by Lara Parker
Squinting, he took aim and landed a well-placed blow to the chin that sent the larger boy crashing. David staggered over and with a huge effort, righted the sled. The boy in the green jacket still had the knife and was dancing around brandishing it in front of him, making a mewling sound.
Panting, his mind a blur, David leaned in, keeping an eye on him, then jerked the start cord, leapt aboard, and revved the engine. Standing up on the back he gunned it, pulled up on the skis, throwing all his weight into the charge; shifted his butt; turned; and rammed the smaller kid in the chest. The boy folded up for a second, and before he could stand back up, David jammed on the throttle and busted off down the road. They chased him for a while, but they gave up when he was twenty yards ahead and gaining speed.
Pumped up with fury, David drove like a maniac, flying over the snow, taking to the air after every bump in the road and landing in flumes of powder. He was afraid to go to the Old House, afraid they would follow him there. If they were still after him, he needed a diversion, and he couldn’t go home without going back by them. Then there was the sound of his sled that gave him away. Up ahead was the cemetery.
He stashed the snowmobile behind a large drift, and then took off his jacket and swept his footsteps behind him as he approached the small crypt where he and Jackie had found the painting. After chasing out the rats, he crawled inside and curled up in the dark. He was shaking violently and his hand was bleeding. Feeling dizzy, he tore a piece from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped it around his palm. The cut was deep, but he couldn’t tell how bad it was. Then he felt tentatively for the wound on his forehead. There was a big knot crusted over and sore. He fought the urge to pass out.
Nineteen
Wiping the blood from his mouth, Barnabas came out of the woods and crossed the snowy terrain behind the Old House. He opened the door to a numbing silence. He was still surprised that a house without Antoinette somewhere about could feel so empty. Somehow her presence had always been palpable, even when she was nowhere in sight. He felt like a very old man.
Even though it had not been satisfying, the kill had sapped his strength. He would have liked to search for another victim; however, weakness overwhelmed him and he was obliged to return to the Old House. The rooms he passed through were as lonely and dark as the grave, and with a tormented heart, he made his way to the basement and to the comfort of sleep.
But when he descended the cellar stair he caught his breath and grabbed the railing to steady himself. Antoinette was waiting for him, standing beside his casket in the dim light. He recognized her silhouette and her tangled blond hair. His heart lurched in frantic gratitude and he cried out with a sob of relief. Fate had not robbed him after all. He moved to her and took her in his arms, crushing her to him, but when his fingers wound into her hair he realized something was different. It was dry and matted, and when he pulled back to look at her he was shocked by her smile, lascivious and almost cruel. “No,” he whispered, “it can’t be. Is it? Angelique!”
She nodded and moved again to embrace him, but he jerked away and reaching back, tugged on the string to the overhead light and saw her face suddenly illuminated like a mask, pale and enlivened by her silver eyes. It was not Angelique. It was the girl, Jacqueline, wearing a cheap blond wig and smiling up at him with a crazed look. Her resemblance to her mother was uncanny, but somehow macabre, like a mannequin in a shop window.
“Jackie—what are you doing here?”
“My mother—”
Ah, he thought, so she knows at last, and she is gone mad with grief. “My dear, I know. I’m so sorry—” He was suddenly uneasy.
She spoke in a whisper. “My mother has left.”
“Yes, Jacqueline, I know.” He felt helpless in her presence. Did she blame him?
“Dr. Hoffman took her to the train station, and she went to Boston.”
“Dr. Hoffman?” He tried to journey into her mind, but it was a miasma of sorrow.
She continued in her soft voice. “I have come to beg you not to follow her, not to summon her or try to find her, but to let her be.”
He floundered for an answer. “Of course…”
“She is very weak, but she is brave. I’m sure she will recover if you don’t try to get her back.”
“I— I … no, I won’t try to get her back.” He dropped his head in shame. The girl came forward into the light and he saw her cheeks were flushed. A strange light danced in her eyes. “And you need not depend on her anymore. I came to tell you that I will take her place.”
“Jackie, I … I don’t think you know what you are saying—”
She became more energized. “I know the truth about you. I have known all along. I saw you—briefly—but that was years ago. You probably don’t remember—” She took a breath, her eyes took on a fiery tint, and the words tumbled out in a rush. “Let me stay with you, Barnabas. You won’t need her anymore. It should have been me all along.” Something in her tone made him shiver because it was familiar—he had heard those same words spoken many years ago.
Then she moaned, lifted her hand to the frown creasing her forehead, and looked around as if she did not know where she was. “Barnabas, what am I doing? I— I have to tell you— You must know—I have an illness. Sometimes I think I am going mad—”
He was torn between a desire to console her and a vague suspicion of her motives. As if she had read his mind she suddenly cried out, “Barnabas, please, help me.” She collapsed against the side of the coffin, grabbing the edge to steady herself, and he saw she was about to faint.
He moved to catch her. “Here, let me—,” and took hold of her waist and lifted her, easing her into a chair. “Are you dizzy?” He sat opposite her and took her hands.
She raised her head and Barnabas noticed for the first time Jackie’s resemblance to her mother—not the same coloring, of course, but even though she was young, only about fifteen, he could see the shape of her face, the way her head in the blond wig was set on her small shoulders, her slender neck, the wide-set eyes, and even her hands too lined for someone her age, with the thin wrists and the fingernails bitten to the quick.
Her breathing was shallow. “What was I saying?”
“You were speaking about your mother.”
“My mother has left me. I am supposed to go to her but I can’t. I will only make her situation worse—” She seemed to be struggling to sound rational, but her eyes were flicking about, and her mouth twisted as if she found the words distasteful. She wore jeans and a loose sweater, but in her shape on the chair he could see her mother’s body—Angelique’s body—her slightly rounded shoulders and her narrow hips.
Icy fingers crept up his spine. Who was she?
She looked at him, her eyes flooded, and her lips trembled. “Barnabas…”
How could he comfort her? Her sorrow made him even sadder; it reflected his own melancholy, and he felt he hadn’t the words to ease her pain. “Jackie, all of us grieve. It is part of life. All of us know loss and heartbreak. You must be strong. Many people you love will die in your lifetime—”
“Are you saying she is dead?”
“No, I— I don’t know, I—”
“Yes! It’s true, isn’t it? I was so afraid that it was true!” And suddenly she was in his arms, clinging to him, her face against his chest, tears flowing. She convulsed, choked, then shivered. Her hands were like claws—gripping his vest. “I want to stay with you,” she cried.
“Jackie…”
She looked up at him, her face damp. “How can I live alone? What shall I do? I’m so afraid … I need to be with you.”
“No, believe me, you do not want that. I am”—he said it with difficulty—“I am not what you think—”
“But I know what you are! You are a vampire.”
He caught his breath. How did she know? But of course she must have seen him with her mother. She fixed his eyes with her own and said in a low voice, “And I am a witch.”
He looked at her, astoni
shed. Why would she say such a thing?
“Don’t you see that we belong together?” She moved closer to him and put her arms around him, her head close to his face. She smelled of pine and vanilla and she shivered, as if from the cold. He could not help but feel drawn to her, but he placed his hands on her shoulders and moved her away so that he could look at her. She was still so young, barely more than a child, and her child’s skin, although pale, was flawless, unblemished as silk. Her eyelids were perfectly formed, as were her lashes, the dark hairs wet with tears, her eyes huge and pale.
“There is one great difference,” he said sadly. “You are alive, whereas I am— I am not.”
He reached up and pulled the blond wig off her head. It was dry in his hand like rusted steel wool. Her black hair tumbled down. He moved it back from her neck and saw the tendon behind her ear. She was a virgin, he was certain, as innocent as the dawn, and yet—was she? She looked into his eyes. There was something smoldering there—a knowing glance. And she whispered again, “I am a witch. I know the dark secrets. We are both depraved. Both evil.” He stiffened as she moved her body against him. “No one will ever love you as I do. I will devote my life to making you happy.”
He felt a rush of desire, and a sense that his pain could be eased, but behind the flood of longing was a vague foreboding. He had heard those words before!
“But … but you are so young,” he said.
“It is only an illusion. I have lived before. And loved before. It was you that I lived for and you that I loved.”
“Oh, my dear, I can’t imagine—what do you mean?” A terrible realization was dawning and he found himself wondering whether it could possibly be true. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you remember? I was a witch in Salem and I was hanged for crimes I did not commit. You were there. You came with my mother to save me, but you could not. I cursed the Collins family from the scaffold.”
“Yes,” he said, “I do remember, but—”
“I have powers that rival yours, and I have lived even longer than you. Let me into your world, and I will take you into mine.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Considering. His body was shaking and his mouth grew damp. She was eager, defiant. Yes, she was powerful—he could feel the vibrations emanating from her body and he could see the woman she would become. Then, his hands still on her shoulders, he drew her close to him again and his face was in her hair, its silkiness against his cheek, and he said in a low whisper, “I cannot—I could never—harm you.”
She pulled away from him and rose from the chair; something in her flashed in anger. “You can’t refuse me! Don’t abandon me. Don’t leave me empty. I don’t want a meaningless life!” Then she whispered, “I want to have a great love!”
He was dumbfounded, and wanted to laugh. “A great love? Yes, but you will, my dear. Many wonderful things will come your way. You are only a child. Your whole life lies ahead.” He seemed to remember she was David’s sweetheart. “What about David? Isn’t he your—”
“No. Don’t speak of David. He doesn’t know me as you do.”
“As I do? Jackie, don’t say that. Don’t reject the happiness closest to you for a faraway dream—”
“Please … hold me. Let me love you. I will make you happy.”
He was surprised by her passion. There was something so familiar, something beyond her youthful defiance, something otherworldly, as though someone was speaking through her. And then suddenly he knew. Of course. Why hadn’t he seen it earlier? She was possessed. Even as she spoke, the words were not her own but were burned into being by some unseen force. But she would not give over, and she became breathless.
“Barnabas, try to understand. I have nothing else to live for but you. We have been given a chance for something wonderful. For our needs and our fates to be linked together. I’m not an ordinary girl and … and I don’t want my days to be ordinary. I must belong to you!”
Suddenly he was concerned for her. “Jackie. The thing you say you have inside of you—something evil—you must not give it power over you. You must fight it.”
He got up and walked away, determined to resist her, but she called to him and when he turned back, the transformation was obvious.
She stood as Angelique had stood, so many years ago, her eyes luminous, a pulse in her throat, her chest rising and falling with her breath.
Once again he was bedeviled by choices that would be irreversible. His voice was hoarse and weakness moved through his body. “Jacqueline,” he said in a shaking voice, “you must go for now. We will talk of all this tomorrow.” The force of her power was pulling him back to a time in his life when everything had been damaged forever, and yes, she was bewitching, seductive, even in her teenager’s shirt and jeans, offering herself, something within her tugging at him, a magnetism he recognized, turning his will to water. He had only to go to her and he would be lost.
“Jacqueline, I beg you to leave me be.”
Her eyes were pleading. “Barnabas, please…”
His hands opened and closed. “My dear, you must go.”
“Can’t I stay with you here while you sleep?” It was her girl’s voice again, and his will dissolved.
“Why? I mean, of course. It is your house.”
“And it is yours as well.”
* * *
David stood at the top of the stair leading down into the basement. He had been on his way to find Jackie when he heard her speaking to Barnabas, and he had stopped for fear of interrupting. For long minutes he had been there, listening, and at last, able to bear it no longer, he turned and stumbled back through the house.
* * *
Barnabas, too troubled by Jackie, could not climb into his casket. He sat with his head in his hands, and finally, when he thought she must have left, he turned to sleep. But he was startled to see she was still standing in the room, her eyes aflame. He heaved a deep sigh and said, much against his will, “Angelique? It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes…” There were flutterings of fire around her. She stood in a column of crimson that pulsed to a point then grew dim. There was flickering in the hollow of her mouth and her eyes flashed cobalt and then bronze.
“Why are you here?” he said helplessly.
Her answer was like the wind in a dark cavern. “I have tried to come back—to spend eternity with you.” She laughed her cruel and mirthless laugh, and her words were tinged with sarcasm. “I gave up my life that you might continue to exist in this form you so despise.”
He tried to move away but found his legs were leaden. Somewhere in the room Jackie was sleeping.
“We have both made mistakes,” he said heavily.
“Yes. We have. But this is my chance, and you must not refuse me. I was a witch in Salem, bound to the earth by my Indian heritage. That was before I knew you. Then I was a worshipper of Erzulie, a girl who could breathe underwater. My happiest days—the ones when we were together. You gave me life, and love, but you abandoned me—so cruelly.”
He thought he must hear this complaint till the end of time. He tried to move but his feet were encased in mud. “Were you … Antoinette?”
“Antoinette never became conscious of who she was. I couldn’t break through. I lived through her, but I could not reach you. Now Jacqueline is my joy, but she is only the breath of the storm, tiny flakes that dance in the air, no shape but that which the wind gives her, no soul but that which the boy gives her.”
At last he understood what had been so familiar about the girl’s pleading. “Are you saying that Jackie is you again, come back to haunt me?”
“I thought by now you would have guessed.”
“No, I never thought. I thought Antoinette, but never Jackie.”
She sighed, as though irritated. “I am neither,” she said, beginning to pace, her dress flickering. “I am both. I clawed my way back as two beings, Antoinette and Jacqueline, mother and daughter. Neither with all my strength or all my powers.”
&nb
sp; “So that was it. How very sneaky of you.” Again he tried to back away, but his limbs were like stone.
“Don’t laugh. Do you know what it is to be split in two? Like the mermaid who longed to walk with her prince and allowed her fish’s body to be sliced into legs. What pain it was for her to dance! I knew that pain and that blood. As for my master, he found it intriguing. He knew that his Persephone would grow content. I had to fight that apathy since even a tyrant can turn a heart. He allowed me to come back to you as a twin temptation—perhaps it was a game, entertainment for a bored devil who had tasted every pleasure and now enjoyed none.”
“I understand that boredom well.”
“He threw the dice to see which half, if either, you would choose, who would win your love. Antoinette had beauty but it bought her nothing—even though she had my courage—only confusion, escape through drugs. Jacqueline has magical powers, but she is lost, don’t you see? Incomplete. You must turn her, make her whole, make her yours.”
“I would never do that.”
“But you are a vampire.” She wavered in her column of flame and her eyes blazed. “Don’t you want her?” It was her challenge. She reached for him, her touch within inches, and he tried to push her away, but his hands drifted into smoke.
He struggled for words. “I want her to grow up and live her life. I like her. She is talented and determined. And you can be happy because your little trick worked. I did love Antoinette, in my fashion. And I will care for Jacqueline in whatever way I can. But I will never harm her.”
“Not even to make her powerful and whole?”
“You should abandon this scheme.”
“Abandon? Then whom would I be left with?”
“Angelique! You fill me with despair! Look what you have done! You are crippled now. Because you would not rest until you had my love—which you will never have—you have destroyed everything that you were. All your splendor! Because of this never-ending obsession that has become all that you are made of, you have sacrificed your brilliance. How many lives have you destroyed? How many more to come? Let Jacqueline have her life. Don’t use her this way.”