Thursday, November 22, 2007

Hill House Revisited

Here's the story in its entirety, so you don't have to go backwards to earlier posts to read the first two installments. I'd love feedback and have asked questions at the end for anyone who feels inclined to answer them. Thanks.


Ian had never told Abigail that he had a Great Aunt Theodora. As a matter of fact, no one in the family ever had. She’d been caught completely off guard the day before Ian’s funeral when this Theodora woman had called to say she’d heard the news and wished she could make it to the funeral, but that she wasn’t going to be able to come. The call had barely registered, as Abigail had been so out of it at the time and had received so many similar calls, she hadn’t paid much attention. By the time the second call came, three months later, she had all but forgotten the first one. When she heard “Theodora,” she hung onto the phone trying to remember if her parents had a friend named Theodora, someone they’d be appalled to find she couldn’t remember. The jolt to her memory didn’t come until Theodora said, “Ian was my favorite nephew, you know.”

She then went on to say how sorry she was that they’d never met while Ian was still alive. She’d like them to get to know each other. Wouldn’t Abigail like to come visit her down in Winston-Salem? It was such an odd request, this relative stranger inviting Abigail to visit. Her curiosity was piqued. And it was piqued even further when the warm, elderly voice on the other end of the phone warned her not to mention the conversations to other members of Ian’s family. As she put it, she’d been “excommunicated” sometime back in the fifties or sixties.

That had been nearly a year ago, and they’d had a number of phone calls since then. Abigail could only think to describe them as having been “delightful,” making her sound as though she’d just stepped out of a nineteenth-century novel, she knew. Theodora seemed to inspire one to sound that way, though.

She was an extremely interesting person, full of life and living, despite her age, the sort of person Abigail hoped to be one day, the woman who shunned the notion of sitting in a rocker and knitting all day as soon as she hit age sixty. Almost every family has a Theodora, someone who doesn’t quite live life “by the rules,” but Abigail couldn’t understand why Ian’s family, usually so accepting of anyone and everyone would have hidden her away. They were the sorts to take great pride in having such a character as a member of their own clan, especially one, who as far as she could tell, was somewhat famous. Theodora should have been a great topic of conversation for them at parties.

It made some sense that Theodora’s parents, being of their generation, had disowned her when she’d gone off to live with her lover in the 1950s, something that just wasn’t done, not if you were from a proper New England family such as theirs. Still, why would anyone care now? Why wouldn’t they have accepted her back in the fold, especially since her parents were long since dead and gone? But then Abigail had to acknowledge that the whole ghost hunting thing might be a bit much for any family, let alone a proper New England one.

The relationship that had cost Theodora her parents hadn’t even lasted. She and her lover had split up, due to one of those arguments in which irreparable damage is done, just before Theodora had gone off on her first investigation with Dr. Montague. Some within the family speculated that the investigation with Dr. Montague was what had caused the real rift in the family, not the live-in lover, and that the lover had been an excuse, since the two events had seemed to overlap. The twenty-five-year-long association she’d shared with the doctor as two often-sought experts on hauntings and the paranormal offered a far better explanation for cutting her out of the family than did a misguided, less-than-two-year-long indiscreet love affair that could have been easily forgotten.

***

Janet hadn’t thought about Aunt Theodora in years. Her father’s sister had been the youngest member of the family, an adopted child, as a matter of fact. Theodora’s parents, good friends of Janet’s grandparents, had died in an accident, and Janet’s grandparents, whose children were all grown or nearly grown by then, had been given custody of the little six-year-old.

From what Janet had gathered from the tales told when she was a child, the young orphan had never really recovered from the death of her adoring and adored father. She was quite a handful for her adoptive parents, who were by no means old by today’s standards, but who had been considered to be getting older and slowing down by then. Everyone felt that what Theodora had needed were young, energetic parents with firm hands to keep her in line.

Not knowing what else to do with her, she’d been sent off to boarding schools, hoping they would instill some discipline, but the schools had seemed to bring out the worst, not the best, in her. The details were sketchy, though, and Janet had never really been able to get anyone to tell her what that had meant. Eventually, talking about Theodora had become taboo within the family, which had meant no one talked about her publicly, although plenty of whispering went on behind scenes, and Janet and her brother and sister had made up so many stories themselves about “Wild Aunt Theo” as they called her, that Janet found it hard these days to recollect what was true and what wasn’t.

She’d never had anything against Theodora herself. She and her siblings had all adored their wild, crazy, and flamboyant aunt, really more like a sister, since she was only seven years older. She’d taught Janet all the stylish dances and had convinced her that girls should wear their hair short, no matter what the fashion. Why waste time with all those hundred brush strokes required of long hair? And washing long hair was such a nuisance.

Theodora may have been disowned when she’d moved in with Robbie, but Janet had always felt her grandparents had just been looking for an excuse to be rid of the child who’d always been a problem. She was never mentioned by them again, and that’s when the whispered discussions began. All Janet had known was that she’d moved to New Mexico at some point, but that was about it. She’d already begun to drift away from her aunt by then, having a family of her own and was really too busy to care too much about the details of the life of a family member who’d always been a misfit. Ian had been drawn to her, as all children had been, but her children were always quick to catch on, and it hadn’t taken too long for him to stop asking for her at family gatherings. Janet was sure he’d eventually forgotten all about her.

****

Abigail and Theodora had spent many of their phone conversations discussing Theodora’s fascinating life. It seemed so interesting compared to Abigail’s predictable and now empty, often very lonely, one. Although originally from Wallingford, like the rest of her family, Theodora had chosen the South for her retirement. She’d been drawn to Winston-Salem during the seventies when they’d been there to investigate a house “way out in the boondocks in Kernersville,” a small community east of the city. She lived now in the heart of the city, on Academy St., within walking distance of Old Salem, her favorite section of town. She was full of tales of all the ghosts in Old Salem, most of whom no one else believed existed, except some of the researchers from Duke who’d come stay with her on occasion.

These conversations were more than intriguing to Abigail. She so badly needed a vacation, so it wasn’t so surprising that just shy of a year after their first conversation, she decided to take Theodora up on the offer. A trip to North Carolina would be cheaper than her longed-for trip to Bermuda, which, living on a shoe string as she currently was, she’d probably never make. She’d always loved Ian’s family – honestly, preferring them to most of her own family members – so it was nice to discover a member she’d never met, and she was sure they’d have a wonderful time getting better acquainted.

****

Janet knew she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Abigail hadn’t adjusted well after Ian’s death. No one talked about it, though, and Janet found herself following suit, despite the fact she was worried about the constant dark circles under the young woman’s eyes. Abigail seemed to be under the impression that she should face life as a stalwart soldier. She closed herself off to the family. She’d shed maybe three required tears at the funeral, but that was the only time she’d cried in the company of others.

At times Janet wanted to shake her. It was almost unbearable to watch her marching efficiently through life, carrying on with all home and business tasks, not once letting down her guard. Janet wanted to tell her it was okay to break down and weep, necessary even. Abigail was worried about Thomas, but Janet told her Thomas would understand. It was better for a son to see his mother’s sorrow, evidence of how much she’d loved his father. Janet didn’t really know how to do it or what to say, though, and she honestly didn’t really want to be the one to do it, so she did what they all did: pretended Abigail was doing so well and wondered how long they would all keep pretending, how much longer everyone was going to ignore the dark circles under the eyes, the quick temper that had begun to develop, the inability to concentrate during normal conversation.

****

Abigail’s mother had agreed to take Thomas for the five days she’d be gone. Thomas hadn’t been too happy about this. He much preferred to stay with her in-laws who spoiled him rotten, in a way her mother never did. However, she couldn’t tell anyone in Ian’s family she was visiting Theodora. Besides, her mother had begun to hint that she never got to see Ian, that Abigail seemed to spend all her time with Ian’s family. This wasn’t true. Abigail knew she wasn’t spending much time with any family members, but she was too drained these days to argue. She hoped an extended period with Ian would appease her mother for a while.

After dropping off Thomas, she realized she still had quite a bit of time before she needed to head to the airport. She decided to stop by Borders to pick up a copy of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the book that had made Aunt Theodora famous. Years before, she’d seen the movie based on the book but didn’t remember too much about it, having never been a huge fan of horror movies. Ghost stories had always seemed silly to her, even at age ten, sitting around Girl Scout campfires after dark. The book was short enough. She’d probably finish it on the plane, especially since she had a two-hour layover in Baltimore.

She was disappointed. Not in the book, which, surprisingly, spooked her quite a bit, but more in the fact that she was barely given any information about Theodora. Of the two young women, Theodora was obviously the more exciting. Eleanor, who received center stage, had so evidently been a real drip. The only exciting or brave thing she’d ever done in her life, it seemed, was steal a car that was half hers anyway. And her chanting of “journeys end in lovers’ meeting” was just plain embarrassing.

Dr. Montague was a pompous ass. Abigail couldn’t warm up to him, either. He and his dreadful wife deserved each other. Typically of someone of his sort, he arranged this whole little experiment and then so often wasn’t around when Eleanor and Theodora really needed him. Abigail couldn’t imagine what Theodora had seen in him to make her keep working with him for twenty five years.

By the time she’d picked up her rental car and was headed west on I-40, she’d come up with plenty of questions for Theodora. Mention had been made, of course, of the domestic arrangement that had estranged her from her family, but Abigail wasn’t the least bit satisfied due to the lack of details. She decided Jackson must not have been a big fan of details.

Theodora, on the other hand, boded to be an extremely detail-oriented person. Her directions were excellent, and Abigail found her cute little yellow house with its front porch (obviously de rigueur in this part of the world) with no trouble. It being a beautiful fall evening, she found Theodora waiting for her, sitting out on one of the porch’s gliders, the porch light shining brightly.

She stood up and gave Abigail an exuberant welcome, as if they’d been long-time friends, offering, despite her age, to take one of the two bags Abigail carried. She was a woman who, in her seventies now, was still stunning. You could tell that in her youth she’d radiated sex and beauty, the kind of girl who so often bewitched the boys with whom Abigail was madly in unrequited love. Abigail had never really been able to blame the boys for being so bewitched, since she was usually half under these girls’ spells as well. Theodora moved sylph-like up the stairs and led Abigail into the second of two bedrooms that had obviously once been the attic.

“Welcome to my guest suite,” she announced, as she placed Abigail’s small carry-on bag on the floor. “The bathroom is through that door,” she pointed to a door on the other side of the four-poster bed, which stood in between it and the door through which they’d entered. “It connects to the other bedroom, but I have no other guests this week, so you’ve got all three rooms to yourself. Feel free to spread out. The other room is bigger and has a desk and sofa in it, but this one has the more comfortable and queen-sized bed, so I thought you’d prefer it.” She left Abigail to “freshen up.”

It was a cute little room, basically just big enough for the bed, the dresser, and a couple of bedside tables, thoughtfully laid out with vases of flowers and magazines that might be of interest to a visitor. The closet was completely empty, as were the dresser drawers. Abigail unpacked her suitcase and stored her things in them, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and joined Theodora back downstairs for the gin and tonic she’d been offered by her hostess.

****

It was odd for Abigail to have left town without telling Janet where she was going, but Abigail had, after all, been acting odd these days, so Janet wasn’t completely surprised. She wished Thomas had been left with her, though. The little boy needed a loving, stable environment, and some positive male role modes, as often as these things could be provided, and, although she prided herself on being extremely tolerant and nonjudgmental (after all, hadn’t she accepted Ian and Abigail?), she couldn’t help thinking that his other grandmother, with her constant complaints about her ex-husband, just didn’t give him that.

Still, the secretiveness was bothering her. Not only had Abigail not told her where she was going, she hadn’t even bothered to tell her she was going anywhere at all. If Janet hadn’t decided to do something she rarely did, calling her daughter-in-law at the office to see if they could plan some time to get together, she never would have known Abigail was out of town for a few days. Her calls to the cell phone were obviously being ignored.

Of course, this probably meant nothing more than that Abigail had a new man in her life, someone she didn’t yet want to share with the family. They’d most likely decided to take a long weekend away together. Janet found nothing inherently wrong in that. It had been a year since Ian’s death, and a new man would be a sign that Abigail was moving on. The problem is, Abigail hadn’t shown any other clear signs of beginning to move on with her life. She certainly hoped this wasn’t just a new way for Abigail to ignore her feelings, to stay preoccupied with something new and exciting. She worried about any man who might be showing interest in a woman who was in such a fragile state. A “rescuer” who turned “manipulator” would not be good, in fact would be terrible, for Abigail right now.

****

Abigail took a seat on the glider next to Theodora’s, ready to bombard her with many questions. Theodora, however, had a very different agenda. She was far more interested in Ian and Abigail than she was in discussing Hill House, Dr. Montague, and her life prior to the incident. Nonetheless, she was extremely patient with Abigail, providing her with thorough answers to all the questions.

Anyone listening would have thought they made quite a pair: Abigail was racing through everything as if they only had one hour to unveil all the mysteries of the book she’d just devoured. Theodora rocked the glider slowly and methodically, carefully considering every question asked, and responding as though neither one of their lives would ever end.

Finally, she said, “Look, that really wasn’t the most interesting of our cases. Unfortunately, it just happens to be the one everyone knows, because Ms. Jackson decided to immortalize all of us, even poor Eleanor, who really should have been allowed to rest in peace. I could share with you some stories that are far more interesting than Hill House.

"Dr. Montague and Shirley Jackson had a real falling out over some of the details (funny, thought Abigail, since there hadn't seemed to be many of those) in that book. As most writers do, she got many of them wrong. She assumed so many things she shouldn’t have. And then, of course, once we all decided not to talk to her, at Dr. Montague’s request, she just blatantly made up stuff. Today, we’d probably all sue her, but in those days, we just laughed about it.

“At this point in time, I can’t really say I blame her. After all, the bare bones of the story are good ones, and she weaved magic with them. I’m just saying that much of it was more fiction than truth.

“For instance, Robbie and I didn’t have our big argument as a result of my choosing to go to Hill House. We’d quarreled about three weeks’ prior, and I’d moved back to Connecticut from Santa Fe. I was living on my own. And in the book, Luke is portrayed as somewhat of a mindless playboy, ordered about by his family and made to come live at Hill House. The truth of the matter is he was the one who insisted a family member ought to be in the house when strangers came to visit, and he decided he’d be that member. I still don’t know how she could’ve botched that.”

Abigail was surprised to hear all this. “But the house itself? I mean, the fact it was haunted, that was real, right?” A year ago, she would have thought this a ridiculous question, but her opinions concerning ghosts and haunted houses were rapidly changing.

“That house was full of ghosts, my dear, no doubt about it. More so than most of the houses I’ve encountered.”

Theodora was determined to get Abigail out of Hill House and into one of her other houses. There’d been many. They’d actually gone to England and the Caribbean a few times, despite the fact Dr. Montague wanted to limit his research to the U.S. And she laughed as she remembered some of the hoaxes they’d encountered.

“In one house, the husband was hoping to scare his poor wife into leaving. Before we arrived on the scene, he’d actually gone walking around dressed in a sheet, passing by the doors of the rooms in which she sat or lay in bed. He had a friend who would climb onto the roof and rattle chains. All I could think was that he’d seen the movie Gaslight one too many times. His wife’s family was completely convinced, though, which just goes to show what people are willing to believe.

“Anyway, I’m sure they didn’t even give you any peanuts on the plane. You must be starving. Let’s go in and eat.”

At dinner, she turned the conversation back to Abigail, eager to learn the details of the life shared with Ian, how they’d met, what their little boy was like. Abigail hadn’t had this sort of a conversation in ages, and she found herself struggling with many different emotions: sadness, enjoyment, fondness for Theodora and the eager way she leaned forward, listening intently…

She had met Ian at a large dinner party hosted by a friend of his and a friend of hers. She was one of the requisite females invited by Valerie to sit across from one of the requisite males invited by Michael. Unfortunately, the young man chosen for her had been a complete idiot. The older man, sitting next to him, however, had been completely endearing. Quite obviously, the older woman sitting next to Abigail who’d been chosen as his companion thought so, too. The three of them had stayed quite late, discussing books and music, Abigail’s two favorite subjects.

She’d been completely surprised when Valerie had approached her cubicle at work a couple of weeks later and asked if she could give Abigail’s number to her husband’s friend Ian. She had wavered somewhat. Ian had been 43 at the time, and she only 26. She hadn’t known the exact numbers, of course, at the time, but she had been aware that he was nowhere near her own age. In the end, flattery had gotten the best of her. She couldn’t believe someone so smart and so funny was more interested in her than their other dinner companion, who had seemed far more glamorous, impressive, and well-read than she’d ever be.

They’d hit it off tremendously from the first date. She couldn’t get enough of his conversations, and their dates weren’t accompanied by the all-too-familiar anxieties typically associated with dating. None of the “does he really like me or is he just lonely and can’t find anyone better?” nor the “should I return his call or let him call me again?” not even the “should I take him up on his offer to spend the night with him?” Everything just felt right and happened as one would expect it to happen. She wasn’t the least bit surprised when eight months after they’d met, he’d asked her to marry him. He said it had taken him too many years to find his other half, and he wasn’t about to let her go.

Abigail and Ian’s first year of marriage hadn’t turned out to be a bed of roses, though, more like a rock garden tended barefoot. He’d wanted to have kids right away, understandably, and she hadn’t. She hadn’t even been sure she’d wanted to have kids at all. She’d told him she’d gone off the Pill, but still had secretly been taking it. It was difficult to remember to take it while hiding it, though. She was constantly missing days, so it wasn’t really a huge surprise when she wound up pregnant.

She’d been somewhat afraid Ian was going to leave her or that he’d been having an affair until the day she told him she was pregnant. He was thrilled, and things between them improved immensely. He was extraordinarily deferential while she was pregnant, and he took such good care of both Thomas and Abigail, once the baby was born. She’d found herself falling in love with him all over again. And, of course, like so many women, once she’d had the baby, she’d realized she really did want children, or at least, wanted this child.

"But it didn’t last,” Abigail sighed between forkfuls of food. “Nothing good ever does, does it? And the least of my worries at the time was that my husband would die of a brain aneurysm. I barely even knew what one was.”

“Funny. A brain aneurysm is what killed Luke Sanderson, you know. And at such a young age,” she said. Abigail hadn’t known, of course. She hadn’t even known who he was until today, and she didn’t know he was dead.

“And I can completely understand your attraction to an older man. Dr. Montague was eighteen years older than I was. You must have figured out by now that he and I were more than just investigative partners. It was perfectly natural, you know, the two of us spending so much time alone together in empty houses. And his wife, well, no one could stand that woman for very long. She was the one person whose character Ms. Jackson managed to get right.

“As much as I hate that old cliché, he certainly knew how to make me feel like a woman. You know exactly what I mean, don’t you? He refused to divorce her, though, said he was old-fashioned, didn’t believe in divorce, turning his back on obligations. He wouldn’t listen to my arguments that he wasn’t so old-fashioned as to believe in fidelity. He always said to me, ‘Fidelity, my dear, is not an old-fashioned value. Read your Old Testament.’

“Mrs. Montague wasn’t around much. When he and I were alone in those houses, I could almost pretend she didn’t exist. She’d often show up unannounced, though, which always infuriated me.”

Abigail could tell how true this last statement was by the anger on her face now, even after all these years. She hoped the shock on her own face wasn’t apparent. Dr. Montague had been a know-it-all old fuddy-duddy, nothing at all like her Ian. How could someone like Aunt Theodora possibly have had an affair with someone like that? And how dare she make any kind of connection between Abigail’s husband and that man?

Aunt Theodora must have noticed Abigail’s discomfort, though, as she quickly decided to leave Hill House again. “You know, I knew Ian when he was a very little boy.” Abigail raced right out the front door of the haunted old house with her, forgetting her shock and anger. She loved to hear stories about Ian when he was a child. “He was extremely bright, even then. Funny he grew up to be a professor, because we all called him ‘The Little Professor.’ He was reading by the time he was four. He absolutely loved Aesop’s Fables. He once said to me, ‘It’s called allegory, Aunt Theodora. Animals don’t really do all those things, but it’s fun to pretend they can.’ Doesn’t that brilliantly capture the advanced cognitive abilities that were stuck in the same brain with the imagination of a four-year-old?”

They spent the rest of dinner talking about Ian and Thomas. Apparently, Abigail’s son was very much like his father. Abigail knew this from other members of Ian’s family, but Aunt Theodora’s perspective was unique. Ian had been frozen forever for her at age five, which was the last time she’d seen him. Her vision of him hadn’t been clouded by watching him grow and change and witnessing what he’d become.

By the time Abigail climbed into bed that night, she was missing both Ian and Thomas. This was the first time she’d been away from Thomas since Ian’s death, and she was beginning to realize how dependent she was on her little boy to keep her from being eaten alive by grief, left to wander around in the gloomy caverns of its massive stomach. That night, as she lay there exhausted but unable to sleep, she was sure she could feel all the cracks still left in the broken heart she thought she’d been so carefully mending for the past year.

Despite thinking it wasn’t possible, she must have fallen asleep, because she was most definitely woken up by the noise. It was coming from the door that led into the bathroom. At first, in her groggy state, she thought it was a dog scratching at the door. Rolling over with an automatic “no,” it took her a minute to realize she hadn’t lived with a dog in years. Then she realized where she was. Theodora didn’t have a dog, either. Could it be a cat she had yet to meet? Theodora hadn’t mentioned one.

Fully awake now, Abigail propped herself up on her pillow and listened. When the scratching, which seemed to be coming from both the bottom of the door as well as from the vicinity of the door knob, turned into a light knocking, her rising sense of dread determined this definitely wasn’t a cat. Nor was it a mouse.

She felt the way she always had as a child when she awakened in the middle of the night from a nightmare, terrified that the loud beating of her heart echoing in her ears was a giant climbing the stairs to get her. She’d learned never to cry out, though, because her sister, lying in her bed across the room would mock her, spending the next few nights doing her best to terrorize her before they went to bed. Thus well-trained, Abigail didn’t make a sound now. She listened until the scratching and knocking stopped, squashing the urge to hide under the covers, as she heard soft footsteps descend the uncarpeted steps that led down to the first floor.

In the morning, Abigail realized Theodora must have been having a little fun with her. The thought crossed her mind that this was an odd way to treat a houseguest, but Theodora seemed to be someone who liked a good practical joke. Yesterday, she’d confessed to Ian’s aunt that the ghost who’d come and thumped at Eleanor’s door in the book had spooked her to the point she’d jumped when the flight attendant had come to ask what she’d like to drink. Theodora had laughed and told Abigail she’d experienced so many instances of something like that in her life she barely remembered it had happened at Hill House. Abigail had set herself up perfectly for a practical jokester.

As Theodora showed Abigail around town that day, though, she made no mention of it. She didn’t even drop the sorts of hints you’d expect from someone who’d played such a joke. Nothing in her conversation lent itself to getting Abigail to confess something weird had happened, enabling her to either feed into her guest’s concerns, extending the joke, or to laugh, confessing her antics. Abigail got none of that, not even when she was giving one her insider’s tours of Old Salem, providing details of each and every one of the ghosts she’d encountered there. This would naturally have been the ideal time to ask Abigail if she'd ever seen a ghost.

Abigail was wiped out, yet again, by the time she went to bed that night. To top off her poor night’s sleep the previous night and walking all around Old Salem, Theodora had insisted on asking more questions about Ian, which had drained the last drops of energy from her body. They’d also enjoyed a heavy meal at The Salem Tavern, and she’d drunk one too many glasses of wine.

She should have fallen right to sleep. Instead, she found herself wide awake under the covers and wishing she were home. Home, with Ian snoring beside her and Thomas sleeping in his crib in the next room. Only about a quarter of her brain seemed to be intent on getting to sleep. The other seventy five percent was focused on being angry with Ian for leaving her here with the monumental task of raising a child on her own. This was soon followed by guilt for having such thoughts. Finally, there were auditory synapses, fully alert and waiting for more scratching noises.

The noises didn’t come, though, and sleep eventually did. She woke up in desperate need of the bathroom. While fumbling for the light switch, she heard something yet again, coming from that bathroom door. It was so faint. Someone was whispering, quietly giggling.

“Ssshhh,” was barely audible. “Abigail’s sleeping.” Then, “Abigail, please let me in.” More laughter. More vague, unintelligible whispers and hissing.

She turned the light on just in time to see the door handle twisting against the lock she’d firmly pushed in before climbing into bed. The twisting was frantic; the whispering became unbearable as she lay trembling, praying for her life to the God she didn’t believe existed. When the manic efforts to open the door eventually subsided, she waited for the footsteps she was sure she’d hear descending the stairs. They didn’t come.

Only a brainless babysitter in Jason’s Elm Street Halloween would have left the bed to go into that bathroom. She lay in agony, wishing she had a bed pan, wishing the clock didn’t read 2:48 a.m. Finally, she admitted defeat. She had no choice but to make her way around the bed to the bathroom. Her bravery could be contributed to the fact that she partly believed Theodora would be there when she opened the door. Another part suspected she'd find nothing, which is exactly what happened. She hurriedly did what needed to be done and rushed back to the safety of the bed, forgetting to flush the toilet.

The next day was a glorious fall day, the sky a brilliant blue, making a perfect backdrop for the reds, yellows, and oranges of the leaves. Theodora took her out to Tanglewood Park. She felt as though she’d been wandering around in a blurry movie, and today, someone had finally fiddled with the focus button, bringing everything sharply to life. Still no mention, however, from Theodora of any ghosts in her house. She was completely enchanting and vivacious, enjoying the day and the park even more than Abigail did, despite her familiarity with it. She certainly didn’t seem like the kind of elderly woman who would be trying to scare her houseguest to death.

Abigail dreaded bedtime that night and kept Theodora up well close to midnight. She didn’t seem to mind, though, not seeming to be the least bit sleepy herself. It was Abigail, this time, who turned the conversation to Ian and then did nothing but talk about him and two of them for close to two hours. She found herself crying months’ worth of unshed tears by the end of it.

She’d been afraid to talk so much about him since his death, afraid this would happen, but somehow, sitting here with Theodora, it didn’t seem to matter. It seemed like the perfect outlet for her grief. Theodora was very patient and understanding, until she finally mentioned that all this must be exhausting and that Abigail ought to get to bed, since they had plans, due to the beautiful weather, for a day trip up to Asheville the next day, and they needed to get some rest for that. Abigail had become a huge fan of Thomas Wolfe when she was in college and had always wanted to go to Asheville. Now, however, she realized she couldn’t care less. She didn’t want to spend another night in that bedroom. She didn’t want to rest up for a long drive. She wanted to stay right down here in the living room until morning. Being a polite and obedient guest, however, she said nothing, heading up as Theodora turned out all the lights in the living room and kitchen.

All Abigail could think of as she lay in bed that night was that once she made it through this night, she only had one night left. She wasn’t stuck living here with a crazy old woman (which was what Abigail’s mind had turned Theodora into once again, the minute she’d crawled into bed in this horrible room), who seemed hell bent on scaring her into a loony bin. Abigail had decided Theodora wasn’t trying to kill her, because that could easily have been accomplished by now. Her life obviously wasn’t at stake, just her sanity, and she was determined to keep it in tact.

She hadn’t even fallen asleep yet when the scratching began. It started slowly and lightly, but then began to pick up its pace. She pretended not to hear it. The more she pretended, however, the more insistent it seemed to become. Now it was scratching and knocking and thumping. When it got no response from her, the doorknob moved frantically again, someone desperately twisting it to get inside the room. Abigail tried to cover her ears to block out the noise, but she was shaking too hard and the noise was too loud. Something fell to the floor. The doorknob. Whatever it was could now get into the room. Abigail was all the way under the covers by now, having abandoned all brave notions that Theodora couldn’t be intent on killing her. She waited and waited to hear footsteps, to feel something pounce on her, for Theodora to burst out laughing at her very cruel joke. Nothing happened.

Finally, her anger got the better of her fear. She threw back her covers to find no one standing there. She stomped around the bed and picked up the doorknob that had fallen to the floor. The door was still shut. She pushed against it, but it wouldn’t open. Someone was standing there, resisting her forceful attempts, keeping it firmly closed. If it were Theodora, she was awfully strong for someone her size and age.

“Theodora,” Abigail said, in tears. “I’ve had enough! Leave me alone!” In response, all she got were whispers and laughter. She crawled back into bed, where she spent the next two hours shivering and crying.

She was ready to pay the $100 it would take to change her flight back home the next day when she woke up, after a few hours of fitful sleep, and discovered the doorknob was back on the bathroom door, which she climbed out of bed to discover she had no trouble opening. She packed her bags and came downstairs ready to confront Theodora, who, looking well-rested and happy, was packing a picnic lunch for their trip. She looked up at Abigail, surprised, when she, more timidly than she’d intended, asked,

“Is this house haunted?”

“Why, have you seen a ghost? You look as though you have.”

“Not seen one, but heard one,” Abigail informed her.

"Lucky you, then. When I bought it, I was told it was haunted. It is, but I don’t know how anyone ever knew. The ghost is extremely shy and forlorn and has never really wanted to come out to play. I’ve barely seen him. He must find you attractive,” and she laughed.

“It’s not very funny,” Abigail said, flatly.


“Oh dear,” she said. “He’s really scared you, hasn’t he?”


“Yes.” Abigail was crying all over again.

*****

Janet wished she had a better memory. She knew her grandparents had never even gone to the trial, but she couldn’t remember how the rest of the family had responded. It had been so unfair. Yes, the trial had been all the way out in New Mexico, but still, these were the only parents Theodora had ever really known. Their behavior towards her was so uncharacteristic of them. They were always so open and loving, spoiling their grandchildren and seeming to enjoy life so much. Janet couldn’t understand what made them behave so bitterly towards a daughter whose only real crime had been to follow her heart by moving in with her lover.

Janet had always felt that the lack of family support was what hurt Aunt Theo’s case, but, of course, no one was allowed to talk about it. She’d always regretted not having flown out there herself, but she’d been in the midst of raising a family and taking care of a home. Someone should have been there to defend her, to let everyone know she was basically just a mixed up kid in a woman’s body.

****

Theodora addressed Abigail’s tears with kindness and warmth and told her she had nothing to fear. The ghost was a man who’d died in the prime of his life, out riding his motorcycle one day. He kept coming home to look for his wife who’d moved shortly after his death. Surely Abigail could relate to that story. She shouldn’t let ghosts frighten her. Most of them were harmless. Abigail wanted to believe her, but something bothered her about this story. The voice that had whispered her name had definitely been female, and how would this ghost know her name? Besides, she was sure she’d heard more than one ghost.

“What was the wife’s name?” she asked, hoping by some fluke her name had been Abigail. It wasn’t, though. Her name had been Michelle.

Her explanation was convincing enough, and Abigail didn’t really want to spend that $100, so she decided to stay after all. They had a wonderful day in Asheville, Theodora engendering so much warmth and affection from complete strangers both at the Thomas Wolfe homestead and the Biltmore Estate that Abigail found herself wondering how she could ever have doubted her. She was so wrong to think this woman had been trying to terrorize her. Maybe she was even wrong in believing she’d heard a ghost. Maybe she’d dreamt it all or was just suffering from some grief-induced phenomenon that was causing hallucinations. She’d heard this sort of thing could happen. They had a delicious picnic in the gardens at Biltmore, and she felt refreshed and much happier by the time they arrived back in Winston-Salem.

When she woke up that night, it was because she could hear Ian laughing. He was laughing and telling her how wonderful she was, just has he had done in the early stages of their romance. But someone was laughing with him, and it wasn’t Abigail.

She opened her eyes to see them standing there at the bottom of the bed. Ian, in all his handsome glory, was just as she’d remembered him. And there was Theodora beside him, only she wasn’t the Theodora Abigail had been visiting the past few days.

The same smile and the same twinkle in her eyes were there, of course. The same charm. The same sexual energy. But the wrinkles were gone. The gray hair was now jet black. Her smooth, un-aged hands were pressed playfully against Ian’s chest. They were both laughing at some private joke, oblivious to the world around them. He planted his hands on both her cheeks, just as he’d always done with Abigail, and pulled her to kiss him. She pulled away, though, put a finger to her lips, then turned and pointed at the bed.

He stopped for a minute, looked at Abigail without seeming to see her, and then turned his attention back to Theodora. Laughing once more, he insistently grabbed her and kissed her. She didn’t resist him, but rather, fell against him, her thin body engulfed by his thick one. They held each other for an eternity, and then she turned back to Abigail again and whispered,

“You know, Abigail, journeys end in lovers’ meeting.”

****

Janet wished they hadn’t all just pretended everything was okay with Abigail. She’d tried to convince her daughter-in-law not to move to Oregon, but Abigail wouldn’t listen. She came back from her trip down south and said she needed to get away, go somewhere new and different where there were no memories. Janet guessed she could understand that, but she just didn’t understand why it had to be so far away. Abigail’s college roommate had married a man out there, and she assured Janet they’d take good care of her until she was settled, but Janet had to admit, she had her doubts.

She was more worried than ever about Abigail after that little vacation she’d taken. She came home finally able to show her despair over Ian, and everyone was quite relieved about that. However, when Janet asked her about her trip to North Carolina, Abigail just told her it hadn’t been what she’d expected, and then she started obsessing about Aunt Theodora, which had brought back memories and feelings Janet had kept buried for a long time. No one knew how she’d found out about Aunt Theodora.

Janet had explained to Abigail how Aunt Theo’s boyfriend, the one she’d gone to live with in New Mexico, had strangled her to death. Nobody in their family was there, of course, when he was acquitted on the grounds of self defense. He claimed she’d come at him with a knife, in one of her fits of jealous rage. After all, the neighbors had heard the fights, and Theodora, living in sin, was quite obviously, in the eyes of all those cowboys out there, a wicked woman. Everyone in Wallingford talked about it, except the family. Janet had read the newspaper accounts, like everyone else, but no one dared mention it to her grandparents. Eventually, people just forgot.

Abigail seemed to have Theodora confused with some woman in a book, a book that had been written after Theodora had died. She refused to listen, or to believe Theodora had been dead for so long, though. Janet certainly hoped she and Thomas would be all right out there in Oregon. Members of their family didn’t tend to do too well living out West.



QUESTIONS:

1. My two main goals when writing a ghost story are ambivalence and surprise. I think of ghost stories sort of has the magicians of writing (i.e. "I'm going to distract you over here and make you think this is what's happening, but what's really happening is -- surprise! -- this"). I expect readers to interpret them in their own ways and try not to make my own interpretation too obvious. Do you feel I accomplished this, or do you think I've got too much in here that tells the reader how to interpret it (as well as how to interpret Shirley Jackson's story)?

2. I also want to scare without blood and guts gore. Was it the least bit scary to you?

3. I originally wrote this story as two first-person accounts, Abigail's and Janet's. I changed it for this post (and if you were paying close attention, you may have caught a few areas in which I may have missed a few "I's" or "we's" or whatever. I thought the third-person account would help make it more ambivalent. Do you think it works, or do you think it might have been better in its original?

4. If you've read The Haunting of Hill House, did this work for you? If you haven't read it (after you've put it at the top of your TBR list), could you tell me if it was too confusing for someone who hadn't read it?

5. I've been told in the past that the humor in my ghost stories doesn't work, that it's too jarring. Agree that it doesn't work here? Disagree that it does work here?

Friday, November 02, 2007

Hill House Revisited Part II

It was odd for Abigail to have left town without telling Janet where she was going, but Abigail had, after all, been acting odd these days, so Janet wasn’t completely surprised. She wished Thomas had been left with her, though. The little boy needed a loving, stable environment, and some positive male role modes, as often as these things could be provided, and, although she prided herself on being extremely tolerant and nonjudgmental (after all, hadn’t she accepted Ian and Abigail?), she couldn’t help thinking that his other grandmother, with her constant complaints about her ex-husband, just didn’t give him that.

Still, the secretiveness was bothering her. Not only had Abigail not told her where she was going, she hadn’t even bothered to tell her she was going anywhere at all. If Janet hadn’t decided to do something she rarely did, calling her daughter-in-law at the office to see if they could plan some time to get together, she never would have known Abigail was out of town for a few days. Her calls to the cell phone were obviously being ignored.

Of course, this probably meant nothing more than that Abigail had a new man in her life, someone she didn’t yet want to share with the family. They’d most likely decided to take a long weekend away together. Janet found nothing inherently wrong in that. It had been a year since Ian’s death, and a new man would be a sign that Abigail was moving on. The problem is, Abigail hadn’t shown any other clear signs of beginning to move on with her life. She certainly hoped this wasn’t just a new way for Abigail to ignore her feelings, to stay preoccupied with something new and exciting. She worried about any man who might be showing interest in a woman who was in such a fragile state. A “rescuer” who turned “manipulator” would not be good, in fact would be terrible, for Abigail right now.

****

Abigail took a seat on the glider next to Theodora’s, ready to bombard her with many questions. Theodora, however, had a very different agenda. She was far more interested in Ian and Abigail than she was in discussing Hill House, Dr. Montague, and her life prior to the incident. Nonetheless, she was extremely patient with Abigail, providing her with thorough answers to all the questions.

Anyone listening would have thought they made quite a pair. Abigail was racing through everything as if they only had one hour to unveil all the mysteries of the book she’d just devoured. Theodora rocked the glider slowly and methodically, carefully considering every question asked, and responding as though neither one of their lives would ever end.

Finally, she said, “Look, that really wasn’t the most interesting of our cases. Unfortunately, it just happens to be the one everyone knows, because Ms. Jackson decided to immortalize all of us, even poor Eleanor, who really should have been allowed to rest in peace. I could share with you some stories that are far more interesting than Hill House.

“Dr. Montague and Shirley Jackson had a real falling out over some of the details [funny, since there didn’t seem to be many of those] in that book. As most writers do, she got many of them wrong. She assumed so many things she shouldn’t have. And then, of course, once we all decided not to talk to her, at Dr. Montague’s request, she just blatantly made up stuff. Today, we’d probably all sue her, but in those days, we just laughed about it.

“At this point in time, I can’t really say I blame her. After all, the bare bones of the story are good ones, and she weaved magic with them. I’m just saying that much of it was more fiction than truth.

“For instance, Robbie and I didn’t have our big argument as a result of my choosing to go to Hill House. We’d quarreled about three weeks’ prior, and I’d moved back to Connecticut from Santa Fe. I was living on my own. And in the book, Luke is portrayed as somewhat of a mindless playboy, ordered about by his family and made to come live at Hill House. The truth of the matter is he was the one who insisted a family member ought to be in the house when strangers came to visit, and he decided he’d be that member. I still don’t know how she could’ve botched that.”

Abigail was so surprised to hear all this. “But the house itself? I mean, the fact it was haunted, that was real, right?” A year ago, she would have thought this a ridiculous question, but her opinions concerning ghosts and haunted houses were rapidly changing.

“That house was full of ghosts, my dear, no doubt about it. More so than most of the houses I’ve encountered.”

Theodora was determined to get Abigail out of Hill House and into one of her other houses. There’d been many. They’d actually gone to England and the Caribbean a few times, despite the fact Dr. Montague wanted to limit his research to the U.S. And she laughed as she remembered some of the hoaxes they’d encountered.

“In one house, the husband was hoping to scare his poor wife into leaving. Before we arrived on the scene, he’d actually gone walking around dressed in a sheet, passing by the doors of the rooms in which she sat or lay in bed. He had a friend who would climb onto the roof and rattle chains. All I could think was that he’d seen the movie Gaslight one too many times. His wife’s family was completely convinced, though, which just goes to show what people are willing to believe.

“Anyway, I’m sure they didn’t even give you any peanuts on the plane. You must be starving. Let’s go in and eat.”

At dinner, she turned the conversation back to Abigail, eager to learn the details of the life shared with Ian, how they’d met, what their little boy was like. Abigail hadn’t had this sort of a conversation in ages, and she found herself struggling with many different emotions: sadness, enjoyment, fondness for Theodora and the eager way she leaned forward, listening intently.

She had met Ian at a large dinner party hosted by a friend of his and a friend of hers. She was one of the requisite females invited by Valerie to sit across from one of the requisite males invited by Michael. Unfortunately, the young man chosen for her had been a complete idiot. The older man, sitting next to him, however, had been completely endearing. Quite obviously, the older woman sitting next to Abigail who’d been chosen as his companion thought so, too. The three of them had stayed quite late, discussing books and music, Abigail’s two favorite subjects.

She’d been completely surprised when Valerie had approached her cubicle at work a couple of weeks later and asked if she could give Abigail’s number to her husband’s friend Ian. She had wavered somewhat. Ian had been 43 at the time, and she only 26. She hadn’t known the exact numbers, of course, but she had been aware that he was nowhere near her own age. In the end, flattery had gotten the best of her. She couldn’t believe someone so smart and so funny was more interested in her than their other dinner companion, who had seemed far more glamorous, impressive, and well-read than she’d ever be.

They’d hit it off tremendously from the first date. She couldn’t get enough of his conversations, and their dates weren’t accompanied by the all-too-familiar anxieties typically associated with dating. She had none of the questions that were so familiar: not “does he really like me or is he just lonely and can’t find anyone better?” nor “should I return his call or let him call me again?” not even “should I take him up on his offer to spend the night with him?” Everything just felt right and happened as one would expect it to happen. She wasn’t the least bit surprised when eight months after they’d met, he’d asked her to marry him. He said it had taken him too many years to find his other half, and he wasn’t about to let her go.


(To be continued...)

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Hillhouse Revisited

Ian had never told Abigail that he had a Great Aunt Theodora. As a matter of fact, no one in the family ever had. She’d been caught completely off guard the day before Ian’s funeral when this Theodora woman had called to say she’d heard the news and wished she could make it to the funeral, but that she wasn’t going to be able to come. The call had barely registered, as Abigail had been so out of it at the time and had received so many similar calls, she hadn’t paid much attention. By the time the second call came, three months later, she had all but forgotten the first one. When she heard “Theodora,” she hung onto the phone trying to remember if her parents had a friend named Theodora, someone they’d be appalled to find she couldn’t remember. The jolt to her memory didn’t come until Theodora said, “Ian was my favorite nephew, you know.”

She then went on to say how sorry she was that they’d never met while Ian was still alive. She’d like them to get to know each other. Wouldn’t Abigail like to come visit her down in Winston-Salem? It was such an odd request, this relative stranger inviting Abigail to visit. Her curiosity was piqued. And it was piqued even further when the warm, elderly voice on the other end of the phone warned her not to mention the conversations to other members of Ian’s family. As she put it, she’d been “excommunicated” sometime back in the fifties or sixties.

That had been nearly a year ago, and they’d had a number of phone calls since then. Abigail could only think to describe them as having been “delightful,” making her sound as though she’d just stepped out of a nineteenth-century novel, she knew. Theodora seemed to inspire one to sound that way, though.

She was an extremely interesting person, full of life and living, despite her age, the sort of person Abigail hoped to be one day, the woman who shunned the notion of sitting in a rocker and knitting all day as soon as she hit age sixty. Almost every family has a Theodora, someone who doesn’t quite live life “by the rules,” but Abigail couldn’t understand why Ian’s family, usually so accepting of anyone and everyone, would have hidden her away. They were the sorts to take great pride in having such a character as a member of their own clan, especially one, who as far as she could tell, was somewhat famous. Theodora should have been a great topic of conversation for them at parties.
It made some sense that Theodora’s parents, being of their generation, had disowned her when she’d gone off to live with her lover in the 1950s, something that just wasn’t done, not if you were from a proper New England family such as theirs. Still, why would anyone care now? Why wouldn’t they have accepted her back in the fold, especially since her parents were long since dead and gone? But then Abigail had to acknowledge that the whole ghost hunting thing might be a bit much for any family, let alone a proper New England one.
The relationship that had cost Theodora her parents hadn’t even lasted. She and her lover had split up, due to one of those arguments in which irreparable damage is done, just before Theodora had gone off on her first investigation with Dr. Montague. Some within the family speculated that the investigation with Dr. Montague was what had caused the real rift in the family, not the live-in lover, since the two events had seemed to overlap. The twenty-five-year-long association she’d shared with the doctor as two often-sought experts on hauntings and the paranormal offered a far better explanation for cutting her out of the family than did a misguided, less-than-two-year-long indiscreet love affair that could have been easily forgotten.

****

Janet hadn’t thought about Aunt Theodora in years. Her father’s sister had been the youngest member of the family, an adopted child, as a matter of fact. Theodora’s parents, good friends of Janet’s grandparents, had died in an accident, and Janet’s grandparents, whose children were all grown or nearly grown by then, had been given custody of the little six-year-old.

From what Janet had gathered from the tales told when she was a child, the young orphan had never really recovered from the death of her adoring and adored father. She was quite a handful for her adoptive parents, who were by no means old by today’s standards, but who had been considered to be getting older and slowing down by then. Everyone felt that what Theodora had needed were young, energetic parents with firm hands to keep her in line.

Not knowing what else to do with her, she’d been sent off to boarding schools, hoping they would instill some discipline, but the schools had seemed to bring out the worst, not the best, in her. The details were sketchy, though, and Janet had never really been able to get anyone to tell her what that had meant. Eventually, talking about Theodora had become taboo within the family, which had meant no one talked about her publicly, although plenty of whispering went on behind scenes, and Janet and her brother and sister had made up so many stories themselves about “Wild Aunt Theo” as they called her, that Janet found it hard these days to recollect what was true and what wasn’t.

She’d never had anything against Theodora herself. She and her siblings had all adored their wild, crazy, and flamboyant aunt, really more like a sister, since she was only seven years older. She’d taught Janet all the stylish dances and had convinced her that girls should wear their hair short, no matter what the fashion. Why waste time with all those hundred brush strokes required of long hair? And washing long hair was such a nuisance. Janet, at age twelve, had wanted to be just like her aunt, but, as any sensible child would, she'd eventually outgrown that silly notion.

When Theodora had moved in with her lover, she had been disowned by her parents, but Janet had always felt it really had nothing to do with her love affair and everything to do with her grandparents looking for an excuse to be rid of the child who’d always been a problem. She was never mentioned by them again, and that’s when the whispered discussions began. All Janet had known was that she’d moved to New Mexico at some point, but that was about it. She’d already begun to drift away from her aunt by then, having a family of her own and was really too busy to care too much about the details of the life of a family member who’d always been a misfit. Ian had been drawn to her, as all children had, but her children were always quick to catch on, and it hadn’t taken too long for him to stop asking for her at family gatherings. Janet was sure he’d eventually forgotten all about her.

****
Abigail and Theodora had spent many of their phone conversations discussing Theodora’s fascinating life. It seemed so interesting compared to Abigail’s predictable and now empty, often very lonely, one. Although originally from Wallingford, like the rest of her family, Theodora had chosen the South for her retirement. She’d been drawn to Winston-Salem during the seventies when they’d been there to investigate a house “way out in the boondocks in Kernersville,” a small community east of the city. She lived now in the heart of the city, on Academy St., within walking distance of Old Salem, her favorite section of town. She was full of tales of all the ghosts in Old Salem, most of whom no one else believed existed, except some of the researchers from Duke who’d come stay with her on occasion.
These conversations were more than intriguing to Abigail. She so badly needed a vacation, so it wasn’t so surprising that just shy of a year after their first conversation, she decided to take Theodora up on the offer to visit a place she probably never would have known existed if R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. hadn’t named their cigarettes after the town. A trip to North Carolina would be cheaper than her longed-for trip to Bermuda, which, living on a shoe string as she currently was, she’d probably never make. She’d always loved Ian’s family – honestly, preferring them to most of her own family members – so it was nice to discover a member she’d never met, and she was sure they’d have a wonderful time getting better acquainted in person.

****

Janet knew she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Abigail hadn’t adjusted well after Ian’s death. No one talked about it, though, and Janet found herself following suit, despite the fact she was worried about the constant dark circles under the young woman’s eyes. Abigail seemed to be under the impression that she should face life as a stalwart soldier. She closed herself off to the family. She’d shed maybe three required tears at the funeral, but that was the only time she’d cried in the company of others.

At times Janet wanted to shake her. It was almost unbearable to watch her marching efficiently through life, carrying on with all home and business tasks, not once letting down her guard. Janet wanted to tell her it was okay to break down and weep, necessary even. Abigail was worried about Thomas, but Janet told her Thomas would understand. It was better for a son to see his mother’s sorrow, evidence of how much she’d loved his father. Janet was uncomfortable, though, and she honestly didn’t really want to be the one to talk to Abigail (shouldn't her own mother do that?), so she did what they all did: pretended Abigail was doing so well and wondered how long they would all keep pretending, how much longer everyone was going to ignore the dark circles under the eyes, the quick temper that had begun to develop, the inability to concentrate during normal conversation.

****
Abigail’s mother had agreed to take Thomas for the five days she’d be gone. Thomas hadn’t been too happy about this. He much preferred to stay with her in-laws who spoiled him rotten, in a way her mother never did. However, she couldn’t tell anyone in Ian’s family she was visiting Theodora. Besides, her mother had begun to hint that she never got to see Ian, that Abigail seemed to spend all her time with Ian’s family. This wasn’t true. Abigail knew she wasn’t spending much time with any family members, but she was too drained these days to argue. She hoped an extended period with Ian would appease her mother for a while.

After dropping off Thomas, she realized she still had quite a bit of time before she needed to head to the airport. She decided to stop by Borders to pick up a copy of The Haunting of Hill House, the book that had made Aunt Theodora famous. Years before, she’d seen the movie based on the book but didn’t remember too much about it, having never been a huge fan of horror movies. Ghost stories had always seemed silly to her, even at age ten, sitting around Girl Scout campfires after dark. The book was short enough. She’d probably finish it on the plane, especially since she had a two-hour layover in Baltimore.

She was disappointed. Not in the book, which, surprisingly, spooked her quite a bit, but more in the fact that she was barely given any information about Theodora. Of the two young women, Theodora was obviously the more exciting. Eleanor, who received center stage, had so evidently been a real drip. The only exciting or brave thing she’d ever done in her life, it seemed, was steal a car that was half hers anyway. And her chanting of “journeys end in lovers’ meeting” was just plain embarrassing.

Dr. Montague was a pompous ass. Abigail couldn’t warm up to him, either. He and his dreadful wife deserved each other. Typically of someone of his sort, he arranged this whole little experiment and then so often wasn’t around when Eleanor and Theodora really needed him. Abigail couldn’t imagine what Theodora had seen in him to make her keep working with him for twenty five years.

By the time she’d picked up her rental car and was headed west on I-40, she’d had plenty of questions for Theodora. Mention had been made, of course, of the domestic arrangement that had estranged her from her family, but Abigail wasn’t the least bit satisfied due to the lack of details. She decided Shirley Jackson, the author, must not have been a big fan of details.
Theodora, on the other hand, boded to be an extremely detail-oriented person. Her directions were excellent, and Abigail found her cute little yellow house with its front porch (obviously de rigueur in this part of the world) with no trouble. It being a beautiful fall evening, she found Theodora waiting for her, sitting out on one of the porch’s gliders, the porch light shining brightly.

She stood up and gave Abigail an exuberant welcome, as if they’d been long-time friends, offering, despite her age, to take one of the two bags Abigail carrried. She was a woman who, in her seventies now, was still stunning. You could tell that in her youth she’d radiated sex and beauty, the kind of girl who so often bewitched the boys with whom Abigail was madly in unrequited love. Abigail had never really been able to blame the boys for being so bewitched, since she was usually half under these girls’ spells as well. Theodora moved sylph-like up the stairs and led Abigail into the second of two bedrooms that had obviously once been the attic.

“Welcome to my guest suite,” she announced, as she placed Abigail’s small carry-on bag on the floor. “The bathroom is through that door,” she pointed to a door on the other side of the four-poster bed, which stood inbetween it and the door through which they’d entered. “It connects to the other bedroom, but I have no other guests this week, so you’ve got all three rooms to yourself. Feel free to spread out. The other room is bigger and has a desk and sofa in it, but this one has the more comfortable and queen-sized bed, so I thought you’d prefer it.” She left Abigail to “freshen up.”

It was a cute little room, basically just big enough for the bed, the dresser, and a couple of bedside tables, thoughtfully laid out with vases of flowers and magazines that might be of interest to a visitor. The closet was completely empty, as were the dresser drawers. Abigail unpacked her suitcase and stored her things in them, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and joined Theodora back downstairs for the gin and tonic she’d been offered by her hostess.
(To be continued...)

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Taking a Vote

I'm taking a vote from you, my readers, to help me figure out what I should do here this fall. All along, I'd been planning to post a new ghost story on this site between now and Thanksgiving. However, while packing to move, I came across a hard copy of a story I wrote based on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House that has comments from a friend on it. In re-reading it with her comments, I've decided I'd like to re-work it a little. I'd told Stef over at So Many Books that I'd share it with her, since she just finished reading Jackson, but maybe others would like to read it. So here's the vote. Choose one:

1. A brand new story (most likely with a moving theme)

2. A re-working of the old story
(Note: you may only vote for one. I'm still up to my neck in boxes and have yet to meet any friendly ghosts in the cemetery willing to write for me.)

I'll tally up over the next few days and then begin. Stay tuned...

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

FINAL DESTINATIONS

Landon was trying to decide whether or not he should pour himself another glass of scotch. After all, he might as well allow himself to enjoy one of the few benefits of Laura’s having left him. Her strict Southern Baptist upbringing had always risen over her head whenever he drank in front of her, glowering down at him from its halo-like position. Even a jolly good buzz, having the time of its life, couldn’t hold up too happily under that kind of scrutiny. He rarely drank much anymore, a fact he hadn’t realized until last month, when Laura had walked out the door, announcing she wasn’t coming back this time. That did it. Just one more glass, and he’d sip it slowly.

The problem was, the buzz wasn’t too strong tonight, and what was there wasn’t jolly at all. It was extraordinarily morose and mope-y, only seemingly gleeful when it could get him to circle around and around all his shortcomings, all the reasons Laura had truly meant it when she said she was never coming back. His mind was stuck in one of its eddies, nearly drowning, while his body was managing to measure out the scotch for the third glass, when the phone rang. Immediately, he shot back up to the surface.

The clock on the microwave glowed 10:42 p.m.; it could only be Laura. He contemplated not answering it. Of course, he couldn’t be absolutely certain it was Laura. He didn’t have caller i.d., having held out on his declaration not to succumb to every technological “must-have” marketed to the masses of American sheep out there who seemed to hang out in fields, just waiting to be herded around by clever advertising. He was so singularly focused, though, so sure it would be her, he never suspected it might be someone else. Six months ago, he would’ve dreaded answering a phone that was ringing at this hour, worried he’d encounter the familiar voice of one of his parents or siblings in a panicked state.

He grabbed the receiver off the wall just before the answering machine would have taken over, his eagerness to talk to her winning out over his desire to let the machine pick it up in the hopes she’d wonder where he could possibly be. He had to pause for a minute at the jolt he received when the voice at the other end of the receiver turned out not to be Laura, turned out not to be anyone he would ever have expected.

"Landon? It's Julie. Sorry to be calling so late, but I need help."

"Julie! Uhh...what's up?" He instinctively began climbing the stairs, in search of the shirt and jeans he'd discarded on his closet floor half an hour earlier, as if she were right outside, peering in through his window, catching him in nothing but his ratty old sweat pants.

"I can't talk about it over the phone. Could you meet me in the Krispy Kreme parking lot in about forty-five minutes?"

"Sure," he heard himself say. (Jesus Christ, what was he thinking?) "But it's a horrible night out." (Was he sober enough to drive?) "Wouldn't you rather meet me inside where it's warm?" He'd pulled on his jeans while cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder. His polo shirt was proving to be a little more difficult. He clutched it in his left hand. "Buy yourself a doughnut." He slid on his sneakers, sans socks, despite the windy wet weather he was advising her to avoid.

"No. I don't have any money on me. I can't buy anything."

"Don't worry. I'll pay for it when I get there. Just stay inside, or you're likely to catch a cold." He knew almost as soon as he'd said it that it was a ridiculous offer. Krispy Kreme wasn't a sit-down diner. Customers bought their doughnuts, and then sat, if they weren't racing off, eating them in transit to their final destinations. He also knew perfectly well that people didn't catch colds from standing out in a cold rain, but this old wive's tale was hard to shake and seemed appropriate for the moment.

"I've gotta go. I'll see you there. Thanks so much." And the dial tone buzzed in his ear.

Landon didn't exactly live next door to Krispy Kreme, but even after pulling on his shirt and sweater, lacing up his sneakers, running a comb through his hair, locating his wallet and car keys, and pulling on his rain jacket, he still had plenty of time to make it from The West End to Stratford Rd. before she said she'd be there. What the hell? He'd get there first, buy the doughnuts, and be waiting for her when she arrived.

During the drive and while sitting at the counter waiting for Julie, one eye on the doughnuts, the other searching the parking lot through the plate glass window, he had plenty of time for his imagination (which certainly didn't need any encouragement in this area) to run wild. He'd been working with Julie at the advertising firm for over two years now. It was a family-run business with just over fifty employees, and everyone knew everyone. As far as he knew, no one harbored any animosity toward her. She was extremely likeable, and her take on life seemed to be that it was fun, that nothing should be taken too seriously. This combined with a surly wit and the ability to charm people into her way of thinking without even realizing what she was doing made for a very pleasant -- at times, exciting even -- colleague.

However, she was just that: a colleague. He was beginning to realize that if asked about her in great detail, he wouldn't be able to provide many answers, nor would anyone else he knew. Julie loved to draw out others, but she was pretty tight-lipped when it came to her own life outside the office. Now that he was thinking about it, she could almost be described as the de facto staff therapist. She was a good listener. Others would go to her with their problems, Landon included, especially since Laura's departure. As far as he knew, though, she never seemed to seek this sort of service from anyone herself.

Yes, everyone knew she'd grown up in Winston-Salem. Her father had died of colon cancer when she was only ten. She'd graduated from Davidson College, had lived and worked in Charlotte how many years? At some point, her mother had been killed in a car accident, and she'd inherited the large house in the tony Buena Vista section of town. She'd moved back to town three years ago with her husband Joe to live in the house. Joe was a man no one at the company had ever met. "Illusive Joe" they all called him. He was always "going to come" to all the events: impromptu happy hours, birthday celebrations, holiday parties, company picnics...but he never actually did. Those who were inclined to create a nasty art form out of gossip referred to him as "Julie's Lord and Master."

Julie would often let slip that she'd love to join folks on a weekend trip up to Grandfather Mountain, or to spend a late night at the fair when it was in town, or to go see a movie with everyone, "but my husband probably wouldn't be interested, and he wouldn't want me to go without him." Other times it would be, "Let me just check with Joe and see if it's okay if I get home late this evening." She didn't seem to notice the odd looks she'd get from the other more "liberated" young women in the office. However, her charming nature helped protect her from true disdain. They were still drawn to her, still wanted to pal around with her, still took long Friday lunches with her on hot summer days.

Imagination, galloping away on an open prairie first presented him with a Joe who resembled the husband in Sleeping with the Enemy. Maybe Julie hadn't lined up the bathroom towels correctly before leaving for work this morning. When he pulled on the reins to slow it down, it stopped to graze on Jack Nicholson in The Shining, chopping down doors in their big old house. Or, maybe Joe was a drug dealer, and someone had come to bump him off tonight. Maybe Julie was a drug dealer. Maybe Joe was the one who hadn't lined up the bathroom towels correctly, and Julie had been chopping down doors with an ax, and now she needed an alibi. Maybe she was the rare female serial killer, and Landon was to be her next victim, late night mysterious phone calls being the way she lured unsuspecting men into her trap.

Crazy thoughts. No wonder Laura had left him after less than two years of marriage. No sane woman could ever last long with a man whose brain worked like this.

And the moment Julie appeared through the plate glass, he knew just how crazy the thoughts had been. She looked nothing like an ax-wielding serial killer. She could easily have been a photograph of a runaway teenager on the cover of Time magazine. The picture should have been in black and white, and she should have been sitting under a bridge, gawky, coltish legs pulled up to her chest and hugged tight by skinny arms. The rest was there, though: wet brown hair plastered to her head; fear-filled brown eyes, pupils the size of silver dollars; no rain gear; wet, wrinkled shirt pulling across her heaving chest.

His puppy-dog-on-the-side-of-the-road syndrome kicked into full gear. Luckily, the stools at the counter were bolted to the floor, or he would have knocked his over as he raced out the door to meet her. He didn't bother to put his rain slicker back on. Instead, he draped it around her without even asking her if she wanted it.

"My God, Julie. What are you doing? Did you even drive over here?"

"No. I walked. I didn't have my car keys or purse with me. The only thing I had was my cell phone. I was carrying it tonight in case my shrink calls me. (Her shrink? Julie had a shrink?) He only has my cell phone number."

He was leading her to his car, the doughnuts completely forgotten. He pressed the "unlock" button on his key remote and opened the passenger side of the door for her, clearing the seat of CDs and travel mugs, so she could sit. When he had driven over here, he hadn't realized he'd be taking her home with him. Reason would suggest this wasn't the wisest move. He didn't even know what was going on with her. However, protective instincts and empathy had the upper hand. Reason put up a very weak fight for the police station, but protective instincts and empathy very quickly squashed that notion. They wanted to get her out of the rain and harm's way. His house seemed the best place to do that.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To my house." "We can't got there. We have to get out of town where he can't find me."

"He? He who? Your shrink?"

"No. Joe."

"Ohh, Joe. You're running away from Joe?"

"Yes. He's really, really mad at me this time, and I'm sure he'll kill me if he can. He wants to bring me down with him anyway. Landon, we can't go to your house. He'll find me there." The desperation in her voice was disconcerting.

"How? He's never been to my house. I've never even seen the guy. He doesn't know who I am or where I live."

"He does. He knows everyone who works with me. He made me give him a list once. He'll look you up. He'll find you. I locked him in the garage, but he'll get out and find me. He always does."

"Was he chasing you?"

"Yes."

"With a weapon?"

"No, but he doesn't need a weapon to kill me."

"Well, Julie, I can't just take you out of town. We've got nowhere to go, and you need some warm, dry clothes. We should call the police, if you're that scared of him. They can put a restraining order on him."

"The police wouldn't believe me. Please don't call them," was a little, but not much, more composed. He'd heard this about victims of domestic abuse. They never wanted to get the cops involved, something to do with thinking it would make their husbands that much more angry. Thinking the police wouldn't believe her was a bit odd, but then, looking at her, she bore no black eyes, broken bones, or any other signs of physical abuse. Well, he'd drop it for now, but if the guy really did show up at his house, he'd definitely be dialing 911.

"All right. We won't call the police. But let me at least take you to my house, so we can put some warm clothes on you. I've got some Scotch, too. A couple of shots of that will do you some good."
A couple more shots for himself wasn't such a bad idea either.

"He'll find me. I know he'll find me."

This panic-stricken young woman bore no resemblance to his mind's image of Julie. This scared little rabbit seemed somehow to have eaten the sly cat who was fond of delivering biting quips that took others a minute to decipher. He'd been in so many meetings with her when she was the sole dissenter, and nine times out of ten, she'd bring everyone else around to her point of view. He was tempted to believe that woman was playing some sort of a joke on him, was practicing some part in a play, had sent a twin sister to him, something. The woman with whom he'd shared so many fun lunches, the one he'd often unfairly compared to Laura during the darks days when Laura was a pit of negativity, that woman was suddenly going to appear any minute now, laughing about how she'd really fooled him, right?

So many times he'd been on the phone in the office, arguing with Laura about yet some other problem she believed they had, and he'd hang up to hear Julie's infectious laugh. He'd find himself bitterly resenting the fact that his wife couldn't see the light his colleague so obviously saw shining all over the world, despite the fact she had a bear of a husband who seemed to be much worse than Landon. Her husband kept her at home, when all Landon ever did was to ask Laura please to let him know when she wasn't going to get home from work until after eight, so he wouldn't worry about her.

Landon still had a trunk full of Laura's old clothes in the spare room. He dragged it out and watched Julie choose a white turtleneck, some brown leggings, and an oversized blue sweater. He showed her to the bathroom, and just as she closed the door, the phone rang. For the second time that night, he contemplated not answering it. He knew who it was. Julie had been right. Joe had already tracked her down. Yet again, his curiosity got the best of him, and he found himself pushing the talk button, getting ready to lie through his teeth." This night seemed to be specializing in producing voices on the other end of phone lines that surprised him. He'd expected a raging lunatic, someone threatening to kill him if he didn't hand over Julie. What he heard instead was a completely calm, gentle -- sane, even -- voice. There was nothing the least bit demanding in the question,

"Is this Landon Small?"

"Yes." Maybe it was the police and not Joe.

"I'm so sorry to bother you at this hour of the night, but this is Joe McKnight. I'm looking for my sister Julie. She disappeared about three hours ago. She hasn't been taking her medication, and I'm worried sick. You're one of her co-workers whose name often pops up in our conversations, so I thought I'd try you on the off-chance she'd gotten in touch with you.

Brother? Wasn't Joe her husband? Did her brother and husband have the same name?

"Her medication?"

"Yes. Julie's psychotic. She's absolutely fine as long as she's taking her medication, but she occasionally goes through these spells when she refuses to take it. I wasn't paying close enough attention, and she locked me in the garage tonight and just wandered off. I'm sure she told you I was planning on killing her. That's one of her paranoid delusions, that I'm trying to kill her. The fact of the matter is, she's more likely to kill me. I've had a few close calls over the past few years, but I have to take care of her. I promised our mother I would."

Landon refused to succumb to the urge to pinch himself. He always hated it when characters in books did that to test whether or not they were dreaming. As if pinching isn't possible in dreams. But that ridiculous old cliché was all that was coming to mind at this point. Better that, though, than all the questions he had. Julie? Psychotic? She was one of the most sane of his co-workers. Happy Julie trying to kill her own brother? Who was this "brother?" Was he the insane one?

"But what about her husband?" So, he'd managed to ask at least one of the questions, one he hoped didn't make him seem too insane.

"Her husband?"

The tone in the other man's voice didn't sound as though Landon had succeeded. He also didn't sound as though he were acting. If he were, he was doing a damn good job of it.

"Yes. She talks about her husband at work."

"Oh God. I know you have no reason to believe me, but I promise you Julie's never been married. I'm not surprised, though, if she has everyone convinced she is. She's been making up boyfriends and lovers since she was thirteen."

At that moment, Julie appeared from the bathroom. In the dark blue sweater, and with her hair combed, she was beginning to resemble the Julie from the office. But the minute she realized he was on the phone, all the color drained from her face once again.

"It's him, isn't it? Don't let him come to take me home. Please, Landon. Let's get out of here."

"Tell her it's not me," came the calm voice on the other end, as Landon struggled to find his own voice.

"Julie, it's not him. He doesn't know where you are."

"Yes it is. No one else would call at this hour."

"Hold on," he said into the phone, unconsciously wiping the sweat from his forehead. He covered the receiver as if he didn't want the person on the other end to hear what he had to say. "My sister lives in California. She's having a bit of a boyfriend crisis. Could you wait down here, please, while I take this up to my bedroom? We'll turn out the light, and you can lie down on the couch, so if your brother does happen to come, he won't see you through the window." Somehow, his lie worked, and she was cooperative. He gave her a pillow and a blanket, told her he'd check on her as soon as he was done with his sister, suggested she try to sleep, and carried the phone up to the spare bedroom, across the hall from the other bedroom that he'd shared with Laura. Since her departure, he'd been sleeping in this one.

"She needs her medicine, and she's got to come home," he heard Joe say, as soon as he could turn his attention back to the phone. "She won't sleep at all, and don't leave her alone for more than fifteen minutes. It'll probably be best if I don't come get her. Do you think if I come by your house and leave some sedatives in your mailbox, you would be able to get her to take them? She likes hot chocolate. You could slip them into some hot chocolate. It will knock her out cold, and then you could bring her home."

"I suppose so," Landon said, doubtfully.

"Good. I'll do that then."

As his sister had been a little over an hour ago, he was gone, with no "goodbye" before Landon could say a word. What the hell? Who should he believe? Julie had never seemed the least bit psychotic to him, and she certainly didn't seem dangerous. On the other hand, neither did Joe, whoever he was. If Joe really were her brother, and not her husband, then the argument could certainly be made that she had some sort of screw loose. Sane people certainly didn't tend to go around making up husbands when talking to colleagues, especially colleagues they'd worked with for three years. And, come to think of it, she'd never actually said, "my husband Joe," as far as he could recall. She'd say "my husband," or she'd say "Joe." Then again, Landon had never gone around saying "my wife Laura" after initial introductions, and there'd been no introductions with Joe. The bottom line, though, was that if she were living with her brother and not her husband, then something most likely was wrong with her. However, if Joe were her husband, pretending to be her brother, or worse, believing he was her brother, that was even more insane (and probably more dangerous).

When he got back downstairs, Julie was curled up in a fetal position on the couch, crying. Once again, his protective instincts kicked in. He wondered how he was going to protect her from Joe. No matter how sane the man may have sounded, he was proposing to drug her, which no one could argue was a sane act. After all, men drugged women so they could rape and kill them. It made sense he’d pretend to be her brother rather than her husband, because people are less likely to accuse brothers of beating up sisters than to accuse husbands of beating up wives.

Suddenly, though, Julie sat up and stared hard at him, all resemblance to a pathetic, lost, and needy teenager gone. The rage in her wild-eyed look scared him, despite the fact she was a tiny woman and he a large man.

“You called him my brother! You called him my brother. That wasn’t your sister on the phone; it was Joe. He told you he was my brother! You believe him now and not me. You’re a liar. I thought you were my fucking friend! You’re not going to help me, are you? You’re going to let him come get me.”

She leapt up and began pounding him on the chest with a strength and fury he never would have believed she could have. Her flailing fists were coming at him so fast it took him a while to grab hold of them and, not as gently as he should have, to force her back down on the couch.

“Stop it, Julie. Stop it! I’m not on Joe’s side (not a lie, he didn’t think). I was just coming down to tell you that if you want to get away, let’s go. Come on. You can trust me (definitely a lie, but Julie was beginning to seem like she definitely did have a few loose screws. Sybil had joined his imagination on that ride across the prairie, bringing along with her a fun-loving colleague, a drug-addicted teenager, and a murderous sister). We’ll go up to the mountains together.”

She struggled and kicked out and screamed, but he held firm, and she eventually (was it really only five minutes?) began to relax. Landon knew absolutely nothing about psychosis. He wondered if one could reason with a psychotic. He loosened his grip a little. She struggled some more, and he tightened it again.

“Listen. Are you going to listen to me? Pull a few more things out of Laura’s trunk that you can take with you while I go upstairs and pack a bag for myself.”

He reluctantly let go of her wrists, and she followed him back upstairs to the spare bedroom. While she grabbed a few more things from Laura’s trunk, he threw together this own bag, having no idea what he was going to do with her for half an hour, nor how he was going to keep her in the house. All he knew was that he was now desperate for that sedative, all thoughts of Joe being a raping, murderous menace having headed off to some destination other than his prairie now that he’d witnessed what the un-medicated Julie was like.

Then it hit him. He didn’t have to hang around here for half an hour. They didn’t have to drink hot chocolate at his house.

They were on I-4o, headed west. He’d told her they were going to the mountains, and that’s where Julie believed they were headed. She’d finally calmed down, and he’d managed to convince her he had some friends in Hendersonville they’d call in the morning, see if they could stay there for a few days. Tonight, they’d find a hotel room somewhere nearby. What others would have interpreted as quiet exhaustion on her part he was beginning to interpret as a catatonic state. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left his house, but he found this much preferable to scenes and accusations.

“Oh, damn, damn, damn!” he hoped the banging of his hands on the steering wheel were convincing. “I forgot to leave the spare key in the mailbox for the neighbor, so she can feed my cat. We’re gonna have to go back. It won’t take me a second,” and he pulled off at the Clemmons exit, turned around, and headed back east.

The cat was as much of a lie as the friends in Hendersonville and his sister’s residence in California, but so far, that last one was the only one she’d managed to uncover. He hoped she hadn’t noticed there was no sign whatsoever in his house that a cat could possibly live there with him. The prescription bottle he found with her name on it in his mailbox wasn’t a lie, but the key he pretended to deposit in its place was. The coffee he was now telling her he needed in order to stay awake until they reached the final destination they never would was another lie. Were these lies that dissimilar from the lies a woman told to convince her co-workers she was married? Were they that dissimilar from the lies a man might tell his co-workers to convince them he was happily settled in a love-filled marriage?

Landon buried these unpleasant thoughts in the recesses of his brain. Otherwise, they might invite others to the party, like those ones with the bright-red warning lights asking him what on earth he was doing. He had no idea what these drugs were, only that they had Julie’s name on them. She could be allergic to them. Joe could have given him something that would kill her. He would then be an accomplice to murder if he slipped them into her hot chocolate. No, those thoughts were too scary. He’d witnessed Julie’s instability. He had to trust that the drugs would help her, that Joe really did have her best interests at heart.

He told her to stay in the car at Circle K and asked if she wanted anything to drink herself. She might say she didn’t, but he was counting on the fact that most people embarking on a long drive wouldn’t.

“Hot chocolate,” she said, just as her brother had predicted.

Joe hadn’t told him how many sedatives she needed, but the directions on the bottle indicated one. He shook one out of the burnt amber bottle and slipped it into her paper cup, hoping it wouldn’t turn the steaming chocolate bitter.

They headed back on I-40, but this time, before they’d even made it to Clemmons, she was knocked out cold. He turned around again and headed back to what he hoped would be his final destination tonight, the huge old brick house on Runny Meade Road where he’d once given her a ride when her car had died. He’d always wondered who lived in those houses, having never had any friends from that neighborhood, even in high school.

He worried he was going to wake her as he struggled to get her out of the car, but she didn’t move a muscle. New worry now, he instinctively reached for her wrist to feel the pulse that was most definitely there. The outside light came on before he’d reached the front door with his dead weight. The door that opened exposed a tall, thin silhouette: the infamous Joe, who hurried down the steps to take her from Landon, thanking him profusely all the while. He seemed genuinely relieved to have his sister back, so Landon deposited her into his outstretched arms without any hesitation.

As he got back into the car and drove to his house for the fourth time since leaving work the previous evening, he was feeling particularly noble and pleased with himself. If only Laura could see him now: the hero saving the schizophrenic from herself. He wasn’t the selfish, self-absorbed lout she thought he was. It was nearly 1:30 a.m., and he was contemplating taking a sick day, sleeping in. Again, Laura would be shocked. She’d always accused him of being a “un-spontaneous” workaholic who would never dream of taking a “mental health day,” staying home from work when he wasn’t actually physically ill.


******


The news in Friday’s paper shouldn’t have been a shock to him. He already knew Julie had hanged herself sometime in the early daylight hours Wednesday morning, not too many hours after he’d handed her over to Joe. He already knew everyone at work was buzzing with the news she’d never had a husband. She’d been alone in the house, where the police reports noted she’d been living alone all along. Still, to see it in black and white, the indelible newsprint, that she was survived only by a sister and two nephews residing in Chicago made his stomach lurch.

His imagination had finally left the prairie and reached its final destination, where it seemed completely intent on staying forever. It reminded him that he’d encountered something, that this had been no suicide. It made him watch himself over and over again, delivering Julie into the arms of the murderer. The newspaper mentioned him, too: the brother Joe who’d been killed along with his mother in a car accident.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Final Destinations (cont'd.)

When he got back downstairs, Julie was curled up in a fetal position on the couch, crying. Once again, his protective instincts kicked in. He wondered how he was going to protect her from Joe. No matter how sane the man may have sounded, he was proposing to drug her, which no one could argue was a sane act. After all, men drugged women so they could rape and kill them. It made sense he’d pretend to be her brother rather than her husband, because people are less likely to accuse brothers of beating up sisters than to accuse husbands of beating up wives.

Suddenly, though, Julie sat up and stared hard at him, all resemblance to a pathetic, lost, and needy teenager gone. The rage in her wild-eyed look scared him, despite the fact she was a tiny woman and he a large man. He took a couple of steps back.

“You called him my brother! You called him my brother. That wasn’t your sister on the phone; it was Joe. He told you he was my brother! You believe him now and not me. You’re a liar. I thought you were my fucking friend! You’re not going to help me, are you? You’re going to let him come get me. I hate you! I hate both of you!”

She leapt up and began pounding him on the chest with a strength and fury he never would have believed she could have. Her flailing fists were coming at him so fast it took him a while to grab hold of them and, not as gently as he should have, to force her back down on the couch.

“Stop it, Julie. Stop it! I’m not on Joe’s side (not a lie, he didn’t think). I was just coming down to tell you that if you want to get away, let’s go. Come on. You can trust me (definitely a lie, but Julie was beginning to seem like she did have a few loose screws. Sybil had joined his imagination on that ride across the prairie, bringing along with her a fun-loving colleague, a drug-addicted teenager, and a murderous sister). We’ll go up to the mountains together.”

She struggled and kicked out and screamed, but he held firm, and she eventually (was it really only five minutes?) began to relax. Landon knew absolutely nothing about psychosis. He wondered if one could reason with a psychotic. He loosened his grip a little. She struggled some more, and he tightened it again.

“Listen. Are you going to listen to me? We're going to go away, okay, before Joe has a chance to get here. Pull a few more things out of Laura’s trunk that you can take with you while I go upstairs and pack a bag for myself.”

He reluctantly let go of her wrists, and she followed him back upstairs to the spare bedroom. While she grabbed a few more things from Laura’s trunk, he threw together his own bag, having no idea what he was going to do with her for half an hour, nor how he was going to keep her in the house. All he knew was that he was now desperate for that sedative, all thoughts of Joe being a raping, murderous menace having headed off to some destination other than his prairie now that he’d witnessed what the un-medicated Julie was like.

Then it hit him. He didn’t have to hang around here for half an hour. They didn’t have to drink hot chocolate at his house.

They were on I-4o, headed west. He’d told her they were going to the mountains, and that’s what Julie believed. She’d been calm ever since they'd packed their bags, and he’d managed to convince her he had some friends in Hendersonville they’d call in the morning, see if they could stay there for a few days. Tonight, they’d find a hotel room somewhere nearby. What others would have interpreted as quiet exhaustion on her part he was beginning to interpret as a catatonic state. She hadn't said a word since they’d left his house, but he found this much preferable to scenes and accusations. He wasn't sure he trusted it, though.

“Oh, damn, damn, damn!” he hoped the banging of his hands on the steering wheel were convincing. “I forgot to leave the spare key in the mailbox for the neighbor, so she can feed my cat. We’re gonna have to go back. It won’t take me a second," and he pulled off at the Clemmons exit, turned around, and headed back east.

The cat was as much of a lie as the friends in Hendersonville and his sister’s residence in California had been, but so far, that last one was the only one she’d managed to uncover. He hoped she hadn’t noticed there was no sign in his house that a cat could possibly live there with him. The prescription bottle he found with her name on it in his mailbox wasn’t a lie, but the key he pretended to deposit in its place was. The coffee he was now telling her he needed in order to stay awake until they reached the final destination they never would was another lie. Were all these lies that dissimilar from the lies a woman might tell to convince her co-workers she was married? Were they that dissimilar from the lies a man might tell his co-workers to convince them he was happily settled in a love-filled marriage?

Landon buried these unpleasant thoughts in the recesses of his brain. Otherwise, they might invite others to the party, like those ones with the bright-red warning lights asking him what on earth he was doing. He had no idea what these drugs were, only that they had Julie’s name on them. She could be allergic to them. Joe could have given him something that would kill her. Landon would then be an accomplice to murder if he slipped them into her hot chocolate. No, those thoughts were too scary. He’d witnessed Julie’s instability. He had to trust that the drugs would help her, that Joe really did have her best interests at heart.

(To be continued.)