Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Marilla was still excited. “Grandpa Jed said this was a sacred place—that it belonged to Those Who Have Vanished. You know something? He always used to ask permission before he came through the doorway. Maybe it’s wrong for us to be here—we didn’t ask, did we?”

  “I didn’t know about asking,” Brian said. “I paid homage with the drum, so I think it’s all right.”

  I found myself shaking my head. “No! It’s not all right. Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong!”

  Brian and Marilla watched me as I began to move about the space, not looking up at that face now, not tempting the sky, just moving and searching because of a strong current that seemed to flow through me. She was pushing me—Vermilion. I walked about, seeking, searching—for what I didn’t know, though I dreaded discovery.

  When I did find it, it was as though I had been aware all along of what would wait for me here. From where I stood, farther down the oval, I could see what was out of Brian’s and Marilla’s sight, and what I saw left me sick and trembling.

  “Brian—look! Up there!” My hand was shaking as I pointed. “Look behind the first rock figure!”

  Pale green shone against red stone, and was smeared with red dust. I held Marilla back as Brian ran in the direction I pointed. He knelt on the shale, half-hidden by scrub growth. For a long moment the secret place was intensely quiet, with no haunting memory of a drumbeat, but only a strange, high, humming sound.

  Marilla clung to me, and we both looked up at a far silver airplane moving against deep turquoise. An entity from another, younger world. Not until the plane was out of sight, leaving the ruled line of a vapor trail behind, did Brian stand up and return to us.

  “It’s my mother, isn’t it?” Marilla whispered.

  He touched her shoulder gently. “Yes, honey. You have to be brave now. Can you be very brave?”

  “That means she’s dead, doesn’t it? But why would my mother come here? She hated this place—just as she hated them because they made her afraid.” Her voice rose, and for an instant her eyes moved upward to the five faces carved in rock that seemed even more fiery now.

  I held her tightly, trying to hold on to myself as well. “Marilla, honey, there are things we have to do now. Brian will tell us.”

  He glanced at me, and then he too turned his eyes upon the high, shining, central face, and said something very strange. “It was destined. It had to be.” That mysticism again.

  “Brian!” I cried. “Don’t talk like that! We must get Marilla back now. You must take us in.”

  He seemed to return from very far away. “We’ll go back to the jeep. I’ve got a two-way radio there, and I can call for help. Someone will drive you and Marilla home. I’ll have to stay until the people from Search and Rescue come. An ambulance can’t get in here, so I’ll need to show them the way to bring in a stretcher. It’s best if you go straight back to the house and tell Rick before someone else reaches him.”

  Brian picked up his drum, and it made a hollow boom as he lifted it and started back toward the thin, leaning gash that had brought us into this place of death. He slipped in first, and I pushed Marilla up after him. Before I followed, I stood for a moment longer in the open, once more finding the courage to look up at that shining face that stared so mercilessly into the heavens.

  “I know who you are,” I said softly, and my voice echoed mysteriously against the cliffs. I didn’t know what my words meant. Perhaps Vermilion had spoken them. I was afraid of her now—afraid of what she was thinking.

  It was true that I’d never loved my sister, but I’d never wished her dead. Had I? Almost beseeching, as though I asked the very cliffs for help, I looked again toward where Sybil lay. Horror and regret—and my own sense of guilt—whipped through me.

  As I stood there, my eyes picked up a tiny gleam of metal among red chips of rock. A small object lay halfway to Sybil’s body, sparkling in the sunlight.

  I stumbled across shale to pick it up and saw that I held a key in my hand. A meaningless bit of metal. When I looked again toward where my sister lay, I was close enough so that I could see her feet and legs extending down the slope on which she had fallen. So dreadfully without motion! The sleeping were never as quiet as this, and the sickness of realization swept through me. She shouldn’t have died in this lonely place, with no one to hear any cry she might make, or to help her in her suffering, if she’d died slowly. My sister, whom I’d never known—never wanted to know.

  Yet behind my strange, tearless grief and shock lurked something else, something I couldn’t even think about yet, which Marilla had already begun to question.

  10

  I brought the key home with me, but it wasn’t until later that I remembered it. Too much intervened before that time.

  Brian had reached someone on his radio, and he drove us back to the highway, where a car came shortly to pick us up and take us home. Then he returned to wait for the Search and Rescue team, and to talk with the Coconino sheriff when he came.

  I still felt shattered and was trying to pull myself together when Marilla broke the news to her father the moment we entered the house. She ran to him with a torrent of words pouring out, and he listened while she sobbed in his arms.

  “I must go wherever they’ve taken her,” he told me over her head. Then to his daughter, “Hush now, darling—I’ll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, stay with Lindsay.”

  Marilla’s sobbing broke out more stormily than ever. For a little while, in the place of the Fire People, she had clung to me for comfort. Now she repudiated me completely.

  “I don’t want to stay with her! She never liked my mother, even if she was her sister. Mom told me so. Mom told me how mean Lindsay was when she was little. Once she even threw a pair of scissors at Mom!”

  I’d put my hand on Marilla’s arm in entreaty, but now I took it away. Sybil’s poisons were still working.

  “Shall I phone Orva?” I asked Rick.

  He nodded. “I’m sure she’ll come. I’ll have to hurry. Marilla, you must try to help now. There’s no use saying wild things you’ll be sorry for later.”

  He released himself gently from her clutching hands and went out to his car. The moment be was out of sight, Marilla stopped crying, staring at me with a malice that broke my heart and seemed all too terrible an echo of Sybil.

  “You wanted her dead, didn’t you? You always wanted her dead!”

  Had I? Had this child seen through to an ugliness I’d hidden even from myself? Had I always exonerated myself by turning whatever was unpleasant over to Vermilion?

  Before I could telephone Orva, she forestalled me by arriving with a squeal of brakes, slamming the car door, and rushing past Consuela into the room.

  “Brian phoned me,” she said breathlessly. “I thought I might be useful here.” She looked at Marilla, who had thrown herself on the sofa face down. “Would you like to come to my house for tonight?” she asked.

  The child relaxed a little, though she didn’t raise her wet face from her arm.

  Orva turned to me. “Brian told me you found your sister. I know you’ve had a shock, Lindsay. Will you be all right alone for a while?”

  “Of course,” I said. I couldn’t put into words any of the clamor that was swirling through me.

  “You go out to the car, honey,” Orva said to Marilla with quiet authority. “I’ll be with you in a minute. I want to talk to Lindsay.”

  A little to my surprise, Marilla got up and walked out of the room without objection.

  “I’ll see if I can quiet her,” Orva said. “You look pretty sick yourself. Brian said that Sybil was trying to climb one of those cock columns that Jed called the Fire People. How could she—those cliffs are practically vertical! Besides, how did she get out there anyway?”

  Orva looked as grim as Rick, and she was stating the question that must be surfacing in all of us.

  “I don’t know anything definite,” I said.

  “No, of course not. At lea
st this will make everything easier for you.”

  I heard her with a sense of outrage. Nothing would be easier, and her words were callous. My face must have answered for me, because she went on.

  “People like Sybil don’t change just because they’re dead,” she said wryly. “The wrongs they started can go on causing trouble for a long time to come. So don’t start blaming yourself. What she had in mind was wicked—even her dinner tonight. To repeat Jed’s dinner party and bring out everything that happened in Vegas—a cruel exposure for someone. Well, now she won’t get the chance.”

  Her words startled me. Had Sybil died to prevent her from bringing off her plan?

  “Anyway,” Orva said, “don’t worry about Marilla. She can stay with me as long as she likes. Take care, and I’ll see you later.”

  She went away with her curiously rangy gait, her angled elbows reminding me of some bird that was always awkward on land.

  Outside, I found a table with an umbrella, where I could sit in the shade. The terrible beauty of the red rocks looked down on me, but there were no faces out there—no one shining face that saw only some terrible destiny. I let my eyes rest on the deep green wash below, where cottonwoods grew, and other growth that needed moisture.

  It seemed a long while ago that a stone had come hurtling over this very rail, surely aimed at me. Yet it was Sybil who had died. And was it only yesterday that I’d learned the truth about myself—that Alice Rainsong was my sister? And in what distant lifetime had Rick held me in his arms? I didn’t dare think about that.

  Everything receded now, paling beside the cruel fact of Sybil’s death. New York belonged to another planet. Some instinct told me that with Sybil’s death a greater obstacle than ever would come between Rick and me, though I didn’t understand then what this new barrier would be.

  What was immediate, what was so dreadfully now, was the moment when I’d stood in that pocket in the cliffs, that moment when I’d gone to pick up the key and had glanced briefly again in Sybil’s direction. That one quick glance had been enough to photograph in my mind what I’d scarcely been conscious of at the time. Now one such detail returned to strike me with shocking force.

  Her feet had extended toward me where she lay, and I had seen her shoes. They were white and had been smeared with red dust. They were also flimsy high-heeled sandals that would have been totally impractical for hiking in the back country. If she had known where she was going, she would never have worn shoes like that.

  The very fact proved that someone had taken her there. Someone who had contrived her fall?

  Consuela appeared, bringing a tray with coffee. There were tears in her eyes as she served me. At least she could cry for Sybil, and that was more than I could do. Horror was still too close and frightening for tears.

  All around me the quiet seemed intense. I started at every slight sound, longing for Rick to return with word of some sort. As always, waiting was endless. My mind could take, too many anxious, torturing turns, and questions only seemed to multiply. Nor was there anyone I might call to learn the answers.

  When the sound of chimes finally rang through the house, I jumped up in relief and ran to the door myself. To talk to someone about anything would be better than this lonely, anxious vigil. But I was disappointed when I saw that my visitor was Parker Hale.

  He greeted me cheerily and breezed into the house carrying a large hamper in his hands.

  “Hi, Lindsay. Sybil’s expecting me. I’ll just take this stuff out to the kitchen, and you can let her know I’m here.”

  I stood staring at him, realizing that he knew nothing about what had happened. He had come to prepare dinner for tonight. Now he saw my face and realized something was wrong.

  “What is it?” he asked, sounding petulant. “Don’t tell me—”

  I broke in on his words. “Sybil is dead.”

  It was his turn to gape, not believing me.

  “Brian and I found her when we took Marilla out to see the Fire People. Sybil must have been climbing out there when she fell.”

  Parker put his covered hamper carefully on the floor and then threw himself with less care into the nearest chair.

  “You’d better tell me,” he said.

  I gave him what details I could while he listened morosely. When I finished he mopped his damp face with a handkerchief.

  “I’d better call Clara right away.”

  I nodded toward the phone and he went to dial. I didn’t listen because a curious thought had come to me. It was an urge so strong that I couldn’t put it aside, no matter how shocking and foolish it might seem. Rick would probably be angry and the others indignant—perhaps one of them frightened—yet I knew I had to go ahead. Perhaps there was a way to discover why Sybil lay dead, and perhaps even what she had known about Jed’s murder.

  Vermilion was suddenly there, whispering. Now you’re getting smart! Do this—it’s the only way, and I knew the source of my impulse.

  Had I been foolish to think that I could now take charge of my own life? At this moment Vermilion seemed to separate from me as though she might take over. And I could no longer fight her—because I wanted this too.

  Parker was still on the phone with Clara. I held out my hand. “Let me talk to her for a moment.”

  He looked dazed as he handed me the instrument.

  Clara’s voice went on excitedly, still speaking to Parker. “What do you mean—she’s dead out there near the Fire People? She hated that place!”

  “But she went there, Clara,” I told her. “It’s true.”

  “My God!” Clara said, and was silent.

  I continued as she listened. “Parker is here with whatever he’s brought for the dinner party Sybil meant to give tonight. Do you see any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead with the dinner?”

  I looked at Parker as I spoke and saw his astonishment. There was a brief pause before Clara exploded.

  “How can you possibly go ahead, when Sybil—when—”

  “Do you mean you won’t come?” I asked quietly.

  “There won’t be any dinner. Rick won’t allow such a thing. Oh, I never liked Sybil, but this isn’t—” She choked and broke off. I waited until she could go on again. “Exactly what would you be celebrating, Lindsay?”

  “I don’t think what Sybil planned would have been a celebration either. But if you’ll come, and if Parker is willing to go ahead and cook dinner, I’ll ask Orva and Brian, so they’ll be here too, as Sybil intended.”

  “My God, you are crazy!” Clara repeated. “Let me talk to Parker.”

  Parker had been listening and he raised his shoulders in a vast shrug as he took back the phone. “So what does it matter? I don’t mind cooking, if that’s what Lindsay wants. Though I expect Rick will cancel this idea the minute he gets home.”

  I couldn’t tell what Clara said. Parker grinned sardonically as he hung up. “She’ll come. Why do you want to do this, Lindsay?”

  “I’m not sure I know. Not exactly. Perhaps I’m just acting on a hunch, the way my father used to do.”

  “Well, I suppose we all have to eat somewhere tonight. So it might as well be here. Though I’m not enthusiastic about this.”

  He picked up the hamper and went out to the kitchen, where Sybil’s cook had been given the day off. I sat listening to the rattle of pans with Parker’s usual operatic accompaniment.

  Was it really because of Vermilion that I’d just done what I had? What might we be asking for if we went ahead with this dinner? I could hear her in my mind: Answers. Answers are what you’re looking for! Stay with it, Lindsay.

  From my shirt pocket I took out the key I’d found in the clearing and considered it thoughtfully. Then I went to the front door and put it into the lock. It slipped in easily and turned. As I was trying it for the second time, Rick’s car pulled into the driveway. He was alone, and I waited as he came up the walk looking haggard and grave. There was so little comfort I could offer him now.

  “I’m sorry, Ri
ck. I know how awful this is for you. And how awful for Marilla.”

  “Come inside,” he said, and then noticed the key I’d drawn from the lock. “Have you found yourself a door key. Good.”

  I followed him inside nervously. I didn’t want him to discover Parker in the kitchen until I’d had time to explain. At least Parker was quiet for once, but how was I to tell Rick what I’d suggested, and get him to accept such a plan? It seemed more and more important to me to go ahead with this.

  “The key must have belonged to Sybil,” I said and handed it to him. “I found this a little way from where she lay. I’d forgotten about it until just now. Does it being there mean anything?”

  He took the key and turned it in his fingers. Then he lowered himself into the nearest chair and stretched out in weariness. “This isn’t Sybil’s key,” he said. “It belonged to Jed.”

  I dropped down beside him. “To Jed? How do you know?”

  “See this notch? Jed had a way of marking his keys with notches like this so that he could identify them by touch in the dark. You know he was always a night owl, and I gave him his own house key, since he stayed here at times. This appears to be the same one.”

  For an instant that strangely atavistic feeling that had touched me in the place of the Fire People flowed through me again. However, it wasn’t Jed who had returned to punish Sybil.

  “How could it have been dropped there?” I demanded. “How could it possibly—”

  “It could have fallen out of someone’s pocket. One of the men from the sheriffs office found some loose change on the ground as well. The key could have been dropped at the same time. I don’t think Sybil would have had it. Someone else lost it there.”

  “They do think she was murdered, don’t they?”

  “No one’s saying. The Coconino County coroner will decide the cause of death. There are already some doubts and they’re expecting someone down from Flagstaff to help out. But, Lindsay, why do you think this?”