San Diego Lightfoot Sue

by Tom Reamy

  Montgomery Sweetwater began to laugh. He couldn’t stop. “It’s ridiculous,” he choked out between guffaws. Then he died.

  Dorothybelle ran into the room and stood there staring while the curled toes of her harem slippers vibrated. She heard a plop and looked out the window. The chocolate icing was dripping off the house.

  Within two days the bananas had turned brown. Within four days they began to rot. Dorothybelle finally went to the mainland—mostly to get away from the stench of the bananas. She missed the first rain in eighty-three years.

  “That’s that!” Mother Nature said with satisfaction. “Not one single absurd thing has happened since Sweetwater kicked off. All the wars have stopped. The strawberry Kool-Aid is gradually disappearing from the Baltic Sea. The invaders from Arcturus have packed up and gone home. The Chinese have started growing hair on their heads instead of parsley. It’s wonderful. Order, balance, and rhythm; it’s the only way!”

  A thousand years later Mother Nature said, biting her lip, “I don’t understand it. Everything was going so well. There was absolute order and harmony. I don’t understand it at all!”

  History yawned. “They’re probably perishing from sheer boredom,” he said. “I know the last thousand years since Montgomery Sweetwater died have been the longest thousand years I ever spent.” He yawned again.

  “But,” she said a little uncertainly, “it was the only way. Absolutely the only way.”

  In another thousand years the human race was totally extinct.

  The Mistress of Windraven

  I dreamed again last night of Windraven Hall. It was as I had seen it last, a gaunt ruin on the edge of the sea. Gulls circled the blackened fingers of stone and blackbirds nested in the creepers relentlessly covering the ugly wounds, The great stone arches of the central hall still stood, curved against the pale sky like the bones of some huge dead beast picked clean by vultures.

  Only the low west wing had escaped the fire. I knew Alex was in there, in his library, perched like a blind bird among his books, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, wanting nothing.

  In my dream I again left Windraven Hall as I had done that last time with my few meager possessions in my old wicker valise. I turned once more at the edge of the meadow and looked at the blind windows of the west wing. Was there a movement at the window? Did he look out at me… or was it only the reflection of a gull?

  Windraven Hall, where my dreams began and seemingly must forever end in a dream.

  “Well, darling, at least she doesn’t set the tiresome tilings in Cornwall. Jesus! If one more gothic set in Cornwall comes across my desk, I swear I shall go screaming through the steno pool. Most of them know as much about Cornwall as I know about the far side of the moon. Why can’t one of the things be set on a wheat farm in Nebraska?

  “My God, the artist doesn’t have to read them. I just tell him the location and the period and he paints the girl and the house with the light in one window. The lucky bastards! I’m the one who has to read the damn things.

  “Her real name is Agnes Gooch, or something. We were the ones who changed it to Valentina Hope. That’s probably why the book is doing so well. The tiny brains out there look at it with their usual perception and see ‘Victoria Holt.’

  “No, I haven’t met the woman. The book came through the mail and now she has an agent. It’s just as well. Spare me from lady novelists. Oops! Don’t let that get over to Cosmo; I’ll be drummed out of my own sex.

  “Well, darling, I did get a tiny bonus from R. T. for buying the book. The agent says she’s started another one.

  “I have to hang up now, darling. I have a luncheon engagement with Manly Armbruster. What a Cosmic Jest! Imagine anyone naming that old fruit ‘Manly.’ If his readers only knew! Cocktails tomorrow?

  “Fine. The Pied Piper at seven. See you then, darling. Bye, bye.”

  He leaned over her shoulder and looked at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. “I dreamed again last night of Windraven Hall,” he muttered and then cocked his eyes at her. “Isn’t that a bit Daphne du Maurierish?”

  She sighed and leaned back in the chair. He knew she didn’t like him reading over her shoulder—and he hadn’t shaved again that morning. “Actually, I thought it was a bit Jane Eyre-ish. Don’t you have something to do?”

  “Don’t get peevish, Valentina,” he grunted and continued to read. “Don’t you think you’re a little heavy on the bird imagery?”

  “No.”

  “What’s this one called?”

  “I don’t know.” She knew he didn’t care what she called it. She knew he was looking for an argument. “It doesn’t make much difference. The titles usually don’t mean anything, anyway. How about Gothic Romance #792?” She tried to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  “There must be more of them than that,” he said over his shoulder, going into the kitchen. “Don’t forget to leave a light burning in the window.” He guffawed and she heard him open the refrigerator and pull the tab on a beer can.

  “Damn you, Howard!” she said softly. “God damn you, Howard!”

  I first saw Windraven the summer of my eighteenth year.

  After the deaths of my dear parents from brain fever, I posted a letter to my uncle telling him of my plight. My father, though a gentle and loving man, was not a wizard with finances. My small legacy was eaten up completely by his debts, leaving me penniless and alone. My uncle, a poor but kindly man, agreed that I might live with his family until such time as I married or found a position of my own.

  It was also that same day, in the summer of my eighteenth year, that I first looked into the laughing gray eyes of Alexander Culhane.

  My uncle’s man met the post chaise at Weymouth. We rode along the Dorset coast in a dray pulled by a dappled mare of sweet disposition and indeterminate age. It was a sugary day, warm and still, the air thick and sweet with the scent of freshly scythed hay. Larks trilled in the meadows and hedge sparrows quarreled merrily in the low hedgerows on either side of the quiet country lane. It was such a perfect English summer day my recent tragedy was put quite out of my head.

  I saw the great house across the long swell of a meadow, a dark silhouette against the sea.

  “What is that?” I asked, strangely affected by the somber beauty of the scene.

  My uncle’s man, whose name was Jaban, halted the dray. The old mare began to nibble at the sweet grass between the ruts of the lane. Jaban turned in the seat and squinted against the bright sky. He shifted the clay pipe in his mouth and spoke with it clenched in his teeth.

  “That be Windraven Hall, Mistress,” he said.

  “Who lives there?” I asked.

  “They be the Culhanes. Most for leagues around be Culhane land, even the croft where the young mistress’s uncle be a freeholder.”

  Jaban had turned back to flick the dapple with the reins when we heard the pounding hoofbeats on the opposite side of the lane. I looked away from Windraven Hall as the night-black stallion leaped the hedgerow. The rider reined him in, just in front of the dray, and the horse reared, his skin shimmering like midnight silk.

  I gasped and lay my hand on my bosom. The powerful beauty of the horse and rider quite took my breath away. Jaban tipped his hat to the young man and the young man nodded as he walked the stallion to the side of the dray. He pushed the wind-blown hair from his face, hair as black as the stallion, and stroked the horse’s neck with his bare hand. The horse stepped in place impatiently and dug at the turf with a shiny black hoof. The muscles coiled under the horse’s black hide much as they did in the young man’s thigh under the soft cloth of his breeches.

  I looked up and into sparkling grey eyes in quite the most handsome face I had ever seen.

  “Good morrow, Jaban. Who is your passenger?” he asked, never taking his eyes from mine.

  “This be the niece of Edward Bronwyn, Master Alex,” Jaban said, tipping his hat again.

  The young man on the horse smiled. “Does the niece of Edward Bronw
yn have a name?”

  “India Bronwyn, your Lordship,” I said boldly, then lowered my bonnet to hide my blush.

  The young man laughed and I looked up again. His head was thrown back in merriment. “I be no lord, Mistress. No drop of royal blood be in these veins.” His speech before had been that of an educated man, but now he spoke in the peasant dialect of the district, seemingly as a jest.

  “Your pardon, sir,” I said, lowering my eyes from the power of his gaze.

  “Granted, Mistress India.” He bowed slightly and touched the stallion easily with the heels of his boots. The magnificent animal leaped away and galloped down the lane, then over the hedgerow, speeding across the meadow.

  I turned in the seat of the dray as Jaban flicked the reins. The old dappled mare moved slowly and ponderously, so greatly in contrast to the beautiful black animal and his rider. As I watched the stallion was reined in and turned. Alex Culhane looked at me again from the center of the meadow, then he wheeled the horse and continued toward Windraven Hall.

  “Master Alex be the best of the Culhanes, but he be also the youngest,” Jaban said. “He be never master of the land.”

  Agnes Grover dropped towels in the pool of water spreading rapidly across the kitchen floor from the washing machine. It was the third time that month and the repair man wanted seventy-five dollars to fix it. She was squeezing towels out in the sink when the doorbell rang. She dropped the wet towel and dried her hands, but heard Howard going to the door.

  He came into the kitchen a few moments later with a special delivery letter. He dropped it on the cabinet and looked at her. She picked it up and saw the return address of her agent. She knew what was in it. She put it back on the cabinet without opening it.

  Howard snorted. “Doesn’t the successful lady author want to know how much it is?”

  “It can wait,” she said and went back to work with the towels.

  “Wait for what?” he said. “Wait until I’m not around so my ego won’t be bruised?”

  “All right, Howard,” she said softly and tore the end off the envelope. She looked at the check.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Fifteen hundred.”

  “That should keep the wolf away from the door until the new one is finished. Adding it to the other checks you used to catch up on the bills and pay my debts makes a very tidy sum.”

  “Howard, please.”

  “Now you can get the washing machine fixed; even buy a new one if you want to.” He threw the words at her like stones.

  “Howard, you’re being ridiculous!” She clamped her lips together. She was letting him do it again, letting him lure her into an argument.

  He looked at her for a moment, victory in his eyes. “Ridiculous, am I? Ridiculous because you have to support me?”

  “No, Howard.”

  “Ridiculous because I can’t find a job and have to be supported by Valentina Hope?”

  “No!” she yelled. “You’re ridiculous because you make so much of it. Why shouldn’t I support you when I can? I’m your wife. This marriage is a partnership. We’re supposed to be helping each other. Why is it so important to you?”

  “Because I don’t feel like a man anymore!”

  “There are more important things than money that make a man. Do you want me to stop writing like you’ve stopped looking for a job? Do you want us to lose the house and the car? Do you want us to starve?”

  He slapped her. She leaned against the sink and forced herself not to cry.

  “Why didn’t you go to New York like they wanted? Why didn’t you go to the cocktail parties and be interviewed by the newspapers?” he growled through his teeth.

  “I didn’t want to go to New York.”

  “Maybe when you’ve sold a few more books we can move to New York, get a penthouse apartment, and I can stay around to answer the phone for you.”

  “Howard, stop it! You didn’t mind when I was writing the first book. You thought it was fun. You bragged about it.”

  “Because I didn’t think it had a chance in hell of ever selling!” He stalked from the kitchen and a moment later she heard the front door slam.

  “Don’t track water through the house,” she said softly and began to cry.

  I was awakened in the middle of the night by screams.

  I sat up in bed and listened. I could hear nothing but Hagan’s snores as he lay beside me, still sleeping. I thought for a moment it had been a dream, then the screams came again. It was Emmaline. I knew. I woke Hagan.

  He stirred and sat up, his face so like and yet so unlike Alex’s. “Emmaline has gotten out of her room,” I said and then smelled the faint odor of smoke.

  Hagan sniffed and jumped out of bed. We raced down the stairs of the east wing, not even taking time to put on dressing gowns over our nightclothes. The odor of smoke grew stronger and soon I saw flickering light from the direction of Emmaline’s room.

  “Stay here, India,” Hagan said and rushed toward the open door from which came the light of the flames. He went inside and I heard Emmaline’s screams grow more frenzied in her madness. Soon Hagan emerged from the room dragging a limp form.

  Even at that distance and in the smoke I could see it was Alex. I ran to them. “My God, India,” Hagan groaned. “She’s killed Leo. I must get him out.” He ran back into the flaming room.

  “No, Hagan!” I cried as he was hidden from view by the smoke. Alex moaned and I looked at him. A cut bled freely on his forehead where he had been struck. I put my hand on his chest and felt his heart beating strongly.

  There was a sudden crash from the burning room as something collapsed. Emmaline’s mad screams rose suddenly in pitch. I went to the door but was driven back by the heat. “Hagan!” I cried, but received no answer. As I watched, something moved in the flames. It was Emmaline. She ran from the room, herself a living flame.

  Even now, I sometimes wake in the night and seem to hear those screams. She ran down the hallway and smashed through the glazed doors into the garden. There she fell and her screams stilled, her tortured mind finally at peace.

  I tried to pull Alex away from the fire, but his weight was more than my small strength could manage. I was almost given in to panic when I heard someone call. It was Jaban. With him was Uncle Edward and Aunt Sophie and my cousins. They pulled Alex to safety while Jaban lent me his strong arm.

  Other neighbors came and, with the servants, extinguished the fire. Only Emmaline’s room and the one above were damaged greatly, but Hagan was dead. Leo was dead. Emmaline was dead. All who had inhabited the great house were dead except Alex and myself.

  In the summer of my twentieth year I was a widow and no longer the mistress of Windraven Hall.

  Howard Grover pulled the pages from the wastebasket and looked at them. He shuffled through them and raised his eyebrows questioningly at his wife. “I thought you’d finished this thing.”

  “I’m changing the ending.”

  “Oh?”

  “I decided not to burn Windraven Hall. When the middle brother’s mad wife sets fire to the place, they manage to put it out. I decided to have a happy ending.”

  “You always were one for a happy ending.”

  “Please, Howard. I want to get this finished.

  “Does dear, sweet little India still marry Alex’s elder brother?”

  “Yes. The heroine always marries the wrong man first.” She looked at him but he was still scanning the pages. “It’s part of the formula. Instead of having Alex become a psychotic recluse in the ruins of Windraven Hall and India leave because she can’t get through to him, I’m having him come to his senses and marry her.”

  “And they live happily ever after.”

  “Of course.”

  “Too bad real life isn’t that way.” He tossed the pages back in the wastebasket and went into the kitchen. She heard him open the refrigerator door and pull the tab on a can of beer. Then he turned on the television even though he knew it made it difficult for he
r to work.

  I stood on the grand staircase of Windraven Hall, listening to the music swell through the great house and watching the dancers whirl on the polished floor. It was the happiest moment of my life; the ball in honor of my marriage to Alex Culhane. In the summer of my twenty-first year I was again mistress of Windraven, but it was of no importance. As the wife of Hagan Culhane it had been an empty joy. Now, it meant nothing to me. My only pleasure was the love of my husband.

  Alex came up the staircase toward me, his handsome face bathed in smiles and his night-black hair for once under control. He took me in his strong arms and crushed me to his chest. He laughed and motioned upward with his head.

  Laughing, I ran ahead of him. The hallway was bright with light. Candles burned everywhere. Every room in the house was filled with waxen sunshine. The candle makers of Weymouth had been kept busy for months in preparation for this night at Windraven Hall.

  With Alex’s aid I quickly extinguished all the candles in our bedroom, then I was in his arms where I would stay forever and ever.

  “Darling, you mustn’t call me at the office. I’m hanging on to my job by my fingernails.

  “Well, R. T. has been the teeniest bit forgiving since the book is selling in spite of everything. I don’t know what came over me. I must have been possessed. Do you know a good exorcist?

  “At least I had the perspicacity to change the title from Gothic Romance #792 to The Mistress of Windraven. R. T. would never have forgiven that.

  “I know it doesn’t mean anything, but the titles of these things never do.

  “We haven’t been able to find her. Agnes Gooch, or whatever her name is, has disappeared from the face of the earth. I even went to that horrid provincial town where she lives looking for her myself. Her husband hasn’t seen her since she mailed the manuscript to her agent. After seeing Harold Gooch, or whatever his name is, I can’t say I blame her. R. T. has been frantic. The first two books are selling very well and he wants another. The Mistress of Windraven is selling even better than the first one—in spite of that wretched cover.