She was answered by a string of words, some taken from the Bible, some from the stable heap, that described, in explicit detail, who and what he considered her to be. Somehow having the confirmation of what she had seen in the book was terrifying, and in haste, she stumbled away from him, trying to circle around the furniture toward the door. But, with a animal cunning shining in his over-bright eyes, he stayed between her and the door.
"Why? What have I done?" she asked, a rising note of hysteria in her voice. But, the sound seemed to infuriate him and he moved faster. Putting the long plush sofa between them, Amelia thought frantically, he's mad, completely insane. In one of those queer insights around the squat, fat sofa, and for an instant, she felt like laughing helplessly.
Suddenly, it was no laughing matter. He feinted to the left, she adjusted too quickly, hampered by her skirt where it trailed over the sofa, whirled there by quickness of her turn. He was upon her. A hand clutched away and he grasped the material at the neck of her dress. With a ripping sound, loud amid their frantic breathing, it came loose in his hand, and for a moment, she thought she was free. Then, his fingers were at her throat.
Though her fists beat frantically at him, she was helpless against the frenzied strength of his thin sinewy arms, and she screamed, a hopeless, despairing cry unlikely to be heard above the wind and thunder. She closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of his thin face, so close, contorted with lust and murder and grief.
Suddenly, she was thrown away, and she stumbled against the couch and clutched at it for support. Wide-eyed, she stared at James who backed away from her, pale and trembling, his mouth round with woe and a shaking finger pointing at the amulet around her neck. "The witch's charm, the witch's charm," he whispered in a strained monotone. "I should have known, the witch's charm."
With her own trembling fingers, Amelia pulled the chain off over her head and held it out before her, and in a reversal of their earlier macabre dance, he backed away from her, shaking his head, his face like a troubled child's,
A flash of movement at the door revealed Katherine hurrying into the room to take James into her arms. "I thought I heard a scream," she said to Amelia. "What it is? What is going on?" Then, glancing at her and the amulet she held, Katherine said sharply, "Put that thing away. Can't you see you're frightening him?"
"He tried to kill me," Amelia said, her voice rising at the thought of it. "He would have, except for this." She dangled the love charm.
James shuddered and shrank against Katherine. "Make her stop," he said, turning his face into Katherine's hair and speaking in the injured tones of a small boy with an absurd lisp in his voice. "She's bad, bad."
"She says you have been bad," Katherine said softly to him. Amelia drew in her breath in amazement at the mild words that could be used for attempted murder.
"No, no," James said, "she was bad first. She didn't keep her promise, nor Reba either. She's going to run away and sell our house, her and the old lady, I heard them say so. The old lady's been someone else all the time, did you know that, Katie? Did you, huh?"
"Oh, Jamie," Katherine whispered brokenly, and patted his head.
Suddenly, the room seemed filled with people. Sylvestor and Reba and Mary Louise clustered around them, asking excited questions, but Amelia only shook her head, unable to answer.
Then, the wind whipped into the room as the front door was flung open and the sound of thunder reminded them of the storm. Silence, a curious, waiting silence, fell as everyone waited to see who had come. Faint footsteps were heard crossing the hall and returning; and then a light glimmered and the outer perimeter of its glow began to move over the floor, pushing the storm darkness into the corners.
Nelville appeared in the door with the light behind him. "What could be better?" he said with a triumphant smile spreading grimly across his face, and he moved with his slender grace into the room, and a woman stood where he had been in the doorway. High above her head she held a lamp that shone down on her grizzled silver hair like a benediction. Her old eyes gleamed maliciously as she advanced into the room and darted quickly from face to face, as if she would see what effect she was having. Clearly, she was enjoying herself, to judge from the wide, wicked grin that showed her toothless old gums.
Utter silence, except for the storm, fell, then James said in a toneless tenor of fear, "The witch, the witch!"
"Grannie Salome," Katherine said, while Reba moved closer to Sylvestor in a gesture of protection, or the need for protection.
Scenting her prey, Grannie Salome bore down on Katherine and James, waving the lamp like a banner of fire and smoke, while their faces, turned up to the light, mirrored a combined fear and fascination. Suddenly, something, some irrational fear born of the courage of madness rippled across James's face, shining in his too-light eyes. Letting go of Katherine, he rushed toward the lamp.
Before anyone could move or sound, their horror, he had grasped the lamp in his up flung hand and sent it hurtling across the room straight at Amelia. Then, he turned and ran out of the room. Nelville crashed into Amelia, sending her stumbling out of the path of the lamp and its trailing comet of burning oil. The lamp splintered into a dozen pieces as it struck the floor, sending spatters of oil in every direction.
Fire sprouted simultaneously in three or four spots, and one blaze touched the dust-dry old drapes, consuming them with a windy whoosh of sound. Burning fragments of cloth drifted in the air, touching the couch and the glistening spots of oil to flame.
Amelia stared in still horror, and then turned her head to see Nelville moving swiftly after James to the accompaniment of James's falsetto laugh, which seemed unreal in the din of fire and storm as James clumsily, but quickly negotiated the stairs. When she turned back to the room, it seemed a solid wall of flame as the old, dry timber and the intense, baking heat combined to make starting pine out of the house.
Katherine beat uselessly at a spreading pool of fire with a throw pillow that smoked, while the rug Sylvestor was using to flail at the wall was itself afire. Tiny tongues of flame licked across the ceiling, waving in the sudden draft as the window glass shattered in the heat, letting in the force of wind from the storm.
Smoke filled the room and Reba coughed constantly as she tugged at Sylvestor's arm. "Let it go!" she shouted above the roaring and crackling. "Let it go! It's not worth it!"
Mary Louise was the first to stumble from the room and the rest followed quickly, with Katherine shouting, "Perhaps, we could get some men and buckets!"
But, Sylvestor shook his head, pointing at the smoke already seeping in little curls and eddies from the boards of the hallway ceiling. With frantic eyes, Katherine stared at him and the fire-filled room behind them. Then, she ran to tug at the hideous hatrack beside the front door, as if determined to save something.
Wearily, Sylvestor joined her while Amelia and the others, after one glance at the smoke-filled staircase with its fire glow at the top of the stairs, left the house and went out into the yard. Grannie Salome, without a backward glance, faded away into the woods from which she had come.
A terrible roar split the sky above them and instinctively they cowered; then, the first raindrops came splatting down into the grass at their feet. With anxious faces, but hopeless eyes they looked into the sky and then at the burning house. No one needed the shake of Sylvestor's head to see that the rain would be too late.
"Look! Look!" came a sharp cry from Mary Louise to call their attention to two figures on the second-story gallery. Dimly seen because of the smoke and rain, they struggled across the width of the house, now in darkness, outlined in the fire behind them.
With a great frozen lump of fear in her throat, Amelia watched them, seeing first one, and then the other, uppermost in the struggle, unable to tell which was James and which Nelville. Silently, she prayed a simple "Please God, please God," while one end of the gallery sagged, eaten away by flames.
Suddenly, the two figures clasped in a deathly embrace, bending slowly over the railing. Back
and forth they rocked, neither able to subdue the other, while smoke whirled around them until it seemed they must not be breathing. Then, one man, the one on the bottom, went limp and sagged to the floor. The other man slowly stood erect and looked around as if suddenly noticing the enormous advance of the fire. While his back was turned, the man on the floor sprang up, James, plainly outlined in the ever-increasing firelight. He caught up the wicker peacock chair and half shoved, half threw it at Nelville!
As Nelville staggered against the railing, the chair crashed into him again, sending him over the railing, and though for one brief moment he hung by the fingers of one hand, James smashed them with the chair, and Nelville fell to the ground with an audible thud.
Amelia ran to the fallen figure and dropped to her knees beside him. Crying without being aware of it, she wiped his face with her handkerchief, knowing it was Nelville, but needing the assurance of seeing his face beneath the smoke grime.
At a burst of cackling laughter above her, she looked up to see James, his face distorted with soot into a grinning gargoyle, a dream demon gazing down on his handiwork, mouthing words that mercifully Amelia could not understand in the roar of the fire and the drum of the rain that was fast soaking them all. Then, the face disappeared, retreated back into the burning house, a scream of defiance ringing above the noise.
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Chapter Twelve
THE RUINS STILL smoked, and the rain still fell in a fine mist like a veil of tears, as they sat in the dilapidated carriage, waiting, ready to leave. Amelia stared at the charred timbers, still feeling like crying for the man she had thought James to be.
Behind them, a shout was heard and the sound of horses hooves, and the wagon carrying Sylvestor and Reba, with Katherine huddled, suddenly old, beside them under the protecting tarp on the narrow seat, pulled out and went around their carriage on the drive. The dark bulk of the wrapped hatrack blocked the windows for a few minutes as they passed, causing Mary Louise to smile behind her masque. "Just like Katherine to save something. You did not see her offering it to anyone else, either."
"Somehow she has lost more than anyone else. I don't mind," Amelia answered gravely.
"Well, no one else would want the thing anyway, but that is not the point. It does not belong to her."
"She feels as if it does."
"It is her feeling that way which brought all her troubles," Mary Louise said shortly.
They were silent, looking out at the brick walk leading up to the blackened boards and debris that was all that was left of Mirror House, thinking of the new grave in the family cemetery, with its new, pine headboard. They waited morosely as Nelville said good-by to the sheriff sitting on his horse beside the carriage. "Terrible accident, just plain terrible," they heard the squat, friendly sheriff say. "Well, you people know where home is, you're always welcome back." Then, the creak of saddle leather as he reached up to shake hands with Nelville on the box and his horse's hooves pounding away down the drive. They looked at each other and then away, the word accident unspoken between them, but there, nonetheless. There had been an understanding that the public and the law would be told it was all an accident. It was a family affair, no business of the public, or of the law, for that matter.
Above them on the box, Nelville cracked the whip and yelled to the horses. The carriage started with a lurch. Rain ran along the ill-fitting windows and poured in at the warped old door, but after glancing at it briefly they did not comment. It did not matter. It would only be for a little while. They planned to trade, the carriage for a wagon, if possible, and buy supplies in Natchitoches with the help of the securities and gold Mary Louise had in the bank. Then, it was just a matter of miles to the Texas border and a new beginning. The far reaches of home, Nelville called it. Pray that the dream came true, sometime, somewhere, somehow.
As they came to the fork in the road, Mary Louise leaned out the window, straining to see in the direction of Harvest Hall, and suddenly, as she brought her head in and looked at Amelia and tried to smile, her fine old eyes filled with tears. "I am an-old fool," she said in apology, "but it hurts to see the land go for repayment of the loan. It was the only place I was ever happy, the only home I ever knew, my only …" She hesitated, then said quietly, "It meant a great deal to me."
After a minute, she continued thoughtfully. "I have tried to blame my Juan Philippe for what happened. Perhaps, I am being overly sentimental, but I cannot quite make myself believe it was all his fault. None of it would have happened if he had divided his land more evenly, more satisfactory, but it was his land and he was as possessive in his way as Katherine is in hers. This was all his estate and he saw no reason to cut it up for his brother and his children, even if he had allowed them to live with the pretense that he would divide it, until it became a firm assumption. After that, everything else was an accident, or nearly so."
"An accident?" Amelia asked in surprise, remembering the twisted, smoke-blackened face of James as he had laughed after pushing Nelville off the gallery.
"Yes. You have to understand that James's mother died when he was young and Katherine raised him in her narrow, critical grasping manner. Not that it mattered, I suppose, since Katherine is just like her mother was, except that Katherine, being younger, had not the tolerance to understand, even a little, what she had never experienced herself. She also had great expectations for Mirror House becoming theirs, since she, unlike her mother, had less knowledge of the situation. She felt, and taught James to feel, that the house was their due, at the same time that she allowed him boundless freedom as befitted the son of the manor, so that he was an indulged and temperamental boy with a grudge against Harvest Hall inhabitants. Naturally, they were upset when it seemed they would lose everything."
"James acted violently, without thinking, and the result was disaster. Two people were dead because of him. Guilt does strange things. He retreated into a fantasy world where the badly burned leg he received at the Harvest Hall fire became a war wound and he a hero, by grace of the commendation given to his father, Lieutenant Charles Harveston, though he never wore a uniform he stayed a boy of fourteen, a disturbed spoiled child, hiding behind Katherine's skirts and fearing Grannie Salome, whom he associated with the time of the fire and the flames and madness, and because she, of all those who knew the truth, was not kin to him and had not gained by what had happened. Katherine and Sylvestor gained. They were almost equally guilty because they ran away without seeing or caring whether the fire James started was a serious one. They could never admit their guilt or allow themselves to think of it, so they turned inward as you found them, so unhappy."
"How could they do it?" Amelia asked wonderingly. How could they go on pretending that nothing had happened, that everything was normal."
"Our minds do marvelous things for us. They have to, to make life livable. They banish our cares and turn black into a faintly colored thing we can live with. Pain becomes a memory and horror and terror slip from us like old clothes. If it did not, we would all kill ourselves to escape the torture of remembered cruelties the world inflicts on us, and drown in tears of remorse for the things we have done to others."
The carriage rolled in silence accented by the tapping of the rain. Amelia broke the quiet with her curiosity. "Reba," she said, "what did she have to do with James? Surely, after all those years of being married to Sylvestor, she should have known what he was like?"
"No, because you see you are confusing what he was like after you came with what he was like before. Before, he had been a rather quiet young man, pursuing his books with, only now and then, a hint of his real nature, such as when he was denied something or someone interfered with him. For months at a time, he could be as sensible and charming as any man, but that changed, or began to change after your arrival. You threatened his security and disturbed his sister, which in turn disturbed him, because he depended on her so to smooth the way for him. Reba felt that James was a nice harmless man, boyish sometimes,
that she could flirt with, who would give her the admiration and attention she was not getting from Sylvestor. She never dreamed he would take her seriously, since he was her husband's brother. Rather silly of her, of course.
"I do not think she was aware of the old guilt that made Sylvestor retreat into his pipe dreams, but when she saw that you disturbed him so much that his mild addiction became worse, and that you were really the mistress of what she had always considered her home, she tried to frighten you away. It was Reba who found Grannie Salome and filled her with lies, so that she attacked you, and she put the snake in your bed. It was this trend toward actively getting rid of you, combined with the attack by Grannie Salome, that triggered James into a similar use of violence."
"But, Sylvestor's accident, was it an accident, then?"
"I do not suppose we will ever be sure, but Nelville does not think so. Reba was trying to withdraw gracefully from her involvement with James and he would not have it. Nelville thinks he tried to kill Sylvestor, thinking that Reba would turn to him, I suppose. Reba became frightened when she realized how dangerous he was, and became too violent in her rejection of him, stirring up all the old rage and fear and frustration. Katherine soothed him with the promise that you would marry him instead, and like a child pacified with a new toy, he was satisfied until her promises were shown as lies, or miscalculation, at best. James was thrown adrift in the sea of his conflicting needs and emotions, magnified by his childish brand of madness."
"You make it sound so simple," Amelia said wearily. "You almost sound as if you are sorry he is dead."
"I am, in a way. He was not responsible. Grannie Salome said he had a devil in him. I think that is as accurate a description as any. People are not responsible for their devils.
Amelia smiled at her turn of phrase, grateful to her and in some odd way, eased of the burden of anger toward James and the people who had lived at Mirror House and had tried to use her. Perhaps, no certainly, the future would be brighter.
The Secret of Mirror House Page 17