Chapter 38: The Last Things (real one)
by CollinsKid
|Ensorcell*Entropy|
there's danger on the edge of the town...
- the doors
Looking out Watching out When I see the future I'll close my eyes... (I can see
it now.)
I see pictures of people (rising up) I see pictures of people (falling down) I
see pictures of people (standing on their heads they're ready.)
- Peter Gabriel/Laurie Anderson, "This Is The Picture (excellent birds) "
*.*.*.*
hematomas (bleeding under the surface)
It was a vicious night both in front and behind that glass that had once again
become Elizabeth Collins Stoddard's prison. Outside, the wind screamed and
howled, battering at the foundation of the Great House like a spurned harridan.
Tiny, glittering flecks of diamond-icesnow spattered and slashed across the
glass like tiny razors, hissing and roiling through the air with none of the
grace or beauty of your typical Maine winter skyfall. The drawing room was
low-lit, and Elizabeth had put on a soft, slinking jazz album of Roger's. It
creaked in the player and crackled with feedback, wafting through the air on a
slightly warped wave, doing nothing to drown out the fury of the black night.
Liz had tried massaging her temples three times, but it did nothing for her
migraine, which seemed to have its jaws clamped round either side of her skull
and was constantly threatening to bite down.
She sipped at a rather generously full glass of sherry -- Liz didn't drink much
anymore, but she was beginning to think it had very practical advantages -- and
was by now fairly floating. But not enough. Not enough to climb out of this
body, out of this chair, out of this room, and out of the hell she now spent
every waking moment. Everything -- *everything* -- now felt ersatz and plastic
beyond that horror; getting up, eating her meals, going through her routine,
talking, walking, sleeping, living. When she closed her eyes she saw the dark
thing she'd become bound to by death, the thing that dominated her every waking
thought and nightmare. She'd thought drink could numb the shockwave of terror
she felt irradiating her every limb and inch of flesh. She had been wrong.
And this paltry attempt at a quiet night with a record and a sherry was a
crumpled house of cards.
A silhouette at the door.
"Elizabeth."
Elizabeth drew her head up with some effort. There; Victoria, looking paler
and thinner and even more willowy than usual. Her face was the color of sour
milk; her eyes were wide and liquid. She looked like she'd seen an army of
ghosts. If only you knew, prodigal dear, Elizabeth thought drolly. "Yes, Miss
Winters?" she said, actively deciding to be more formal with the girl -- a last
gasp at maintaining order in the face of alcohol anesthetic and utter ruin.
"I must speak with you," Vicki began slowly, her voice catching. "Do you have
a minute?"
Maybe not, maybe no more, Elizabeth murmured in the recesses of her mind. But
she said:"Of course, Miss Winters. Do come in." Lightning ripped the sky
outside the French windows.
Victoria padded into the room, keeping her hands clasped together at her chest
like a penitent child, her head bowed. She couldn't decide whether to sit or
stand; Elizabeth, still in her easy chair, made no move to help her sort it
out. So she stood. It was immediately clear to the matriarch -- how silly was
that title now -- that the girl had more than one weight round her neck
tonight; that she was in fact carrying a parcel full of nasty things in her
heart now. Elizabeth could recognize it; she saw the slipped steps, the jerky
motion.
"I have to talk to you about something very personal," Vicki began, trying her
best to be delicate. "I hope you can keep an open mind."
My mind has never been more open, the now-quite-bombed Elizabeth thought
blithely. "What is it, dear?" she said, toting her drink.
Vicki seemed to take the drinking in stride; she had more important things on
her mind. "Mrs. Stoddard," she began, changing her phrasing already, "...this
is very difficult..."
"Spit it out, dear," Elizabeth mumbled, her head low now. She sipped the
sherry again. Black clouds in the brain.
So Vicki did, sighing. "It's come to my attention that you...you had another
sibling. A sister. Her name was Louise Collins."
Elizabeth looked up slowly, languidly. She almost smiled. House of cards
indeed. "Yes," she said slowly. No point in denying it now.
Vicki continued:"Mrs. Stoddard, normally this would be none of my business --
"
"Oh, no, no," Elizabeth mumbled drolly, hefting her sherry. "By all means,
don't stop now, dear, you're on a roll."
Vicki *stared* at her for a minute, utterly confused and slightly appalled,
then continued:" -- B-but you see, these past few months...I believe that
something...something in this house has been trying to...make contact..."
"Like what?" Elizabeth asked casually.
Vicki sighed. "Mrs. Stoddard, I feel like you're not taking me seriously -- "
"On the contrary," Elizabeth mumbled, sitting up (barely) . "I am hearing
every word, every syllable you say, Miss Winters. And I take it all very
seriously." She leaned forward, towards Vicki, head cradled on one hand. "What
would you like to know? About Louise? My sister? She's dead, you know."
Vicki bowed her head. "Yes. I know. I'm sorry -- "
"Oh, don't be," Elizabeth said. "You didn't know her; she's nothing to you,
isn't that right?" She took another swig of sherry, then murmured musefully,
"She died before she could ever grow up. She went out of this house, and found
a man -- a very different kind of man, a man with *means* and goals, goals
he was sure to achieve with her money and power and name. He gave her his
seed and then he...drove her completely and utterly mad." Elizabeth shrugged,
seemingly finding the whole thing banal, as Vicki stared her, gaping.
"She died in childbirth," Elizabeth said. "So did the little girl. 'Baby
Fenn-Gibbon, dead.' It was quite a mess. You have no idea the amount
of...desperation involved..." She looked away for a moment, composing herself,
then, like quicksilver, drew herself back up, her face flawless and porcelain.
"Anyhow," she finished. "It's no mystery, Miss Winters. None at all. Now you
know all there is to know. What else will you bring me, I wonder, if you keep
finding all the right phantoms we have to offer?"
Vicki was wringing her hands. "Mrs. Stoddard, you're not making any sense."
"Funny," Elizabeth said dryly. "They always told me I had sense."
Vicki was worse than when she'd come in. She folded her arms and quickly moved
to the door. "Excuse me, Mrs. Stoddard," she mumbled, exiting fast.
"Always, dear," Elizabeth said quietly, keeping her eyes on the storm.
Then she threw up.
*.*.*.*
absolved? (bleed-out)
It didn't take her long to find him.
After getting her wits about her following Roger's pulling a gun, Julia had
realized her she was being a fool to sit in the drawing room feeling shocked
and horrified, and that things -- whatever those nondescript, insidious,
slinking-past-the-retinas things were -- were falling into place, either coming
together or unraveling entirely, and that Roger was a part of that. He'd meant
to kill her, because he'd been told to. He'd stopped. He'd run off into the
bowels of the house. He was practically begging her to find him, to tell her
everything. So she would, and he would. And now here they were, in a tiny
little room at the edge of the West Wing, amidst all the dust and cobwebs and
old relics, here he'd come, to the elephant's graveyard, his head bleeding from
where he'd fallen over somewhere along the way and his eyes bloodshot, and a
bottle of whiskey in his hand.
"Julia," Roger mumbled brokenly. "You're quite the foxhunter, aren't you..."
"Slow down, Roger," Julia said, kneeling down in front of the prostrate man.
"Let me take a look at your head."
"Oh, yes, I wish someone would," Roger quipped, then broke into quiet, evil
little snickers. Then he started crying.
That was when Julia caught the shape lurking at the edge of her peripheral view
-- David in the doorway, pale and mute. "Go back to bed, David," Julia snapped
at him; it was not a request. The boy vanished.
As Julia tended to his head with a hankerchief, Roger sighed, shaking his tired
skull back and forth (and thus not making her job any easier) . "Oh, Julia,
you shouldn't have followed me...you're almost in the witch's oven now, you
know..."
"No, I don't know, Roger; why don't you tell me."
"Would that I could," the widower mumbled. "But they won't let me, you know.
It's a quiet thing, this...cancer of theirs -- this banquet of my brains...I
never thought myself this good a meal. You see, Julia...when *pressed*...I am
*quite* the hired help..."
Julia listened to him ramble on and kept dabbing at his head. She could feel
her skin rising up off her bones and shivering with white fire; she could sense
her heart skipping beats. Her mouth was dry. The last fraction of her brain
that could afford to be analytical and detached now slowly began to put the
pieces together, the shards of distant, indstinct little enigmas, started to
knit the tapestry together, started to form the picture without even realizing
it was doing it.
"Slow down," Julia said. "Explain it to me like I'm a four year old."
"But you're not," Roger said, trying to sit up and failing. "You're not. You
know that. And you're not, you're not a starched coat either, Julia; you're
not a sexless wonder. You're not within your passion or your own obsessions.
People take you wrong, but I, I can see it -- it's really brilliant in you,
tiger tiger burning bright... You're not doomed to be alone; not the way I
was, am, forever...and now I've damned myself, without even knowing what I did.
The Devil must be in insurance...or is it in the details?...oh, I can't mix
metaphors at this hour, not with whiskey." He cocked his head, looking out into
the dark, out into some private abyss.
Julia looked into his eyes, clasping either side of his face. "Roger." she
said. "You tried to kill me tonight. You tried to shoot me. You couldn't.
You know something, something about what's sickened this house, this town,
you...maybe all of us. And I have to know what."
Roger smiled through cracked lips and bleary, scratched-cornea eyes. The gash
on his head had started bleeding again. "yes," he said. "you do. don't you."
He drew himself up into a sitting position finally, and flung the bottle of
whiskey across the room. It broke with a scream of glass. "i was never much
of a son, julia," Roger Collins murmured. "and so, i could not have been much
of a man, or a father, or a husband. you have no idea what it feels like
-- this brilliant epiphany -- to look back now and see that you've been trying
to pay it back, to play the good son..."
He swallowed, and looked up at her with a dead face. "but now," he said,
"perhaps i can play a man."
The wind rose, and swallowed the rest of what he then told her up.
*.*.*.*
gone (carousels)
David Collins sat on his desk chair in the dark, curled up into a ball. His
head was tucked into his knees. His hands clutched at his head.
He had initially attempted to protest, feebly. Amy would have none of it. Amy
and that thing upstairs wouldn't have any of ANYTHING. He was nothing. He
knew that now.
And so in here, in the dark, despite himself, David grew introspective. The
boy'd spent a great deal of time in his head, but this was different. He sat
there, head buried in the sand like an ostrich at armageddon, and he
remembered...
(carousels)
He had been four. Five, maybe. And Mother had had her summer clothes on, and
the hat she'd bought in Manchester, and they were in the park. Despite all his
teasing, David hadn't managed to crack a smile on the redcoated guards he'd
encountered. And then, they'd seen that festival -- that beacon of light and
sunshine and pastels under the sun-over-Europe -- hiding behind a ring of trees
and a few rows of benches, and there it was, with its kiosks of yummy glazed
treats and sweetmeats, and horses, and jesters, and balloons, and then -- the
centerpiece of a fantasy -- that carousel, with its painted roof, and mock
wooden tigers, lions, and bears. David had instantly rushed for it, and then
he'd felt hands at his waist and before he knew it, his father was laughing and
lifting him up and onto the big tiger with the white eyes, and then he was
spinning and spinning all by himself, and while he soared round his miniature
universe, with every whip of the centrifuge he could see, almost in fractured,
jumped slides, his mother and father kissing, and his father smiling at him,
and all these things that would be smashed and burnt in a year's time -- just
more kiln for his mother's fire. Where had that day gone? Where had London
gone? Where had the big tiger gone? Where had they all gone?
David didn't know. He just knew what he had to do.
So the little boy sat up, pulled his head out of hiding, and stared, tears
drying, out into the night.
*.*.*.*
murder
"Well, hel-LO, Mrs. Stoddard."
Elizabeth had been standing in front of HIS door in the West Wing -- she didn't
really know why. She was by now quite drunk. Maybe she'd been trying to work
up the nerve to try and kill the thing one more time. Maybe she'd just come to
ponder how she'd gotten from a happily married woman in the prime of her life
to this, the drowned, murderous black widow. Who knew? Not she. And when she
turned round to face her sweetvoiced, venom-tinged visitor, she came
face-to-face with none other than Margaret Evans. Maggie was in a purple
velvet number, and her "ebony" hair had never looked quite so ebony. She stood
there, hands on hips, pouting like a whore. Looking for her beau, no doubt.
Her limp lothario. He'd almost played them both. Fortunately, now only Miss
Evans was none the wiser.
"What do you want?" Elizabeth blurted out, done with pleasantries forever. Her
hands unconsciously clenched and unclenched. She wanted to break the little
tart's face. She wanted to eat her ruby lips. She -- no, she couldn't; she
was still SANE --
"What does anyone want?" Maggie breezed airily, flouncing around the dank
little storage room, plucking at cobwebs with dainty fingers Elizabeth wanted
to crush to dust. "Money, success, fame, love. You've got all that, Mrs.
Stoddard -- or did, anyway." She leaned forward, lips flecked with spittle as
she hissed:"You're out, I'm in, Liz. Understand and accept it. Get out of my
way or I'll hurt you."
Elizabeth tried to turn away, back to that dark door. "I haven't the foggiest
idea what you're talking about."
Maggie spun her back around, and grabbed Elizabeth's arm before she could
strike at her. "You know exactly what I'm talking about!" Maggie shrilled,
hair flying in her face, eyes wide and psychotic. "Nicholas! Nicholas Blair!
Your pathetic little attempt at a boytoy; well, he won't settle for any
varicose bag of bones, oh, no; he wants something on the way up, not circling
the drain -- "
Elizabeth almost -- no, did -- giggle. She put a hand to her mouth to stifle
her laughs. "Nicholas Blair? Oh. Oh, my, Miss Evans, you ARE an idiot..."
"Don't try to deny it," Maggie snarled at her. "I've seen you with him. He
was only humoring you for your money and your company, but it's over now, do
you hear? Nicholas is mine. He's for me. I deserve it. I want what I
deserve."
"You can have it," Elizabeth snapped, grabbing Maggie's arm. Now her eyes were
wild, too, and her perfect hair falling out of its tight bow. "Nicholas
Blair's a loser. He'll always be a loser, and you'll never, ever be a winner."
Do you want to know what your problem is, *Maggie?*" Elizabeth sneered, voice
vulgar and piercing. "Do you want to know what it's always been? You're a
nothing. You've always been a nothing. You've been your father's mother, his
sponsor, his WIFE since the day his real one died. You washed his clothes, you
made his meals; you bathed him, for God's sake. Then you went to your cute
little job at the cute little restaurant and made cute little ice creams like a
cute little girl. You couldn't go to the college fair, no, no, because your
father needed his dinner. You couldn't take that trip to the night school in
Bangor because the coffee shop has you working double shifts, and WHO will make
my sailors their cups of joe? Then you got involved with Quentin. Quentin!
Were you honestly foolish enough to believe that a piece of wash lint such as
yourself could 'settle him down?' Did you see yourself as his mother and his
sister too? You're everything to everyone, Maggie; oh, yes, you're everyone's
pal. But make no mistake, Miss Evans, you're no one's friend. You're less than
zero, and do you want to know why? Because you made it that way."
Maggie was aflame; her face was bone-white, her eyes saucers of blood, and her
teeth bared and glittering. "I'll kill you," she snarled, and brought her
right hand clutching a huge old oil lamp. She swung at Elizabeth, who just
barely managed to bring her hands up to block the blow. The lamp's glass
shattered, and then Maggie's claw-hands were wrapped around Elizabeth's neck,
throttling her, slamming her skull back against the door over and over again --
Elizabeth felt dizzied --
Then, she summoned up all her strength, and whipped herself around, and now it
was her turn to slam Maggie against the door. Shrieking, Elizabeth pounded the
fragile girl against the door again and again, and when Maggie finally fell,
the girl's hand gripped at the doorknob to steady herself --
-- And the door slid outward and open.
Then, suddenly, before Maggie could move or scream, Elizabeth shoved Maggie
forward into the room and slammed the door shut behind her with a primal howl.
The older woman pressed herself against the door, quaking with sobs, then
laughing, then sobbing again, then laughing. Her dank, wet little giggles were
drowned out, first by Maggie's whimpering, then by Maggie's screaming, then by
Maggie's outright guttural shouts and shrieks of primordial horror and pain.
And when the mixture of tallow, gore, and blood -- a viscuous pink fluid --
began to trickle and ribbon out of the keyhole and under the door, Elizabeth
didn't even notice.
She was still laughing. "Eat the poor!" Elizabeth howled through
gleeful/tortured sobs, her auburn hair falling into her once-perfect, now
makeup-spattered face. "Eat the poor and DAMN THE RICH!"
It went on for another half-hour.
*.*.*.*
playing the son
Death was chasing Roger Collins.
He was sure of it. He had seen it there, with its army of voices and whispers
and chants, at the foot of his bed, after he'd told Julia his sad tale and put
him to bed and promised to be back in an hour; she'd had urgent business. And
that's when it had shown up -- in his room, at his bed, brandishing its
cacaphony of destruction. He'd fled instantly, in his bedclothes, wildeyed and
unshaven, down the stairs, out the front door, and out here, into the storm.
He was running through wet mud and bushes and tree branches, with no heed for
anything, anyone, except the terror he was sure was right on his heels.
Suddenly he was at the foot of a familiar clearing, and as the vicious snow mix
rained down on him and raked at his flesh, Roger stopped short. There, at the
edge of the clearing, and, seemingly, the cliff -- which he now recognized as
Widows Hill; of course, why not, he should've known
-- was his son, dressed in his raincoat.
Roger tottered across the seemingly endless, wet, dirty expanse, like the last
man of a dying race. David stood there, pale and somber, his face blue-white,
his hair drenched and his wet bangs clinging to his head like a helmet. He
stared up at his father impassively, his eyes lit with a misty, indistinct
light Roger didn't recognize.
"Hello, Father," he murmured.
"David," Roger wheezed, struggling to be heard over the storm. "My God, boy,
what are you doing out in this..."
"I was looking for you," David said softly, his voice light but somehow heard
above all else, muting the fury and rage around them.
Roger blinked at the boy, then rubbed his eyes. Then, he felt his heart sink
-- no, no, it couldn't be, that wasn't why he was here, wasn't at all...
Despair flooded him. "I'm here now, David," he said brokenly. "We can, we can
go inside..."
"Do you remember the carousel, Father?" David asked, his voice equally
breaking, a weak little meep. "Do you remember, we went to the park, you and
me and Mother, and you put me on the tiger and I spun around? Do you remember
that? Because I, I remember that..."
The father just stared at his son for a minute, befuddled, but then he blinked
-- memory shuttering into focus -- and nodded. "Why, yes," he said, suddenly
genuinely displaced by nostalgia. "Yes, I do...you were in your summer suit,
and your mother had vanilla pudding, and I...I helped you onto that
monstrosity, didn't I? Yes, I do remember. That was quite a day. Quite a
day." Roger's face relaxed, and he broke into a beautific, brilliant smile at
the memory, one that lit up this dreary, dark cliffedge, and the rain, and the
storm.
David's chin was trembling, and tears, not rain, were on his cheeks. "Why
couldn't we have stayed that way, Father? Why couldn't we, why couldn't we
have been that way always?"
Roger's square Adonis jaw was quivering now too, and he looked down at his son
with whimsical, wet eyes. "I don't know," he said. Then, he paused. "No,
that's wrong. I do know. I know exactly. I've always known. It was me,
David. It was me. Me and my father. I've -- I've been an angry little boy
all my life. I was never a man, and I was never your father. I've only been
his son." He was crying now. "But I do love you, David. Of that I'm sure.
It's all I've really got."
David's tears had dried; he was doing his best to not cry again. He crossed
around his father, then stood in front of him, putting Roger at the edge of the
hill. David opened his arms. "Hold me, Father."
So Roger did. He held his son.
No one heard him yell as the phantom winds wrenched him away, and only David
saw his father fall.
He stood there for a long time.
*.*.*.*
into the void
Julia couldn't find Roger anywhere. She'd come back from her jaunt to the
pharmacy and her futile trip to the Old House to alert Barnabas and Roger's bed
was rumpled, but he was gone. She'd checked the whole house -- nothing. She'd
went looking for people, but David, Carolyn, and Elizabeth were gone, Amy was
asleep, Vicki was off somewhere brooding about Quentin or who knows what and
Quentin was most likely doing the same, and Mrs. Johnson would only become
hysterical if Julia mentioned it. She'd checked upstairs, downstairs, the
basement, some of the grounds. There was only one off-chance left.
So Julia had ventured into the West Wing.
The West Wing, for all the mystique attached to it, seemed to be nothing more
than a series of short musty, cobwebbed storage rooms and long musty, cobwebbed
corridors with old portraits and locked doors. But the mystique worked. Julia
had the wiggins as she shone her flashlight down into yet another hallway, at
the end of which lay a door. She advanced on it, opened it, and stepped
inside.
Another storage room. Knick-knacks here and there; an armoire, some old dolls
and china, chests full of heirlooms and books. An ancient maroon stain on the
floor in front of the door at the other end. A broken oil lamp. Outside,
Julia could hear the storm slamming against the walls. Suddenly, she felt very
claustrophobic, even more unnerved than before, and decided this venture was
very pointless and very foolish and she should leave now. That was when she
heard the whisper.
"julia!"
Julia stopped in mid-turnaround, and slowly craned her head back, towards the
door with the maroon stain.
(that HAS to be the wind.)
She waited another ten seconds, and heard nothing. She turned around and
headed back for the way she came. She was about to leave the room when the
whisper came again.
"julia!"
Now she KNEW she heard that. Julia whipped around, brandishing her flashlight,
and shone it into the vast expanse of darkness. "Who is it?" Julia snapped.
"I -- I have a gun. Who's there? Come out!"
Then Julia's flashlight beam fell on the door leading to the room Julia hadn't
been in yet, and her eyes went wide. She inhaled sharply, gasping for breath;
she clutched at her neck for air. The flashlight dropped.
"No," Julia murmured. "It can't be...it's impossible...!"
Dr. Julia Hoffman's dear, dead brother Raymond smiled winsomely up at her
through that pixie hair and leprechaun eyes.
"Hello, Jules."
TO BE CONTINUED ...
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