The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt!

by Andrews, V. C.

  It came to me then just what to do. “Don’t you worry none, Apple I’ll only spend one week in Disneyland before I come back to you. I’ll hide your puppy-pony biscuits under the hay and leave the water tap dripping in your pail. But don’t you dare eat or drink anything John Amos gives you, or my grandmother either. Don’t you let anybody bribe you with goodies.”

  He wagged his tail, telling me he’d be good and obey my orders. He’d made a big pile of do-do. I picked it up and squashed it through my fingers, letting him know I was a part of him now and he was really mine. I wiped my hands on the grass and saw ants come running and flies going to work. No wonder nothing lasted, no wonder.

  “Time for your lessons, Bart,” called John Amos from the barn, his bald head gleaming in the sunlight. I felt captured as I lay on the hay and stared at him towering over me. He smelled old and stale.

  “Are you reading Malcolm’s journal faithfully?” he asked.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Are you teaching yourself the ways of the Lord and saying your prayers dutifully?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Those who follow in his footsteps will be judged accordingly, as will those who don’t. Let me give you an example. Once there was a beautiful young girl who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, and she had everything money could buy—but did she appreciate all she had? No, she didn’t! When she grew older she began to tempt men with her beauty. She’d flaunt her half-nakedness before their eyes. She was high and mighty, but the Lord saw and He punished her, though it took Him some time. The Lord, through Malcolm, made her crawl and cry and pray for release, and Malcolm bested her in the end. Malcolm always bested everyone in the end—and so must you.”

  Boy, he sure could tell boring stories. We had naked people in our garden and I wasn’t tempted. I sighed, wishing he had more subjects to talk about than God and Malcolm . . . and some darn beautiful girl.

  “Beware of beauty in women, Bart. Beware of the woman who shows you her body without clothes. Beware of all those women who lie in wait to do you in and be like Malcolm, clever!”

  Finally he let me go. I was glad to be done with pretending I was like Malcolm. All I had to do to feel really good was to crawl sneakily on the ground, listening to the jungle noises in the dense foliage where wild animals lurked. Dangerous animals ready to gobble me down. I jerked. Bolted upright. No! That couldn’t be what I thought it was. Just wasn’t fair for God to send a dinosaur. Taller than a skyscraper. Longer than a train. I had to jump up and run off to find Jory and tell him what we had hangin around our backyard.

  A noise in the jungle ahead! I stopped short, gasping for breath.

  Voices. Talking snakes?

  “Chris, I don’t care what you say. It is not necessary for you to visit her again this summer. Enough is enough. You’ve done what you can to help her and you can’t. So forget her and concentrate on us, your family.”

  I peeked around a bush. Both my parents were in the prettiest part of the garden, where the larger trees grew. Momma was on her knees, mulching the ground around the roses. Green thumb she had, and he did too.

  “Cathy, must you stay a child forever?” he asked. “Can’t you ever learn to forgive and forget? Perhaps you can pretend she doesn’t exist, but I can’t. I keep thinking we are the only family she has left.” He pulled her to her feet, then put his hand over her mouth when it opened to interrupt. “All right, hold on to your hatred, but I’m a doctor sworn to do what I can for those in distress. Mental illnesses can be more devastating than physical ailments. I want to see her recover. I want her to leave that place—so don’t glare at me and tell me again that she was never insane, that she was only pretending. She’d have to be crazy to do what she did. And for all we know the twins might never have grown tall anyway. Like Bart. He’s not of normal height for a boy his age.”

  Oh, wasn’t I?

  “Cathy, how can I feel good about myself, or anything, if I neglect my own mother?”

  “All right!” stormed Momma. “Go on and visit her! Jory, Bart, Cindy, and I will stay on with Madame Marisha. Or we could fly on to New York so I can visit with some old friends until you’re ready to join us again.” She gave him a crooked smile. “That is, if you still want to join us.”

  “Where else would I go but to you? Who cares if I live or die but you and our children? Cathy, think about this—the day I turn my back on my mother will also be the day I turn my back on all women, including you.”

  She fell into his arms then and did all that mushy loving stuff I hated to see. I backed away, still on my hands and knees, wondering about what Momma had said, and why she hated his mother so much. I felt a little sick in my stomach. What if my grandmother next door really was my stepfather’s mother, truly crazy, loving me only because she had to. What if John Amos was telling the truth?

  It was so hard to figure out. Was Corrine Malcolm’s real daughter like John Amos had told me?—was she the one who had “tempted” John Amos? Or was that Malcolm who hated someone pretty and half-naked. Sometimes I got confused after reading Malcolm’s book; he’d skip back to his childhood and write about his memories even after he was grown up, like his childhood was more important than his adult life. How odd. I couldn’t wait to grow up.

  I heard them again, coming at me. Quickly I crawled under the nearest hedges.

  “I love you, Chris, as much as you love me. Sometimes I think we both love too much. I wake up at night if you’re not there. I want you to not be a doctor, but a man who stays home every night. I want my sons to grow up, but each day brings them nearer to learning our secret, and I’m so afraid they’ll hate us and won’t understand.”

  “They’ll understand,” he said. How could he know I would understand when I wasn’t good at understanding even simple things, much less something so bad it woke Momma up at night.

  “Cathy, have we been bad parents? Haven’t we done the best we could? After living with us from their childhood, how can they help but understand? We’ll tell them how it was, give them all the facts, so they will see it as we lived it. In so doing, they’ll wonder, as I often wonder, how we survived without losing our minds.”

  John Amos was right. They had to be sinning or they wouldn’t be so afraid we wouldn’t understand. And what secret? Whatever were they hiding?

  I stayed under the hedges long after my parents went into the house. I had favorite caves I’d made deep in the hedges, and when I was inside them I felt like some small woody animal, scared of everything human that would kill me if possible.

  Malcolm was on my mind, him and his brain that was so wise and cunning. I thought of John Amos, who was teaching me about God, the Bible, and sinning. It wasn’t until I thought of Apple and my grandmother that I felt good. Not real good, only a little good.

  Fell on the ground and began to sniff around, trying to find something I’d buried last week, or a month ago. Looked in the little fish pond Daddy wanted us to have so we could watch how baby fish were born. I’d seen itty-bitty fish come out of eggs, and the parents swam like crazy to gobble down their children!

  “Jory! Bart!” called Momma from the open kitchen door, “Dinnertime!”

  I peered into the water. There was my face, all funny-looking, with jagged edges, hair up in points, not curly and pretty like Jory’s. Something dark red was on my face—ugly face that didn’t belong in a pretty gardens where the little birds came to bathe in a fancy bath. I was bleeding tears. I dipped my hands in the fish water and washed my face. Then sat back to think. That’s when I saw the blood on my leg—lots of blood that was drying in a big dark clot on my knee. Didn’t really matter because it didn’t hurt too much.

  Wonder how it got there? I retraced my crawl with my eyes. That board with the rusty nail—had I driven that in my knee? I crawled over to the board and felt the blood sticky on its end. Daddy called nail holes in skin “punctures,” and I guess I had one. “Now, it’s very important that a puncture bleeds freely,” he explained.
Mine wasn’t bleeding freely.

  I put my finger in the puncture and stirred up the blood so it would run. Freaky people like me could do awful things like that, while sissy people like Momma would look sick. Blood in my wound felt hot and thick, just like that pudding stuff Apple had made and I had squeezed through my fingers because it not only made him more mine, but it felt good too.

  Maybe I wasn’t so freaky after all, for all of a sudden I was beginning to feel real pain. Mean pain.

  “BART!” bellowed Daddy from the back veranda. “You get in this house instantly! Unless you want a spanking!”

  When they were in the dining room they couldn’t see me sneak in the family room sliding door, and that’s just what I did. In the bathroom I washed my hands, put on my pj’s to hide my bad knee, and, quiet and meek, joined my family at the table.

  “Well, it’s about time,” said Momma, who looked pretty.

  “Bart, why do you insist on causing trouble every time we sit down to eat?” asked Daddy. I hung my head, not feeling sorry, just not feeling well. Knee was really throbbing with pain, and what John Amos said about God punishing those who disobeyed must be right. I was being judged, and a knee puncture was my own hellfire.

  Next day I was back in the garden, hiding in one of my special places. All day I sat there and enjoyed my pain, which meant I was normal, not a freak. I was being punished like all other sinners who’d always felt pain. Wanted to miss dinner. Had to go and see Apple. Couldn’t remember if I’d been over there or not. Drank a little from the fishpond. Lap, lap, lap, like a cat.

  Momma had been packing all day, smiling even early this morning when she put my clothes in a suitcase first. “Bart, try to be a good boy today for a change. Come to your meals on time and then Daddy won’t have to spank you before bedtime. He doesn’t like punishing you, but he does have a way to discipline you. And do try to eat more. You won’t enjoy Disneyland if you feel sick.”

  Sunset changed the blue sky to pretty colors. Jory ran outdoors to watch the colors he said were like music. Jory could also “feel” colors; they made him glad, sad, lonely, and “mystical.” Momma was another one who could “feel” colors. Now that I was getting the knack of feeling pain, maybe soon I’d learn to feel colors too.

  Real night started coming. Darkness could bring out the ghosts. Emma tinkled her little crystal bell to call me in to dinner. Wanted so badly to go, but couldn’t do it.

  Something rotting was in the hollow tree behind me. I turned and crawled out of my cave and peeked into the dark hole in the tree. Rotten eggs inside! Phew! I put my hand in slowly, feeling around for what I couldn’t see. Something stiff and cold and covered with fur! Dead thing had a collar around its neck with points that cut my hand—was that barbed wire? Was that rotten dead thing Clover?

  I sobbed, wild with fear.

  They’d think I did it.

  They were always thinking I did everything that was bad. And I’d loved Clover, I had. Always wanted him to like me more than Jory. Now poor Clover would never live in that wonderful doghouse I’d finish someday.

  Jory came down the main garden path, calling and searching for me. “Come out from where you are, Bart! Don’t make waves now that we’re all ready to leave.”

  Found me a new place he didn’t know about and lay flat on my stomach.

  Jory left. Next came my mother. “Bart,” she called, “if you don’t come inside . . . Please, Bart. I’m sorry I slapped you this morning.” I sniffed away my tears of self-pity. I had only accidentally dumped a whole box of detergent in the dishwasher thinking I could help. How was I to know one small box could make a whole ocean of suds? Foamy suds that filled the kitchen. This time it was Daddy. “Bart,” he called in a normal voice, “come in and eat your dinner. No need to sulk. We know what you did was an accident. You are forgiven. We realize you were trying to help Emma, so come in.”

  On and on I sat, feeling guilty for making them suffer more. Panic had been in Momma’s voice, as if she really did love me, and how could she when I never did anything right? Wasn’t fit for her to love.

  The pain in my knee was much worse. Maybe I had lock-jaw. Kids at school had told me all about how it made your jaws lock together so you couldn’t eat, making doctors knock out your front teeth so they could put a tube in your mouth and you could suck in soup. Soon the ambulance would come screaming down our street, and, with me inside it, would sound its siren all the way to Daddy’s hospital. They’d rush me to the emergency room and a masked surgeon would shout: “Off with his rotten, stinking leg!” They’d hack it off short, and I’d be left with a stump full of poison that would put me in my coffin.

  Then they’d put me in that cemetery in Clairmont, South Carolina. Aunt Carrie would be at my side, and at last she’d have someone small like her to keep her company. But I wouldn’t be Cory. I was me, the black sheep of the family—so John Amos had called me once when he was mad about me playing with his “choppers.”

  On my back, with my arms crossed over my chest, I lay just like Malcolm Neal Foxworth, staring upward as I waited for winter to come and go and summer to bring Momma, Daddy, Jory, Cindy, and Emma to my grave. Bet they wouldn’t bring me pretty flowers. Down in my grave I’d stiffly smile, not letting them know I liked the killer Spanish moss much better than I liked the smelly roses with prickly thorns.

  My family would leave. I’d be trapped in the ground, in the dark, forever and ever. When at last I was in the cold-cold ground, and the snow lay all around, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be like Malcolm Neal Foxworth. I pictured Malcolm when he was old. Frail, with thin hair and a limp like John Amos, and only a little better-looking John Amos, who was very ugly.

  Just in the nick of time, I was solving all Momma’s problems and Cindy could live on and on in peace.

  Now that I was dead.

  Wounds of War

  Dinnertime came and went. Bedtime was drawing nearer and still Bart didn’t show up. We had all searched, but I was the one who kept it up longest. I was the one who knew him best. “Jory,” said Mom, “if you don’t find him in ten more minutes I’m calling the police.”

  “I’ll find him,” I said, not nearly as confident as I tried to sound. I didn’t like what Bart was doing to our parents. They were trying to do the best they could for us. They weren’t getting any big kick out of visiting Disneyland for the fourth time. That was Bart’s treat, and he was too dumb to understand.

  He was bad, too. Dad and Mom should punish him severely, not indulge him like they did. He’d know, at least, that they cared enough to punish him for his wicked ways.

  Yet when I’d mentioned this to them once or twice, both had explained they’d learned in the worst way about parents who were strict and cruel. I’d thought it odd at the time that both of them had come from the same kind of heartless parents, but my teacher often said that likes were attracted to one another more than opposites. All I had to do was look at them to know this was true. Both had the same shade of blonde hair, the same color blue eyes, and the same dark eyebrows and long, black, curling lashes—though Momma used mascara, which made Daddy tease her, for he didn’t think she needed any.

  No, they wouldn’t punish Bart severely even when he was wicked, for they had found out firsthand what harm it could do.

  Boy did Bart love to talk about wickedness and sin. A new kind of talk, like he’d been reading the Bible and taking from it the kind of ideas that some preachers screamed out behind the pulpits. He could even quote passages from the Bible—something from the song of Solomon, and a brother’s love for his sister whose breasts were like . . .

  Gee, I didn’t even like to think about that kind of thing. Made me feel so uneasy, even more uneasy than when Bart spoke of how he hated graves, ole ladies, cemeteries, and almost everything else. Hate was an emotion he felt often, poor kid.

  I checked his little cave in the shrubs and saw a bit of cloth torn from this shirt. But he wasn’t there now. I picked up a board meant for the top
of the doghouse Bart was building, and stared at the rusty, bloody end of the nail.

  Had he hurt himself with his nail and crawled off somewhere to die? Dying was all he talked about lately, excluding talk of those already dead. He was always crawling around, sniffing the ground like a dog, even relieving himself like a dog. Boy, he was a mixed-up little kid.

  “Bart, it’s Jory. If you want to stay out all night, I’ll let you, and won’t tell our parents . . . just make some noise so I can know you’re alive.”

  Nothing.

  Our yard was big, full of shrubs and trees and blooming bushes Mom and Dad had planted. I circled a camellia bush. Oh, golly—was that Bart’s bare foot?

  There he was, half under the hedge, with only his legs stretched out. I’d overlooked him before because this was not his usual place to hide. It was really dark now, the fog making it even more difficult to see.

  Gently I eased him out from the shrubs, wondering why he didn’t complain. I stared down at his flushed hot face, his murky eyes staring dully at me. “Don’t touch me,” he moaned. “Almost dead now . . . almost there.”

  I picked him up and ran with him in my arms. He was crying, telling me his leg hurt . . . “Jory, I really don’t want to die, I don’t.”

  By the time Dad picked him up and put him in his car, he was unconscious. “I don’t believe this,” said Dad. “That leg of his is swollen three times larger than it should be. I only pray he doesn’t have gas gangrene.”

  I knew about gangrene—it could kill people!