A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror (10 page)

“You won't—won't forget?” Jennifer asked breathlessly. She could hardly believe, after all she had been through, that help was so readily available as this.

“No, I won't forget, not a second time.”

“A second time?”

“I meant to bring some food with me when I came up, but I forgot. Aunt Christine tells me I'm the most thoughtless person she's ever encountered.”

She got up and started from the room. At the door, she paused to say, “I was only fifteen at the time.”

Jennifer, brushing the tears from her eyes, asked, “At what time?”

“When I drowned,” Marcella said. She went out, closing the door softly.

That girl has been with these lunatics too long, Jennifer told herself; that's for sure. Perhaps, she added, it would be wise to take Marcella with her when she left Kelsey. Of course, before she made any plans of that sort, she would have to determine just how she was going to get away from the place. She didn't seem to be getting any closer to a solution.

Or was she? Marcella was willing to help. If she could convince the child of the danger she was in...and if she suggested that Marcella come with her. Was that kidnapping? Well, it could hardly matter. Hadn't she been virtually kidnapped herself, kept a prisoner here? No, the family surely would not want to make a police matter of all this. And it would be best for Marcella.

She lifted her eyes and caught sight of herself in the dusty mirror over the dresser.

“I am a sight,” she said. The scratches from her morning in the woods had turned livid, and there were smears of dried blood on her face and arms. Her suit was almost literally a shambles, and she was covered with filth. She looked like a wild woman; she scarcely recognized herself in that savage reflection.

The minutes seemed to drag by. She had nearly decided that Marcella had lied to her, when a soft knock came at the door. She rushed to it, flinging it open. “Oh, Marcella,” she exclaimed, and then caught herself.

It was not Marcella, but Aunt Abbie who stood outside, holding the familiar silver tray before her. She smiled disarmingly. “Marcella said you wanted something to eat,” she said. “So I've brought you a tray up. I'm glad to know you're feeling hungry at last.”

Jennifer watched mutely as Aunt Abbie brought the tray into the room and set it atop the dresser.

“Now you enjoy your meal,” Aunt Abbie said, starting from the room again. “And then you'll feel better. It isn't good to skip meals.”

Jennifer stood motionless for several moments after she had gone. Then, although she felt sure of what she would find, she crossed slowly to the dresser and lifted the lid from the silver tray.

It was empty, of course. She nearly screamed aloud, or threw the tray at the wall. They were trying to starve her, it was obvious; or drive her mad; or both.

But why? How much money had her mother left her, a few thousand? Certainly it was not a fortune.

But of course her relatives would have no idea how much it amounted to. Was it possible that they somehow had a mistaken idea that it was more? Perhaps they thought she was rich, and that she stood between them and a fortune. Was it conceivable that they were doing these things to her for the sake of gaining an inheritance?

Anything was conceivable. She might not have thought
that a short time before, but she had learned that lesson at least in her stay so far at Kelsey House. Much of her thinking had had to be changed.

She looked about the room, at the furnishings, ugly and dismal, at the horrid wallpaper, at the dirt everywhere. Impulsively she tore the slip from one of the bedpillows and began to dust frantically, running the cloth with ferocious movements over the dresser, the stool, even the floor. She worked as if possessed by demons, and the dust rose in the air like a fog, filling her nostrils, wrapping itself about her in little wisps, only to settle again as thickly as before. Tears streaming down her face left little white trails through the black that smeared her cheeks.

At last with a small sob she threw herself across the bed again, clenching the now black cloth tightly in one hand.

* * * *

Lydia. Aunt Lydia. In her sleep, the name reverberated through her mind.

“We had hoped Lydia would be with us.... She'll join us soon....”

That was what Aunt Christine had said. A simple enough remark to make. Why should it haunt her so, as it did? Why did that name linger in her mind? There was something her mother had said at some time about Aunt Lydia. That, and the image of a letter. The memory teetered on the brink of her consciousness, and then was gone.

“Jennifer.”

Her name again. But it was not here, at Kelsey. She was at home, in her bed, the bed that had been moved into her mother's sickroom. She was living again the long weeks before her mother's death. Agonizing, sleepless nights, a constant vigil at her mother's side, long days of exhaustion; and medicines to prolong both of their labors.

“Jennifer.”

It was that night again, the night of her mother's death, and she was so weary, so very tired. She was asleep, deeply, heavily asleep, and the name had invaded her sleep. It came, the calling, and grew more plaintive and more distant, weaker and still weaker. She had awakened, or half awakened, but her sleep had been too deep. She had drifted off again, not to awaken again until morning, to find....

“No, I didn't hear my name,” she argued, burying her face in her pillow. “I dreamed it. You didn't call.”

Her voice became a whimper. The dream faded and passed away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Morning. Another morning at Kelsey House. How many had there been so far? The days had run together in a bewildering stream, so that she no longer k
new how long she had been here. A week? Surely not that long, but she could not say for certain.

She rose, peering out on the lawn, and there was Mr. Kelsey, Aunt Christine's husband, standing by himself below her window. Mr. Kelsey who had not yet spoken a word to her. Was he as mad as the rest, or was he, in some way, a prisoner like herself? She had observed that he felt no affection toward the women of the household, and Aunt Christine had suggested as much. Perhaps he too wanted to leave. If only he would help her find her car, she would be more than happy to take him along with her when she left. She would take any of them along, any and all, if they would only allow her to go.

She must try to enlist Mr. Kelsey's help. Surely someone among all the people in this house must regret what was being done to her. They couldn't all be monsters who could enjoy watching her starve to death, or go mad, without lifting a hand to help her.

She left her room and made her way quickly down the stairs to the main hall, and the entrance. The sun was warm and soothing when she came out, the air mellow. It was a lovely autumn day. It was certainly not the sort of day that one ought to be trapped in a house that defied comprehension, desperately alone.

He was still there on the lawn, exactly where she had seen him from her window. He stood motionless and stared across the lawn in the direction of the woods beyond. She thought he looked at them with longing, and the possibility that he too might want to leave seemed even stronger. He gave no indication that he heard her approach until she stood almost beside him.

“Good morning,” she greeted him, sounding as cheerful as she could manage. She did not want to offend him or turn him away from her. But she could not quite keep the note of desperation from creeping into her voice.

He turned, his eyes meeting hers, and for an instant all hope died in her breast. She had an urge to run, to leave him at once. What was it, that look that he gave her? Hatred? Violence, surely—no, nothing as active as that. A coldness, a terrible, lifeless emptiness that sent an involuntary shudder through her.

He turned away from her again almost at once, looking back toward the woods. It was as though he had dismissed her.

She would not be put off so easily, however. She summoned her courage again and said, “It certainly is a beautiful day, isn't it?”

He made no answer, nor did he even acknowledge her comment but only continued to stare into the distance. Courtesy, Jennifer thought was not encouraged here at Kelsey.

“I'm afraid I haven't been able to find my car,” she continued, determined to make the effort to enlist his aid. “I wonder if you could tell me how to find that road again, the road that the stream crosses.”

Still he ignored her.

“I do think you could at least answer me,” she snapped angrily.

Still he did not reply. Without even looking again in her direction, he turned and started back toward the front porch of the house. She watched as he climbed the steps and passed through the door.

“Well, that beats everything,” she declared aloud, staring after him.

“He can't talk, you know.”

The voice came from behind her. Jennifer whirled about, startled. It was disconcerting, to say the least, the way these people crept up on you without any warning.

“He can't talk,” Marcella repeated, smiling at her.

“That's no excuse,” Jennifer said, too angry and frustrated to feel sympathetic or charitable. “He could have at least made some sign to me that he heard me. Or can't he hear either?”

“Oh, his hearing is fine. But he's never forgiven Aunt Christine for what she did, and it's made him rather distant, I think.”

Yes, Aunt Christine had said something similar herself—“Wilfred has never forgiven me....”

“What did Aunt Christine do?” she asked.

“She had his tongue pulled out,” Marcella informed her cheerfully. “That's why he can't talk. I'm afraid it was too much for his heart. He....”

“Marcellal!” Jennifer stared at her in horror. Was this only another example of the girl's vivid imagination, or was she telling the truth? Surely Aunt Christine could not really have done such a thing. “You can't mean what you're saying.”

“Oh yes,” Marcella said, looking taken aback that her statement had been questioned. “I watched.”

“But that...that's terrible.”

“Yes, it was. Quite terrible.”

Jennifer stared open-mouthed. Her mind was reeling from the shock of what she had just been told. What kind of monsters were these people, these relatives she had once been so eager to meet? What form of madness could devise so dreadful a deed?

But it went beyond that. Until now, she had clung to the hope, however faint, that there was some awful mistake going on. She had not fully believed that these people could truly mean to let her starve; she had been sure within herself that no one could be that cruel. Now she saw that it was madness to cling to that hope. If Aunt Christine could have her own husband's tongue taken out she would certainly not hesitate to let a niece die of starvation.

“Marcella,” she said, her voice hoarse and strained, “Marcella we must leave here. You must go with me, and help me find my car, and we will go away from this terrible place, just the two of us.”

“Oh, I can't leave here,” Marcella replied. “It isn't allowed.”

“But you can, and you must,” Jennifer insisted. “It's not safe here, can't you understand that. All we have to do is find my car. You must know your way through the woods. I'll go up now and get my purse, the car keys are in it, and we can leave at once.”

“Aunt Christine would never allow me to leave,” Marcella said, seeming quite unalarmed at the prospect of danger.

“But we won't tell her,” Jennifer said. “It will be our secret, and by the time they discover that we've gone, we can be miles from here. All we need to do is find my car, and it will be all right.”

“But it is all right,” Marcella said. “There's no need for us to leave.”

“But....”

“Good morning.”

Jennifer turned to find Aunt Christine standing nearby, only a few feet away. How long, she wondered fearfully, had the woman been standing there? How much of the conversation had she heard?

CHAPTER TWELVE

It did not seem as if Aunt Christine had overheard Jennifer's grim conversation with Marcella. The older woman's smile was as cheerful and whimsical as ever. Jennifer met her eye
s, and found herself trying to envision that horrible scene that Marcella had mentioned. Could this smiling old woman who looked so frail and harmless actually have had her husband's tongue pulled out? No, it seemed impossible that Aunt Christine could do anything so terrible, mad though she might be.

And yet, Jennifer reminded herself, here I am, starving to death; and for all I know, my tongue may be next to go. She can't like some of the things I've been saying.

Aloud, she said, “Excuse me.”

Aunt Christine made no attempt to stop or delay her, and when she had started toward the house, she heard her Aunt and Marcella begin to talk in voices too low for her to hear what was being said.

She supposed Aunt Christine must have heard some of their conversation, and was now badgering the child for more details. Jennifer half expected to be attacked before she reached the house. But nothing happened. She reached the safety of the porch, and entered the house, walking without pause up the wide stairway. Not until she had reached the relative safety of her own room with the door locked after her did she stop.

She sank wearily down upon the bed. “I must remain calm,” she told herself, but in truth she felt anything but calm. She knew she must try again to leave Kelsey House.

“But to begin with, I must find some food,” she said. It would be impossible for her to do much of anything unless she found some food, and found it soon. And even if she did not leave, she might need some strength. She might have to defend herself.

There had to be a logical way of looking at all that had happened. “Everything,” her mother had been fond of saying, “makes sense, in its own way. Sometimes you have to discover what sort of sense it makes.” So far, things at Kelsey did not seem to make sense. But that was because she had not yet discovered what sort of sense they did make.

To begin with, they had to eat and keep themselves alive. They all looked healthy enough, that was for sure. So, that meant they must be eating when she was not with them. They had plenty of opportunities. Perhaps she could catch them at it.

That idea, though, seemed less appealing the more she thought of it. There were too many of them, and she had no reason to suppose they ate together. She could not follow them all around all day long.

Perhaps she could pick a likely spot and just wait until she found someone there eating. If she hid herself in the dining room, for instance....

Upon reflection, the dining room seemed unlikely. There had been no evidence, on her trips there, to suggest that anyone had eaten anything there in years—no spilled crumbs, no food stains.

She went back to the idea of following people—of following one person. Perhaps if she followed Aunt Christine, for instance.

She gave her head a shake. No, she couldn't follow her
everywhere. Suppose Aunt Christine ate in the privacy of her room. Suppose the food arrived some secret way, by dumbwaiter or through another corridor. This house might well have that sort of convenience.

She abandoned the idea of finding them eating. She would have to work on finding food. There certainly was an indisputable fact; they had to have food. There had to be food in the house somewhere.

The answer came to her in a flash. The kitchen, of course. There would certainly be food in the kitchen. More than likely, this was where they ate too. Old houses like this often had huge kitchens, with tables set up there. She could almost envision the kitchen, warm and cheery, filled with the smells of bread baking and something spicy simmering atop the stove. There would be a big old table, round, and made of oak, or perhaps maple. From time to time during the day, perhaps even now, at this moment, various members of the family gathered over coffee and hot plates of steaming food. While they ate they talked, perhaps they laughed at the plight of their house guest, and planned how they would behave toward her at evening, when they pantomimed dinner in the dining room.

Her vision was so real that she nearly smelled the food and heard their voices. Her mouth actually began to water.

“I must find the kitchen,” she told herself. There was the obvious solution.

But at once her spirits sank again. How was she to find it? At the very least, that meant another trip through the house, and probably getting lost again. How on earth did people find their ways about in unfamiliar places? Men had explored the globe—the continents, and the ocean floors, even the jungles. They had gone through space and back. And she couldn't find her way through a crumbling old house. Surely if she thought calmly and clearly, some means would occur to her. Not a map, no. Nor a compass.

“A string,” she said aloud, her face brightening. Yes, that was it of course, they carried a string with them and left a trail for themselves to follow. She remembered a story in which children had left a trail of breadcrumbs. In that, though, the crumbs had been eaten by birds, so that their trail had vanished. Well, she was not going to leave crumbs, and anyway, there were no birds inside the house, not of the feathered variety anyway.

She frowned again. Where was she to find a string long enough to leave a trail for herself to follow? Without much hope of finding anything, she opened a drawer of the dresser. It was empty, as was the second one that she opened. But she did find something in the third—not a string, but a spool of white thread. A spool of thread would do as well, perhaps even better.

She went out into the hall, taking the thread with her. There was no one in sight, not in the upstairs hall, nor in the downstairs hall. She thought as she descended the stairs that she should have looked from her window to see if there was anyone on the lawn. Aunt Christine had been there a short time before, and Marcella. But she saw no one in the house. In fact, now that she thought of it, it was difficult to imagine where all of these people spent their time; she so seldom saw any of them. Surely they did not just spend their entire days in their rooms.

Kelsey was a large house, however, and it was obvious that the part of it she saw was not where the family spent their time. There must be another section of the house in which they lived; rooms, perhaps, in which they played bridge or cribbage, or read.

In her mind, she saw rooms with open fireplaces and walls of books, and on a tray would be a decanter of sherry and several dainty little glasses. There would be a rustling as the pages were turned in books, and perhaps the clink of glasses, and a crackling from the fire, and from time to time the clicking of knitting needles. Oh, if only they would invite her in there. How happy she would be with such a simple homely scene.

She came to the downstairs hall and walked instinctively to the front. There she paused outside the first door. This was the room in which she had waited for Aunt Christine, and from which she had started before. She had found nothing that way, not even evidence that anyone else used that part of the house. Perhaps it would be better if she started on the other side of the hall. After all, somewhere in this monstrous house there had to be those rooms they used for their living quarters. If they were not on one side of the hall, then they must be on the other.

She opened the door directly across the hall and peered in, half expecting to see the whole family sitting there, the pack of them, waiting for her to find them, waiting to laugh.

The room was another sitting room, similar to several she had seen already, and it was empty, so far as people went. There was plenty of furniture, and it wore the same coating of filth she had seen elsewhere.

She stepped inside, allowing the door to swing shut behind her. Then, very carefully, she tied one end of her white thread to the knob, tying several knots so that it could not accidentally come loose. This time she would take no chances.

Satisfied that her thread was secure, she started out from the room she was in, holding the spool in her hand and trailing the string behind her.

The rooms she saw were not much different from the ones she had seen the time before. When had that been? A day ago? A week ago? She really had no idea; time did not seem to flow in its natural course here. Nothing here seemed to flow in its natural course.

And all these rooms, so much alike, serving no particular purpose. Whoever had designed the house originally (Aunt Christine had told her: Robert Kelsey, wasn't it) had been interested first and foremost in size, judging from all appearances. A lot of rooms had been the first requirement and no one seemed to have cared whether the rooms were of any use.

She passed through room after room, always choosing, if there were a choice, the exit that seemed to offer the straightest path.

“This time,” she told herself firmly, “I am not going to
travel in a circle.” She was sure of this, and it followed that even if she found nothing, she was certain to reach the end of the house eventually, even if it took her all day.

And that, she realized, was another oddity. In the other part of the house, the part she had explored previously, she had apparently followed the outside walls of the house; most of the rooms had had windows, so far as she remembered. The rooms she was in now were, without exception, windowless. Either her trail was taking her directly through the house without approaching the extremities, which was entirely possible, or one side of the house had been built without windows; quite possible in this strange house.

The result of this oddity was that despite the bright sunlight outside, the rooms were dark as night. Without thinking she had taken to turning on the lights as she entered each room, leaving them on behind her. It was, she thought, like traveling through a nether world of night and darkness; indeed, the very shadows around her seemed alive, hovering about her, watching and listening. She shivered at the thought and tried to laugh at herself, but the laugh was unconvincing.

“You're really going crazy,” she said, speaking instinctively in a whisper.

It was difficult to keep track of time here, and so she did not know just how long she had been walking. Nor did she know when or how the thread had broken. No doubt she had caught it carelessly on one of the doors as she passed through. But broken it was, the end of it trailing behind her. For a moment panic nearly overcame her again.

“Now wait,” she cautioned herself, fighting down the sense of helplessness that threatened to engulf her. “I have been unwinding this the whole time. If that's all the tail there is hanging from the spool, it must have just broken. If it had broken very far back, I would be dragging yards and yards of it after me, instead of just a few inches here.”

She remained outwardly calm. She backtracked, reentering the room she had just left, watching the floor for the telltale thread. But there was no thread here. Across the room were two doors, almost side by side. Try though she might, she could not remember which one she had come through.

Heart in throat, she approached them and opened the first one, peering beyond. There was no thread there either. Closing that one, she opened the other. Still no thread. She closed that door also, before she thought of the lights.

She had turned on the lights on her way through the house, and that should have left another trail for her to follow; but both of the rooms she had just looked into were lighted.

She thought of Hansel and Gretel, and their trail of crumbs that the birds had eaten. Well, certainly no bird had come along to eat her thread.

But it had certainly vanished.

“This is ridiculous,” she said aloud, the sound of her own voice startling her. “There were no lights on when I came through. And anyway, I could not have come this far since the thread broke.”

Unless, she thought, and this thought she did not voice aloud, unless someone had turned on the lights, had removed the thread, someone following her from room to room, watching her, as the shadows in the corner were watching her....

She shuddered violently. On an impulse she returned to the room where she had discovered that the thread was broken. There was only one other door in this room. Perhaps as before she would find that she had made her way back to the main hall.

The door was locked, however. It was the first one she had found that was locked, and that alone was enough to make her suspicious, but that was not all. At almost the same moment that she tried the knob, she heard a sound from the other side, a sound that might have been a smothered cough.

No, she amended her thoughts, this was not the first locked door she had found. There had been one that other morning she had gotten lost in the house, a door that had
seemed to lock itself. And she had thought there was someone beyond that door too; she was convinced of it now.

The truth came to her suddenly. She had found what she had been seeking, the kitchen; that was why this room, of all the rooms in the house, was locked to her. She was at the kitchen door and someone was on the other side of this door, waiting for her to leave. Perhaps it was the person who did the cooking. Perhaps it was more than one person. She saw again the big oak table she had imagined earlier, saw the family sitting about it, food before them, their forks poised en route to their mouths. They sat with eyes turned in this direction, saying nothing, listening.