by David Connor
“Pennsylvania,” he said. “Is it truly you?” The enormous hand I was certain was meant to twist my neck until it snapped gently brushed my face, scratched by brambles. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes, but—”
“We have to get you away from your sister.”
I shook my head so hard my sweat-clumped hair whipped my cheeks. “Please…listen!” The salty moisture burned there. “We…have to…rescue…Ewan.”
“Ewan? An Irishman?”
“Scottish.”
“Where has she taken him?” Abel asked.
“You leave my brother be, Abel Mobley!”
I turned. Georgia and my brother had returned. Neither was panting as if involved in a chase. He must not have run very far.
“You need to leave my family be, Georgia Dupree.” Abel Mobley spoke as if he knew unquestionably which twin she was.
“It is not your family I am concerned with,” Georgia said. “I want the girl. She shall come live with the rest of us, as it should always have been.”
“You’re mad, woman! You always have been. I understand it stems from grief. Your family suffered a great loss when the boy disappeared, but you can’t continue like this, holding people like prisoners. And I will not have you spooking my wife and my girl.”
“She is not your daughter and you know it. Had we kept her from the start, she would have been better off, never even on that ladder, not damaged as she is. Now step aside and leave Pennsylvania to me.”
I cowered behind the man, plotting how the two of us would find Ewan together. I saw a flash of something in the sun which almost blinded me. Before I even realized it was, in fact, the razor, Georgia had it at Abel Mobley’s throat, unwilling to give him a moment to heed her command. I rushed to Abel’s defense as he stumbled back. Georgia lunged for him. He grabbed at her arm and I joined the fray until the tumult took us back several feet. I saw the spiked post I’d bent when first escaping with Ewan, another piece of evidence this was happening and not merely an interminable nightmare. Georgia shrieked like a madwoman. The man whose identity remained dubious stared blankly ahead, probably under the effect of some stupefying sedative. As Georgia lunged for Abel once more, he skitted to the side, which threw her off her balance, with cursing, arms a-flail, and kicking, unsteady feet. The sound of the arrow tip piercing through flesh and bone as she fell back against it was sickening to my ears and my insides. It had impaled her through her gut, and blood flowed from each orifice in her head as she rasped and sputtered one brief moment before her open eyes went dead.
I took a moment for my shock to melt into grief. This was the woman who’d raised me, after all. I was devastated at what had happened, just now and before, but I still felt sorrow at losing her, first to her psychosis and then to such a gruesome death.
“Did your sister send this Mr. Parish to find us? He spoke with Celia. I—”
“No.” I cut him off. “He…was…searching out…answers for…me.”
“Are you certain he is savable? Your sisters are capable of some rather wicked things.”
“She…said…‘near…death.’ I do…not know…where…she has him…held. The house…or the…cabin.” My fright and worry, my grief and disbelief had my voice coming out more halting than ever. “I was…headed back…to the house.”
There was a sound. An exclamation not of words. The man who’d stood stoically through the entire brawl suddenly grabbed my wrist. He pulled. He wanted me to go back toward the woods, it seemed, not towards the estate. But dare I believe him and his obviously dimwitted idea?
“Have you…ever…been to…the cabin?” I asked Abel Mobley.
“Yes.”
“Is there a…base…ment or cellar? A large…hidden room, perhaps?”
“No. A pantry is all I remember, with shelving, leaving little space for a man.”
We were headed in that direction, even as we conversed, taking the silent word of this unknown simpleton. What did that say about me? He was involved, and possibly regretted his actions. That was my hope—my only one. This sole collaborator was the only one from whom answers might be forthcoming. Three corpses could obviously offer no aid. This lad, far too young upon further rumination to be my brother, was the only one who could save Ewan’s life.
“Oh my God!”
The other and I, we both stopped a split second following Abel Mobley upon his interjection. No time dared we spare to be still, however, and we all moved faster right after, as dark smoke billowed from the hills up above us. As we climbed closer to it, I panicked. “If the place…is on fire…and Ewan…is inside…he will not…survive.”
“We have seen this coming a long time,” Abel Mobley said. “No one in the family was right after Del Jr. disappeared.”
I did not ask for details. My mind was singularly focused on Ewan, my heart, my life, my soul, trapped inside the burning shack.
“It all happened before you were born.” Abel answered questions I suppose he thought I should ask. “Not long before. Your older brother was twelve. Your father took him hunting for the first time. Delaware Senior never returned. We found him in a catatonic state in the cabin the next day. We searched and searched the woods, but the boy was never found. Your mother, pregnant with you, and Virginia both blamed your father. Virginia going so far to allege he killed the boy during one of his spells. More likely your father lost consciousness, like Abee does.”
“And I.” I hadn’t realized I’d been listening.
“Everyone with rational thoughts figures the boy wandered off while Delaware was out of it. The assumption that the bones the policemen found recently are him is not a stretch. Some animal probably devoured his flesh. Georgia became obsessed afterward. Delaware refused to leave the shack. Georgia cared for him there, and Celia and I helped for a time, until Georgia started to turn. First we were let go, and then we fled, relieved to be rid of the lot of you. Virginia left her son to Georgia as well. The boy was born not right, Pennsylvania. Not in a frightening way, but slow.”
“Is this…him?”
The man in question still had my wrist as we rushed deeper up and into the woods. The short trek away suddenly seemed twice as long getting back and trying to run had proven counterproductive. We’d tripped and stumbled constantly. A brisk-yet-careful walk was getting us closer much faster, as Abel Mobley held my ear with his blathering and my probably-nephew held my touch, with you still so blasted far away from doing the same.
“I have not seen Virginia’s son since he was a boy,” Abel said. “I suppose it is possible. Has that woman been around?”
“She’s…dead. Father…as well.”
“Oh. I am sorry.” He didn’t sound so. “For you, at least.”
“Somehow…she ended up in…the shack.”
“I can only imagine—”
“No. Truthfully…you cannot.”
We arrived at the burning structure, its roof, all four walls, the porch I’d hidden beneath already black with soot and ash, and orange heat.
“Ewan!” I bolted toward the inferno.
But Abel grabbed me. “No, boy! There is no point in losing you, too.” He wrapped his massive arms around me and bent my head to his sweaty chest, where his shirt opened in front. The other—was his name actually Del? That is what my sister called him. Del tugged on my pant leg, dirty and damp from the woods. Perhaps he wanted a hug as well. That was my thought, and I was in no mood to offer it.
I ignored him. He remained persistent.
“Stop!” I yelled, too self-centered to care about his feelings.
He flinched, and hugged himself instead.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I looked around. Where From where was the faint sound emanating? Was it a specter of imaginary sorrow, or could it be possibly for real?
Del tugged at my pants some more. He wanted me to follow him. We did not go far.
There was a pile of rocks close to where the cabin burns.
“Be careful, you two.”
<
br /> Del—for that was what I’d chosen to call him, right or not—down on hands and knees, started tossing rocks in all directions. I took a similar position and began a similar act. Within moments, we’d uncovered a sheet of plywood. I tossed it too, as easily as if it were one of the large, but moveable, stones.
“Ewan!”
Del had led us to a well pit, barely four-by-four and eight feet deep, where I found him crouched in one corner, beside the water pump for the cabin, shaken, bloody, shirtless, but alive.
“Hello, Pennsylvania.”
Chapter 8
Pennsylvania
One week later, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia, and Delaware Dupree, Jr. were properly laid to rest. Virginia and Delaware’s bodies were found at the gazebo, where Georgia had apparently brought them to reunite us all. Once she’d discovered I had escaped, she had taken off in search of me, we figured. What happened next, along the walkway, in the unfinished prison she had called to be constructed, no supposition was needed to recount for police.
Though I had free run of the house, I still spent much of my time in my room. The door was open, and I had company quite often—my nephew, Del, who had a room on the other side of the house. “If only…one of us…had been hit…by wanderlust,” I jested with him. “We may have met…years ago.”
Del was no ways near as dimwitted as I originally thought, and shame on me for the assumption. He could not speak—yet. But he understood when Ewan and I spoke to him.
Del’s room was not the only discovery made back at the family dwelling I tried desperately to imagine as a happy place, with Christmas trees and outdoor picnics, rather than what it had become. Fiona had graciously thanked me for saving her life, as I’d carried her up the cellar steps. “Partway through the conversation, the crazy sister bashed me with a rolling pin and flung me down there,” she’d told the police, her French accent thicker than the other times I’d heard her speak. Her bitterness against Ewan for his duplicitous sexual ways had waned during her forty-eight hour capture. She may not have fully forgiven him, but there was certainly no desire left to fight for him, either. The lawmen had given her swift permission to leave town, and a moment later, it seemed, she was on her way back to Europe.
Abel Mobley had handled most everything with the police. He and Celia promised to visit, and perhaps even move back to Rabun County, now that Georgia was no longer a threat against Abee. I assured them that the door to the Dupree home was always open to them, to visit or even stay. Celia had once been like family to me, more so, as it turned out, than some who shared my heritage.
Ewan dreaded the publicity that would certainly follow his recent adventure. So far, however, News of the World had shown no interest in the goings on in the small southern US town, even those as extreme as what he and I had endured.
As we cleaned out Georgia’s room, Del discovered a diary stowed away beneath her too-soft mattress. It smelled of her perfume and the grief of it all hit me hard. I took it from his hand, opened it, and read. Just like with me, loneliness and an overactive mind had led her to record many of her daily doings. I surely cannot speak them, she’d written, and they soon become too cluttered in my head. This is the only way to rid myself of some, so that I might focus on the thoughts that are least troubling.
I wished that she could have and my chest grew tight. I could certainly relate.
Georgia had confessed to her journal how she’d held Virginia in the cabin, a prisoner, since shortly after Judah Mobley’s attack, probably taking her around the same time she’d confiscated my clothing. The journal depicted Virginia as quite frail and sickly, even back then, two-thirds of a decade ago. She had not put up much of a struggle, according to Georgia’s writings. In fact, it was written that Auntie Virginia had needed Georgia’s care. Georgia would collect all sorts of drugs for her, the diary read, to help extend her life, drugs easily obtained through a medical contact Georgia would visit as Virginia. It was all spelled out in Georgia’s fancy cursive. Future pages—the last ones, actually—revealed Georgia had used some of the drugs to bring on my seizures. I was reading to myself, mostly, while Del gently grasped my hand. I did not reveal the sickest parts to him, rather only to Ewan.
“She had desperately wanted her family around her,” I told him later on. “So desperately, in fact, that she kept several prisoner, and would not let others go, even after death.”
Georgia wanted Abee, the third sister, and a sinister plot was outlined by which she would take her by Easter, which was a few weeks away. One passage in Georgia’s journal claimed that my father and Celia had created Abee during a brief affair, one begun because my mother and Abel were too consumed by the drink to tend to their lonely, overwrought spouses.
I recalled mention by someone of Abel Mobley as a stumbling drunkard in my mind. “Though mostly I cannot recount I ever witnessed it firsthand,” I told Ewan.
“Some people stop,” he said.
“I wonder if my mother ever could have, and I’m sorry your father never did.”
There was no mention in Georgia’s recorded thoughts of Virginia ever dying. Maybe Georgia had been too far gone to know that she had. Abel Mobley suggested that Virginia, while healthy enough to do so, may have used her medical training and certain preparations to keep Georgia slightly in balance. Once Virginia had passed, Georgia had gotten quickly and irrevocably worse.
I brought a tray to Ewan for breakfast the first normal morning after days that were anything but.
“How much longer must I stay in this bed?” he complained.
“The doctor said…a week.”
“I want to get up!” Ewan said.
“Or I…can…get into bed…with you.”
“Well…” Ewan smiled. “Doctor’s orders and such…”
And so I crawled in beside him. We stayed together in the same chamber in which I had spent much of his life. It was now ours, not mine, and certainly not like a prison. Except I had not left the house again since the one day I finally had. I vowed eventually I would, but only when Ewan could go with me.
“Shall we destroy the walkway?” Ewan asked.
“Or shall…we enjoy it? Del already…does.”
“What a wonderful young man.”
“Yes.”
“I guess a decision need not be made at once.”
“No.” I was quiet then, a bit too long, perhaps.
“What is it?” Ewan asked.
“I worry…for our…heredity. What am…I…inside?”
“You, too, are a wonderful young man. Virginia was hateful and ignorant, you’ll forgive me for saying. Incapable of love. Perhaps Georgia loved too much. You are incapable of hate. And your love is not selfish or off-balance. I feel so fortunate that you have given me a chance.” Ewan kissed me on the mouth. “I love you,” he declared.
“And I you. My heart…feels stronger. It is still…broken…for Judah…my sisters…my father…and the brother…I never knew. But you…make it better.”
“And you make mine feel real. No lies. No fakery. My body wants only you. My soul wants only you. And my heart is so much fuller with you in it.”
“Perhaps…we will…redo the walkway…with new scrollwork…to represent…that.”
There was still the matter of Judah’s attack. Was it Georgia, we pondered? Ewan regretted jumping to the conclusion that Abel Mobley was guilty of it and apologized to both Abel and to Celia for the accusatory thoughts put to words. After witnessing, once rescued, the sweet, gentle, caring way Abel coddled me like both the mother and father I’d never had, there was no way nor reason, Ewan believed, Abel would want to bring harm to his actual son.
As we discussed it again, there was a knock at the kitchen door.
“I will…be right back,” I promised my bedmate.
The Mobley family stood on the front porch—Abel, Celia, and Abee. I had not seen Abee in so very, very long. I had stopped seeing her even before her accident, sometime before I’d stopped furtively seeing Judah. She
stood like a child, and also fiddled like one, more so than Del, not at all behaving like the over-thirty-year-old that she was. The damage to her brain, I deduced, had to be severe.
“May we come in?” Celia asked.
“Of course.”
Ewan hobbled out from the bedroom.
“We wish to set things to rest,” Celia said. “Regarding Judah’s attack.”
“It is…not…necessary…to rehash…such sorrow,” I said.
“If it will bring you peace, we believe that it is. We have all found our own in some small way, now,” Celia said. “It is only fair that we offer what we can to you.”
We sat around the kitchen table. No one accepted the offer of food or drink. Abee still fidgeted. Celia looked around the room, possibly to see what had changed since she’d last been on the premises, or maybe just to stall. Abel kept his eyes on the scarred pinewood surface of the table and the clock ticked away several loud seconds while no one said a word, until Celia took a breath, and finally spoke again.
“It is a blessing Abee seems to have no memory of what she has done. I am grateful to the good lord that she never seemed to fully realize her deed.”
“Abee?” I asked.
“Not an act of free will, I dare say. Abee always admired Virginia, though I have no idea why.”
Abel put his hand on Celia’s wrist.
“I should not speak ill of the dead. However, Virginia manipulated my daughter, her half-sister, in ways that are simply vile. You remember the stories Virginia would tell?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Of monsters in the woods and the people who fought them.”
“Yes.”
“Those tales became an obsession before Abee’s fall, and something of them, we realized, still lingered in there afterward. Abee had a habit of following her brother about, even when he snuck around in the middle of the night.”
Ewan sat up straighter in his seat. I wondered if he’d gotten an idea as to where Celia’s recounting was headed. I had yet to myself.