”

  She didn’t want to hear her sister’s name now—not at this moment.

  “Yes,” she panted back. “But I don’t care. I don’t want to be.”

  “I could never take that from you—I wouldn’t,” he said. He seemed so considerate, so sweet. “I’d have to know that you were really sure....”

  I’m ready, she thought. I’ve never felt like this before....

  But in her mind, her emotions collided. Guilt tried to ruin the priceless embrace, to put a wrecking ball through a moment that she’d been yearning for for so long.

  But then she remembered what he’d told her, that Lissa had said this was all right.

  “I’m really sure,” she promised him. “I know I am.”

  His eyes penetrated her. “Let’s go over here....” A strong hand urged her toward some boxes in the corner. From his back pocket, he produced a condom. Cassie kissed him one more time, her exposed breasts pressing hotly against his chest. “I want you to do it now, right now,” she nearly pleaded.

  He was just about to lay her down when—

  “What are you DOING!”

  —Lissa walked in.

  Cassie froze. Radu shoved her away as if leprous.

  “Lissa, I thought she was you!” he exclaimed. “She came on to me. Honey, I swear—she was pretending to be you!”

  Liar! Cassie wanted to yell, but her voice was lost. She could just lie there across the boxes, frozen in dread.

  Rage had contorted Lissa’s face into an incised mask. Bloodshot eyes watched the condom fall to the dusty floor. “Bullshit!” she screamed. The voice sounded hysterical, insane. Inflamed by drugs, alcohol, and now betrayal, Lissa seemed possessed.

  “Lissa,” Radu began. “Honey. Calm down—”

  “SHUT UP!” Then the twisted face shot to Cassie. “And you, you treacherous BITCH! My own SISTER!”

  Cassie’s lips barely worked. “I-I’m sorry,” she peeped. “I—”

  Lissa was shaking all over. Her face was hot-pink, her eyes radiating hatred above streaming tears.

  “Well to hell with BOTH of you!” the next scream exploded, and in another second she’d unzipped her wrist-purse, removed a small pistol.

  “Holy shit!” Radu yelled and turned to run.

  BAM!

  Cassie screamed, the world falling in on her. The bullet caught Radu right in the back of the skull. He fell flat, face-first. Within seconds, a frightful amount of blood began to halo around his head and shoulders.

  Lissa’s red face turned. The gun pointed at Cassie’s face.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Cassie sobbed.

  “My own sister....” Lissa’s voice could’ve been a death rattle, and the eyes that looked down already seemed dead. “How could you do this to me?”

  Lissa put the pistol to her own temple.

  “No!” Cassie screamed and lunged.

  She wrapped her arms around Lissa’s shoulders, tried to grab for the gun, when—

  BAM !

  Lissa collapsed, dead, as Cassie staggered backward, her face and breasts splattered with blood and brain tissue and flecks of splintered bone.

  Cassie fell to her knees and screamed until she passed out.

  Chapter Two

  (I)

  She shot upright, her heart thumping, skipping beats. Her hands frantically dragged up the bedsheets, used them to wipe the blood and brains off her face.

  She quavered, the silent cry on her lips, and then fell back into the pillows. Her heartbeat paced down; she looked at the bedsheets.

  No blood.

  No brains.

  Just the curse of memory.

  Two long years and the nightmare still marauded her at least once a week. Better than every night, she reminded herself, which had been the case until they’d moved out here. After Lissa’s suicide, Cassie’s mental troubles had compounded, not just the recurring nightmare, but further introversion, two failed suicide attempts of her own, and a month in a private psychiatric hospital where the regimen of psychotropic drugs had reduced her to a stumbling zombie. The scars on her slim wrists were the only tangible results. Group therapy, hypnotic-regression, and narco-analysis had also failed. Ironically, it had been her father’s idea to break away from all of that. “To hell with all these crackpot doctors and drugs,” he’d said one day several months ago. “Let’s just get out of the city, get out of this shark-tank. Maybe that’ll be the best medicine for both of us.” Cassie had no reason to object, and with that, her father, the rather famous William F. Heydon, controlling partner of the third most successful law firm in the country, quit his influential—and very lucrative—post with a single one-sentence letter of resignation. The jurisprudential power circles in D.C. had experienced the legal equivalent of a grand mal seizure, and her father never went back to the firm again. Clearly, the two minor heart attacks and repeated angioplasties had shown him the light. “Every day above ground’s a good day, honey,” he told her. “Don’t know why it took me so long to see that. We’ve got everything we need. Besides, I’m sick of the chauffeur, I’m sick of lunch every day at the Mayflower, and the Redskins suck. Who needs this town?”

  “But what about all your friends at the firm?” she’d asked, and he just laughed back. “There’s no such thing as friends in a law firm, Cassie, just more sharks who’d stab you in the back without a second’s thought. I wish I could be there to see them fight over the big piece of raw meat I leave in their laps. I’ll bet those blood-suckers are even fighting over my office chair.”

  It was all fine with her; Cassie’s own insecurities had barred her from any real friendships herself. Who would want to hang out with someone perpetually half-dazed by psych drugs anyway? What guy would want to date a “Thorazine Queen?” And the city’s Goth scene was dead to her now.

  She knew she could never walk into another Goth club again because they’d only remind her of Lissa.

  Her father’s spur-of-the-moment plan had worked. Since the day they’d moved into Blackwell Hall—a month ago now—her emotions seemed to start balancing out. The nightly dream of her sister’s death reduced its recurrence to a weekly basis. The dread of seeing her psychiatrist evaporated; she didn’t go to her any more. Release from the battery of anti-depressants and other psycho-pharmaceuticals rejuvenated her to a degree she found astonishing.

  She felt alive, vibrant, more so than she could remember.

  Maybe things will really work out, she thought. Maybe I’ll get past this, and have a real life some day.

  She was learning quickly that one step at a time was the best way to handle things.

  She slid out of the high, four-poster bed, drew the heavy drapes
, and immediately shielded her eyes. The harsh sunlight seemed to barge into the room. She opened the French doors and sighed at the caress of fresh air. Standing on the balcony in only panties and bra left her with no reservations. Who’s going to see? In D.C., that would be another matter altogether. But this was the country. All that looked back at her near nudity were rolling hills and distant pastures. The sun rose over the crust of the Blue Ridge mountains a hundred miles away; song birds—not garbage-plump pigeons—lifted off the railing when she stepped out.

  It was an alien environment indeed: Cassie preferred the cityscape at night, not late-morning sun shining over farmland and forests. But she wasn’t about to complain. The quiet countryside was what her father craved for his own rehabilitation—Cassie would just have to get used to it. Beggars can’t be choosers, she reminded herself. It beats the view from a psych-ward window.

  Though she lacked her father’s appreciation of country scenery, she absolutely loved the house. Blackwell Hall, as it was called, loomed over a hundred acres of disused grazeland from the summit of a pleasantly wooded incline known as Blackwell Hill. Blackwell Creek burbled at the hill’s foot, feeding unsurprisingly into Blackwell Swamp. When Cassie had asked who Blackwell was, her father had answered with a casual “Who gives a crap? Probably some plantation magnate from before the Civil War.” His law firm had inherited the house in an estate settlement; his former partners had gladly given it to him as part of his severance when he’d agreed to endorse his client list over to them for no future shares. He’d simply wanted out, and the millions he’d invested throughout his career provided several more million per year in interest income. Dad was rich for life, in other words, and Blackwell Hall, regardless of its history, provided the seclusion he believed was desperately necessary for them both.

  The old southern antebellum house had obviously been added to—if not eccentrically—since its original construction. Gone with the Wind meets the Adam’s Family, she thought when she first saw the pictures. Works for me. The front of the original structure—and its polished white-granite pillars—faced west, and around that, the rest of the delightful monstrosity had been built: a three-story manse with a dormer level, a garret level, iron-cresting along the roof, stone cornices, parapets, and off-hanging turrets windowed with stained glass. Ivy crept up the genuine mahogany siding, and great bow windows, complete with functional shutters, seemed to have grown from its fieldstonewalled first story. There was even an old oculus window in the mansion’s central garret.

  This place is so creepy, I LOVE it! was Cassie’s first assessment.

  Inside, the expected clash of styles merged well in an overall refurbishment that borrowed from Colonial and Edwardian styles. Whole walls were reserved for deep man-tall fireplaces and slab mantles and hearths. So what if they’d never be used in the nine-month hot season ? They looked cool just the same. The floor layout was a fascinating maze, with odd corridors branching this way and that, rooms leading to smaller rooms lead. ing to still smaller rooms, frequent dumb-waiters, and even hidden closets behind hinged bookshelves. The original gas-lamp fixtures remained, having been refitted with electric lights; six-foot-high sconces provided standing room for statutes of southern historical figures such as Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Pickett, plus more brooding unidentified figures. Thirty rooms in all, the house was a clash of stereotypes which brought visions of southern belles fanning themselves alongside stuffy robber-barons from the ’20s.

  And the ubiquitous multi-layered drapes kept the interior dark—just the way Cassie liked it.

  What functioned as the “living room” was more like an atrium, a thousand square feet in itself. Exotic throw rugs covered the refinished natural wood floors. There was a den, a study, a sitting room, and a library, too, not to mention a vast country kitchen which her father had upgraded with high-end appliances. Other millionaire upgrades appointed the house: a hot tub, a 54-inch television and home theater, spacious black-marble bathrooms, and much else. Lastly, the house didn’t have a basement, it had a series of basements: long narrow cellars of nearly hundred-year-old tabby brick, so low-ceilinged a tall person would have to duck. Perfect stowage for her father’s law books, which he clearly intended to never look at again.

  Her bathroom was pretty cool too. A brass ring-shower hung above the original claw-foot sliptub. A framed chevaldefrise mirror was mounted in more original brass over a pedestal marble sink. Cassie took a cool, leisurely shower, then meandered around for a while as she dressed. Her room, like most of the estate’s rooms, was enormous—all dark paneling, hand-carved friezework, and intricately embossed brass-and-tin ceiling tiles. Sometimes she felt tiny in its near emptiness; she’d brought no furniture from home, electing to settle for the few furnishings that were already here. The big four-poster—more like a Renaissance Revival bed—an antique chiffonier, and a simple table and cane chair, and that was it. It was all she needed, and she’d declined on her father’s offer to furnish the room however she liked, just as she’d declined on his offer to buy her an exorbitant stereo. Her boombox would do just fine. The only other things she’d brought from their former D.C. brownstone were her clothes and CDs.

  She’d never felt comfortable with the luxuries her father could effortlessly provide, and that had been a great bone of contention between them for years. Most of her clothes she made herself, with Good Will scraps and overstock fabrics; she’d become quite a designer, and she supposed that’s what she might want to be when she “grew up,” whatever that meant. But she knew she needn’t worry about any of that until she got her head straight.

  She still quite often felt the smothering guilt of her sister’s suicide; some part of her spirit felt branded. Since the incident, she’d taken to wearing a silver locket with Lissa’s picture inside; she never took it off, and every day she’d plead to herself, Please, Lissa, please forgive me. The dreams, she supposed, were punishment, but perhaps forgiveness was coming. Out here, the nightmares had declined and so had her depression.

  Would she ever be free? I don’t deserve to be, she thought.

  Sometimes the days would start like this, steeped in remorse. She even hated looking in the mirror—of course—because every time she’d see Lissa. She’d cut her long hair straight across at the middle of her neck, dyed it lemon-yellow with lime-green highlight lines. It helped a little, but her face was still the same; it was still Lissa who looked back at her through the silver veins. In the mirror, she inadvertently noticed the tiny rainbow tattoo over her navel, which only reminded her of the barbed-wire tattoo her sister had in the same place.

  Damn it, she thought. Not again. She was getting depressed, and if she just hung around the house, it would only get worse.

  “I think I’ll go somewhere,” she said aloud, “even if there’s no place to go.”

  She grabbed her Discman and swept out of the room. As she descended the broad stairs, statues scowled at her, backlighted in strange dark colors from the stained glass. She scowled back, and gave one the finger. You have a good day too. At the landing, her hand squealed around a carven newel post; she looked into the living room and saw that the television was off. She checked the kitchen, the study, and the back patio but found no sign of her father.

  Hmm.

  In the foyer, Mrs. Conner was dusting. Cassie’s father had hired her from town to keep the house clean. She was a nice, quiet hill woman, all business. Probably in her fifties but a lifetime of hard work had kept her in good shape. Cassie liked her; she never gaped at her bright hair or dark Gothy apparel like most of the locals. Cassie wasn’t too keen, though, on the woman’s son, Jervis, who came around a few times a week to take care of the yard. Jervis was pure-bred redneck, about twenty-five, and drunk half the time. He tended to leer at her through a shucksy grin, constantly adjusting his Red Fox chewing tobacco hat. Fat and broad-shouldered, he delighted in telling her far-fetched stories about local murders, hoping to scare her. “Had a brother, Tritt was his name. Got kilt in the wo
ods,” he’d told her once. “Couldn’t reka-nize him when they brung him out.”

  “Your point being?” Cassie said somewhat rudely.

  “Stay out the woods, girl,” Jervis had replied.

  Cassie laughed.

  Tragic as losing a sibling was, Mrs. Conner had told her what really happened, “My son Tritt weren’t much fer smarts. Chugged a bottle’a shine one night and up’n died.”

  At any rate, Jervis was a bane but she supposed he was tolerable.

  “Mornin’, miss,” the woman greeted without looking up from her dusting.

  “Hi, Mrs. Conner. Have you seen my father?”

  Her feather duster gestured the door. “Out front in the court, goin’ someplace. Didn’t say where, though.”

  “Thank you. ”

  Ah, a woman of few words.

  Cassie went out through the great, sidelighted front door, sided by high ionic pillars. Later-morning immediately exhaled a gust of humid heat in her face. God! It’s hotter than a Dutch oven out here! When she re-closed the massive front door, the odd knocker on the center stile caught her eye: an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. Neat! Cassie thought.

  Past the portico, her father was loping away down a flagstone trail.

  “Hi, Dad!”

  His hand extended.

  “Bye, Dad.”

  He turned around, sweating already in the heat. A ludicrous fisherman’s hat looked jammed down on his head. “I’m going down to the creek,” he called back, brandishing his collapsible fishing rod.

  “Rednecks probably pee in that creek,” she jested.

  “Naw, from what I can see they just pee in the street. I’ll be bringing back a bunch of catfish.” He paused, scratched his head. “Do you know how to cook catfish?”

  “Sure. I’ll cook ‘em, but you have to gut ’em.”

  “No problem. It’ll make me feel like a lawyer again. What are you up to this morning, honey?”

  She frowned at the honey. “I’m bored, so I think I’ll walk into town ... and be more bored.”