The Glory Hand (31 page)

In the downpour the forest was an angry green, like the sea off of Nantucket in a gale, Cassie thought. It was as if the New England summer had disappeared in one downpour, to be replaced by a sudden, unyielding winter. Rain-heavy branches slapped against her, and her hands tingled from the cold. She blew on them, then swept her wet hair from her eyes and pushed deeper into the woods. The fallen branches, the trail that had turned to mud, the sharp and slippery rocks . . . they were obstacles in her path. But there was a more serious obstacle - the thought that hovered in her mind: Sarah had lied.

The Hanging Tree seemed even more enormous in the glowering light. The storm clouds hung low, as though caught in its branches. But no . . . Sarah had been right. Two straw men, like those that had been burned on Consecration night, hung from ropes that dangled from the oak's boughs, the nooses creaking in the storm wind. The straw glistened, the same wet gray as the oak's bark. It was exactly as Sarah had said: no one would be able to set these figures on fire now. The straw was so wet it was starting to dissolve, to . . .

Cassie stepped closer. The arm of one of the effigies . . . the rain had soaked through. The arm was dripping blood.

Chapter 27

The doorknob felt moist and cold, as repellent to the touch as the flesh beneath the straw would have been, Cassie thought, and yet she clutched it tightly for fear she might fall. Her panic had carried her here without her realizing her destination, and she was grateful for that. If she'd known where she was running, would she have had the nerve? The rage, the rage that she had leveled at herself
(See, you're not crazy. You're not!)
... it would be aimed at the right person now.

Miss Grace . . . she knew everything, she had to know. Wasn't the camp hers? Wasn't she wearing her mother's ring? And everything that the old woman knew - about the letter, about what had happened here - Cassie vowed she'd get it out of her.

But she's a frail cripple,
a voice inside her pleaded.

Choke the truth out of her,
the rage in Cassie snapped back.
Put your hands around her throat and she'll tell you everything.
She imagined her palms clamped around the veined neck, and the intensity of her anger scared her. Then, standing there on the porch, she could feel the blind fury ebbing, leaving her weary, drained. She rested a hand uncertainly on the doorknob.

The door creaked ajar.

Water dripped from Cassie's hospital gown onto the hooked rug, which muffled her footsteps. The velvet curtains of the parlor were drawn as tight as an old woman's eyelids, and yet even in the dim light she could see that the bric-a-brac had changed: a stuffed owl and a stuffed sparrow hawk, and ... at the base of a Tiffany lamp, it looked like the stuffed figure of a white kitten, the body mounted as if curled in sleep. Her knee bumped against a brassbound trunk, and a stuffed squirrel on top of it shivered. The grandfather clock skipped every third beat, as hesitant as her footsteps.

The wheelchair - it was facing the cold hearth. Its varnished wood back, gleaming as shiny as a coffin, was all Cassie could see, and from this angle she couldn't tell whether or not the old woman was seated in it.

'Miss Grace?' She was surprised at how polite her voice sounded, how humble.

Breathing - slow, asthmatic breathing - more regular than the ticking of the grandfather clock, told Cassie that the old woman was there.
She's sleeping.
Even though the back of the wheelchair blocked any view of her, Cassie was sure of it.

The thought emboldened her to step closer, and she edged across a threadbare oriental carpet until she could have reached out and touched the back of the wheelchair, the mustard-yellow afghan draped over its arms. Suddenly it seemed like a terrible risk to awaken her.

Steal the ring instead,
Cassie convinced herself.
{Why had she taken it? And howl)
That would be revenge enough. Cassie edged closer.

Slip the ring off her finger, then run like hell.

The floorboard groaned, and fearing that another step would give her away, she stretched out her arm, her muscles straining.
Better to stay behind the wheelchair, so that if the old lady wakes up, she won't see you.
It meant groping blindly under the afghan.

Which hand
? Cassie ran her fingers across her own palm, to remember the handshake at the dance pavilion on Visiting Day, when the ring had pierced her skin.

Her left hand. Pull it off her ring finger and . . .

Cassie forced her hand under the blanket. Something was wrong. The hand she felt under the afghan wasn't withered, with swollen, arthritic knuckles. The skin was soft, smooth. And before she could realize that it wasn't wearing the ring, the hand seized hers.

With a screech of steel spokes, the chair spun to face her.

'Looking for something, CassieV

'Iris . .
.?' The frail girl had wrapped Miss Grace's shawl over her faded T-shirt. And the arrogant smile on her face was Abigail's. She didn't let go of Cassie's hand, and her grip - Iris' grip that had always been so flaccid and weak was . . .

You're crushing my hand.

'Looking for the ring, Cassie?'

'Give it to me!'

'I don't have it.'

'It belonged to my mother. I want it.'

'Cassie, I haven't the foggiest idea where it is.' Iris' voice was so calm, Cassie thought. How could a weak, little Iris suddenly be so strong, so confident? 'You really missed something last night, Cassie,' Iris sighed. 'I'm not kidding. It was incredible. But you'll see . . . tonight.'

'The hell I will!' Cassie tried to wrench her hand from Iris' grasp, but she didn't have to. Iris let go.

'Look, Cassie, we were wrong about the seniors. They're not so bad, really they're not.'

'Don't touch me . . .'

'They like
you,
Cassie. You may not believe that, but they do. They've just been giving you a hard time because they wanted to see if you could take it.'

Cassie was backing to the door. 'I don't have to hear this bullshit

'Go ahead, leave if you want. But you'd feel a lot better if you knew everything.'

It was the reason she had come to Miss Grace's cottage, to find the answer to all the painful riddles. And yet now that she had the chance, Cassie didn't want to hear it: '
You . . . can't. . . make ... me .. .'

'Come on, Cassie. Nobody's
making
you do anything. Don't you see? It's been inside you all along. It's in your blood ... in your genes. At Casmaran, they just help you . . . find yourself.'

'What . . .' Cassie hesitated at the door. 'What do you mean?'

'Cassie, you know me. I've always been the sensible, scientific type, right? And, well, what I did last night ... it makes so much sense.' She stopped herself, and the puzzled look on Cassie's face made her take another tack. 'Okay, so I was Catholic. Maybe that made it easier for me to get
"into"
it.'

'Get "into" what?'

'I mean, there's nothing weird about it, really. This thing is just a religion, that's all. I mean, it's a free country, isn't it? That's what they teach us at school. We're free to worship any God we choose . . . And believe me, this one is a lot better than that other one, because He accepts you for what you are. He doesn't expect you to be what you're not.' She added in a lower voice: 'They don't pick on me anymore, Cassie. I mean, I'm just one of the girls now, like Abigail or Robin or any one of the seniors. It was worth it for that. I don't have to be afraid anymore . . .'

'I'm not afraid, either.' But Cassie's voice rang too ioudly, as if she were trying to convince herself.
It's only Iris. It's just dumb little Iris sitting there.

'Anyway, after tonight, Cassie, you'll be one of us, whether you like it or not.'

Before Cassie could ask Iris what she meant, she could feel the change creeping over her - a twinge in her belly that knotted into a cramp. A cramp that doubled her over, forced her to grasp her sides.

Oh, God.

The pain shot into her back, stabbed down her legs, but she managed to pull open the door.

'Hey, come on, Cassie. Don't go.' Iris leaned forward in the wheelchair, holding out a hand to help. 'I mean, it's pouring down with rain outside. You'll catch pneumonia, for God's sake. I'll make some tea and we can build a . . .'

'The tea . .
.' Cassie said. 'Sarah put something in that tea.' The next cramp brought up a taste from her stomach -the cloying sweetness of dried petals mixed with bile. '
The tea . . :

Iris rolled her eyes. 'I wondered how long it would take you to figure that out, Cassie. I mean, how dense can you

be?'

'You told me about them on that hike . . .' Cassie murmured. 'Windflowers . . . You said they could be used to bring on someone's . . .'

'So, Casmaran rushes things a little,' Iris interrupted. 'But it's all very organic. I mean, it would have to be, right? You know Sarah.' The pains shooting through her stomach made Cassie bite her lip to stifle a groan. Iris stood up from the wheelchair. 'Here, have a seat. It won't hurt so bad if you take it easy. I mean, I thought I was dying when I got them at first. But they don't last long, really. It's no big thing.' She reached out and gave Cassie's arm a reassuring squeeze: 'I mean, think how long you've been waiting for it.'

Cassie pushed Iris' hand away and wrenched the door wide. The roar of the rain drowned out her footsteps as she descended the porch stairs painfully, one at a time.

Iris didn't try to stop her. Iris didn't have to stop her, Cassie thought.
They've taken over your body. You can't escape what's inside you.

But your mind, they haven't got your mind yet.
She tried to force her legs into a run, but her muscles refused to obey.
Once they've got your body,
she thought,
there's nothing your mind can do.
Tears ran down her face, along with the rain, tears that told her she could not run far.

She did not remember falling, but suddenly Cassie's cheek was pressed against a rock, water from the downpour trickling into her mouth. The rain felt as cold on her eyelids as two silver coins.

Mud seeped between her lips, and dimly Cassie remembered the Spinning, the way Abigail had probed her tongue between Iris' lips with that taste of welcome. Before she passed out, Cassie knew the taste.

Chapter 28

As Barbara gunned the car down the highway at dusk, she felt as though she were careening on the razor's edge between day and night. The clock on the dashboard read 7:55. Until twilight sharpened into dark, she would be in neutral territory, she thought. But after night fell . . .

The New England Airlines jet had arrived late at Bangor, and she forced the rented Chevette to make up for lost time. There had been no other cars for miles, and she allowed hers to straddle the white center line, as if the road were hers alone. She searched the thicket beyond the windshield for a landmark. In the aftermath of the cloudburst, the map that had guided her on her last trip to Jake's was useless. The wind had snatched away the road signs, felled trees to conceal the turnoffs. The weathered barns, the handful of clapboard farm houses she remembered from the day before, seemed to have disappeared, as if gutted by the impending night.

Despite the suspicion that she was being followed, a suspicion that had gnawed at her since she'd left her apartment this morning, a glance into the rearview mirror told her that there was no one behind her - just the white center line of the highway, as faint in the twilight as the trail left by a snail. Her palms were wet, the steering wheel slipping beneath them. When she glanced at the speedometer she was surprised to see she was pushing 70. She hated the way her panic had affected her, depriving her of her usual cool reason. Her eyes darted up to her face in the mirror, as if to reassure herself that with everything shifting so crazily around her, at least
she
hadn't changed. But the image was hardly reassuring. The twilight's afterglow tinged her skin the sickly green of the painting at Jake's, as though she herself were being transformed into one of the crazed harpies in the revel.

Or the condemned woman in her dream.

On the plane from New York, she had dozed fitfully, and had dreamt she was standing on a scaffold, a noose around her neck. Otto was the hangman, dressed in the severe black cloak of a Puritan at Salem. 'Guilty,' he had said.
'Guilty:

When he had pushed open the trapdoor beneath her, she had swung by the rope, gasping, writhing, whispering hoarsely: 'It's not true . . . I'm not guilty . . . I'm not!' But the rope had pulled tighter around her throat, choking off her words.

Until the plane had shuddered through a downdraft and awakened her.

The tires of the Chevette skidded around a rain-slick curve and she twisted the wheel, forcing the car - and her mind - back on course. The winding road was a test of hand and eye, especially treacherous after the downpour which had ended just ten minutes before. But she couldn't focus on the road, her mind flashing towards her destination:
What, dear God, will you find?
She summoned the nerve to lower her right foot another inch, and floor the accelerator. The road seemed to be hurtling towards the darkening sky, that was veined with lightning from the fleeing storm.