I could see him clearly now—a strange figure in the dancing light that surrounded him. He held out his hands, palms upward, raising his eyes toward the black sky.
“I’ve been playing my drums, Lauren!” he called to me. “I’ve been asking for help. It’s coming right now!”
Big drops splashed on my face, hissing in the fire at my feet. Suddenly, sheets of rain poured from the sky, long overdue.
Gretchen shook her head angrily and began to scream at him over the sound of the rain. “Look what you’ve done, Ty! Now this isn’t going to work. You might as well cut her loose!”
Ty cut the rope with a pocketknife and caught me as I sagged. He carried me out of the stone circle and over to where Gretchen stood. “Take her to the car and put her in the front seat—now!” she yelled.
When I tried to struggle, he tightened his grip on me, probably too afraid of Gretchen’s anger to disobey. I tried to speak to him calmly, but Gretchen heard me. “Be quiet. You’ll come with me to the cave, and you’ll be still—or I’ll put you under again.”
I couldn’t allow that; I had to buy some time. “I’ll come. I want to see where Victoria is buried.”
“Go away, Ty,” she told him. “You’ve messed things up enough.”
We’d reached the car. He opened the door and then faded into the darkness, again obeying her, as he’d so often obeyed his strong, younger sister. She pushed me onto the floor of the front seat and ordered me to crouch there as she got behind the wheel. “I’ve got to be able to keep my eye on you. Don’t give me a reason to put you under!” When she’d turned the car around in the clearing, we went bumping down the hill at a greater speed than was safe.
All my focus was on escaping. I would wait for the right moment and hope I was successful. Perhaps when the car slowed, I could get the door open and hurl myself out. Gretchen was clever; it was hard for me to move, cramped as I was under the dashboard, and my hope began to fade.
I heard the windshield wipers working at top speed as sheets of rain slammed into the car. I was already soaked before I got in, and Victoria’s long dress clung, hampering my movements.
Perhaps Ty would go for help. But how far could he get on foot? How could he reach anyone in time? Time for what? Would the cave be my tomb, as well?
Once we reached the highway, the car picked up speed as we headed toward Lake Lure.
“Be careful. I know what you’re thinking,” Gretchen warned. “You’ll kill yourself if you jump out. That’s not the answer. Not yet. I want you to meet your grandmother. It’s time—just as it was time to show you where she died.”
At least she seemed to know who I was for the moment.
“It’s just as well”—she sounded pleased with herself—“that there wasn’t another accident up there in the Indian village. The first death was an accident, you know—Victoria’s death. I never meant for that to happen. I followed her along the lake as she was walking toward Roger’s house.”
Abruptly, Gretchen switched pronouns again, chilling me.
“Do you remember how we quarreled? How scornful you were! You asked for punishment. I had my walking stick with me, and I was so angry that I used it. But I never meant to kill you. Afterward, I let Roger find your body, and I said what I could to point toward his wife’s guilt. She had every motive, and he believed what I said—so of course he had to protect her. We hid your body in the cave to save Camilla! That was the wonderful joke—that he stayed here at Lake Lure because that house guards the way to the cave. All these years he has never let her know that he believes she’s a murderer. What a laugh! Now you can bring it all full circle.”
So when she’d showed me where my grandmother had died, the story she told me had been only partially true. Roger wasn’t trying to protect his reputation or Victoria’s; he thought he was protecting Camilla! Once more I tried to reach Gretchen: “You can’t undo old history, Gretchen. There’s no way to change what happened so long ago. I’m Victoria’s granddaughter, and I had no part in any of this.”
She braked so suddenly that I dared to peek over the dash as we skidded on wet pavement and came to a sliding stop only a few feet from a dancing, gesticulating figure in the middle of the road. Ty! Of course, he’d known the shortcuts down the mountain that allowed him to get here ahead of us on the road.
Gretchen reached for my arm with a steel grip and rolled down the window on her side. “So you won’t go away, will you?” she called to Ty. “If you feel you must come with us, get in the car.”
He moved agilely to open the rear door and got in. Gretchen spoke over her shoulder. “Take her with you in back, Ty. She makes me nervous up here. Climb over the seat, Lauren.”
At least I would be able to see where we were going if I was in back with Ty, and perhaps he would help me get away if there was an opportunity. We were already moving fast again, and I fell clumsily into the seat beside him. Rain clattered on windows and road, and under its cover, Ty whispered to me.
“I knew of a ranger’s phone near here and called Gordon. I told him where she’d probably take us.”
I slumped back in the seat and closed my eyes, too grateful and relieved to be able to do more than squeeze Ty’s hand.
The dark rain made Lake Lure nearly invisible when we reached it, though light showed brightly around the inn, where the party was still in full swing. Gretchen followed the winding road that led around the lake and across the dam. We saw no other cars, and Ty was quiet and watchful.
Once he whispered to me, “I don’t know how she’ll manage this.”
Below Roger’s house, she drove through a blind cut into the woods and on to where an empty house stood. When she’d pulled into the driveway, she spoke over her shoulder.
“Get her out, Ty. And keep ahold of her. She mustn’t get away now. Just relax, Lauren. Don’t worry—I know you’re not Victoria, though it’s been fun to scare you a bit.”
I didn’t believe her. I suspected that she went in and out of a state of delusion. She would still mix me up with Victoria—and that was dangerous. How would Gordon ever know where to find us? He probably didn’t know where the cave was.
“Now we climb on foot,” Gretchen said. “You go first, Ty. You know the way. We’ll put her in the middle so she can’t get past either of us. That’ll keep her from playing any tricks. If she’s smart, she’ll behave.”
I saw that she’d brought her walking stick from the car, and I shivered.
We seemed to be climbing a thread of path through thick underbrush. Ty found his way like some woods creature that could see in the dark. Rain pelted us, but the thunder sounded farther away now. Gretchen had brought a flashlight, and that helped a little.
My long dress clung to my legs and hampered me. I was still very weak. At times, I took hold of bushes to pull myself up. Even if it had been possible, I would no longer try to get away. I wanted to know what lay in the cave toward which we were climbing. That was my destiny. I had come here to find Victoria.
Some distance up the mountain, Ty stopped, so that I bumped into him. Gretchen played the thin beam of her flashlight over the rocky face of a cliff.
“Good for you, Ty,” she said. “I’d never have found it in the dark. Go in first. I know you stored some lanterns here years ago.”
Ty seemed to disappear into a sheer face of rock, and Gretchen prodded me with her stick. “Go on! Follow him. There’s a slit up there you can get through real easy.”
By reaching out with both hands, I felt the ragged fissure of the opening and found my way in. I was soaked through and cold, and it was a relief to be out of the rain and wind.
Ahead of us, Ty had lighted two lanterns that threw very little radiance into a high-roofed cave, spacious and hollow. I was fearful of what I might see, but only a featureless brown void opened around me. From deep inside the mountain came the muted roar of rushing water.
Gretchen listened, pleased. “That’s the waterfall. This rain’s been enough to stream through all
the crevices and flood the inner river. Too bad it’s so late, Lauren. I’d like to show it to you, but we haven’t time.”
Ty said, “This is where Roger and Justyn came for shelter the night they saw the spacecraft hit the mountain. That storm was real bad—worse than now. They ducked in here to get away from hail the size of golf balls. I was out in it—I know.”
Gretchen laughed—an unsettling sound that echoed in the cavern. “Roger knew to seek shelter in this place because he’d come here before. This is where we carried Victoria. I never wanted to come back, but you come here often, don’t you, Ty?”
“Somebody had to look after her,” Ty said. “This is where I brought Jim. I showed him what’s up there.”
“That was a mistake, wasn’t it?” Gretchen said. “Because he would never have kept still about what he found. Now we’ll show Victoria’s granddaughter—and she isn’t going to tell anyone, is she? Lead the way, Ty.”
I still felt weak and shaken, and when Gretchen shoved me again, I stumbled after Ty. Most of all, I feared her walking stick. I could easily become its next victim.
Compelled by his sister’s voice, Ty began to climb what at first appeared to be a sheer rock wall. “We won’t need lanterns up here,” he said mysteriously. “Come along, Lauren. It’s easier than it looks.”
In lantern light, my own shadow grew to monstrous size as I followed him along grooves in the rock. Partway up, he disappeared into another, higher chamber and again I followed him. This was a larger cave than the one below, and as I emerged into it, the sound of rushing water grew very loud, it’s voice filling the mountain.
As Ty had said, we needed no lanterns or flashlights here. The entire space seemed alight with an eerie greenish glow—not as bright as daylight but luminous in its own way.
“My God!” Gretchen’s voice rising above the sound of rushing water sounded awed, and I knew that this was something as strange to her as it was to me. When I went farther onto the floor of this second cave and saw what waited for us there, a trembling started inside me. On a natural rock platform ahead of us, a bier had been placed.
For a moment, Gretchen had dropped behind, and Ty held out his hand to me. “This is why you came here, isn’t it—to find your grandmother?”
Suddenly, I was as fearful of this place as I had been of the stake in the Indian village. But no escape was possible, and I let him draw me up to the level of the rock plane that held the bier. Beyond lay empty black space where the green light didn’t reach. Now the sound of water falling precipitously into unseen depths became a rambling boom that echoed through the cave.
Gretchen came to stand beside me, and I could still feel her shock. “It wasn’t like this when Roger and I brought her here!” she cried.
I expected to see Victoria’s bones stretched out upon the flat ledge of rock, but nothing of what remained was visible. A blanket of lush green vines covered her—beautiful and healthy, growing in a place where there was no sunlight, earth, or water. Great kudzu leaves shone with their own green light, eerie and unnatural.
As my eyes became used to the luminous green, I found its source. On each side of the bier was a small heap of greenish material, from which the vine seemed to have taken sustenance. Now I knew where the snippet of strange cloth Jim had left for me had come from.
“Tell me what happened, Ty!” Gretchen demanded.
He managed to raise his voice so we could hear. “All those years, I kept bringing vines to cover her, even though they just withered and died. But after that—whatever it was—crashed on the mountain, everything changed. Maybe something from that wreckage came down here before army intelligence arrived. Maybe they found the upper cave to hide in until their kin could come and get them. I sort of think they found her, and they left something of themselves here for her when they went away. So for all these years, she’s had a proper shroud.”
Like Gretchen, I felt awed by a mystery that was beyond earthly understanding. Gretchen and had been shouting, but now that they were silent, the crash of falling water filled my very being. I remembered the vision I’d had of a waterfall—a warning vision!
Ty shouted again: “I climbed out through there once to stand on the edge. There’s no bottom. The waterfall feeds the river and cuts its way underground from the top of the mountain straight down. Sometimes when you stand outside on Rumbling Bald, you can hear the sound of rushing water.”
“This is Victoria’s tomb.” Gretchen’s voice struck a high, clear note, and I heard her clearly. “Yours will be out there, Lauren. You’ll just step into space and be gone. It will be quick and easy. No one will ever find your body, just as Victoria’s was never found.”
I felt a sharp pain as her stick poked into my back, and once more I swung around to face her. “No, Gretchen! You’ve done enough! This has to stop now.”
I think she would have struck me with the heavy knob on the end of her stick, but something strange seemed to happen around the bier. It was as though a green mist rose from beneath the vines—or perhaps it was only a thickening in the air.
Whatever it was, Gretchen saw it, too. Perhaps her own feelings of guilt, which could doubtless shake her at times, made her see it more clearly than I did.
She thrust out her hands to push nothingness away, but the thickening that quivered in the air did not subside. Whatever she saw caused her to shrink away, to step backward, and then backward again, her movements violent and jerky.
Ty’s mountain-trained ears must have heard something from the lower cave, for he shouted suddenly: “Gordon? Are you there, Gordon?”
My heart jumped in wild hope as Gordon—and Roger with him—climbed up into green light. I learned later that he had gone to my grandfather to try to find me, and Ty had reached him there. Now, however, it was still Gretchen who held us transfixed.
Perhaps she never knew how close she was to the edge. Or perhaps she knew very well and, in the face of greater terror, made her choice.
The next step took her backward into space, and I could hear her cry, lost in roaring emptiness, as she went down. There could be no echo of her plunge into whatever river flowed beneath the mountain. The waterfall that came rushing out of some high place swallowed up all other sound.
Gordon sprang up to the platform where I stood with Ty. He simply held me as I fell into his arms. I pressed my face against his neck and tried to stop trembling.
Roger climbed up to stand beside us. He wore a spectacular cape that belonged to past glories, but he no longer looked like the dashing actor he had once been. All make-believe was gone; he was an old man possessed by shock and sorrow.
I didn’t try to speak aloud above the roar of water, but I spoke to her in my mind. You’re free now, Grandmother. Wherever you are, you’re free of what held you here.
No green mist stirred among the leaves, but a deep feeling of some loving presence filled me.
Together, Gordon, Roger, and I went down to the quieter area of the lower cave. There my grandfather held out his hands to me and I put my own into his.
“I can let her go now,” he said, and I understood. “But I don’t want to let you go, now that I’ve found you.”
“I don’t think Lauren is going anywhere,” Gordon said, his arm still around me. “I hope she will stay here with me.”
I had no doubt at all that this was what I would do.
Ty had followed us down, more subdued than I’d ever seen him. When he spoke, it was as if only to himself.
“I reckon it had to be. She couldn’t go on playing at being somebody she knew she wasn’t. She was blessed in some ways—and she was cursed. She couldn’t live with that forever.”
He seemed to collect himself and see us now, though he showed no emotion. There was a question I had to ask. “How did you know about Victoria, Ty?”
He no longer hesitated about answering. “I was in the woods when Gretchen and Roger carried her into the cave. When they’d gone, I found her. I saw the wound on the back of her
head and I knew it was made by Gretchen’s stick. She fooled Roger, but she didn’t fool me.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Roger’s voice was faint.
“She was my sister. They were both my sisters, and I didn’t hate either of them. Victoria was wearing that bracelet with the bells, and I took it off her wrist so as to have something of her to keep. I sent it to you as a signal, Lauren—to pick up or not. When you brought it across the lake to me, Gretchen knew where it had come from and it threw her pretty badly.”
There was one more question I must ask. “What about Jim?”
“I showed him the bracelet and I brought him here to the cave. She was only bones under the kudzu, but when he looked at her skull, he knew it had been murder. He cut off a piece of the green stuff to see if he could find out what it was. Gretchen knew he was getting too close and she found a way to stop him in the village that day.”
Emotion came through in Ty at last, and after a choking pause, he continued.
“Gretchen was right, you know—even at the same time she was wrong. She helped so many people with her healing. But when she brought you to the village tonight, Lauren, I knew it had to end. Justyn was catching on—getting suspicious—and I didn’t want him after her. Roger, you were always on the wrong track. Now you know it was never Camilla. You were protecting each other—and you were both wrong.”
“I know that now, Ty,” Roger said sadly. “Finally, I know. Tonight after we left the ball, Camilla and I talked for a long while. I should have talked to her about Victoria’s death years ago. But because of what I thought she had done, I was afraid of what I might learn. And all the while, she believed that I was guilty, and she couldn’t speak of that to me.”
Ty spread his arms wide, palms up, as he had done in the Indian village when he was asking for rain. Perhaps the gesture was a benediction now. “Go back to your lives—all of you. I’ll stay up there for a while with my family.”
We left him there, and Gordon helped me out through a slit in the rock. The rain had stopped and the wind had died down. Moonlight edged the clouds, pointing our way, as we took the difficult path down the mountain. Roger came with us partway and then disappeared in the direction of the Brandt house. Perhaps he was the guardian now of a new legend that would spring up around Lake Lure.
Star Flight Page 25