Jilly-Bean (Jilly-Bean Series # 1) (8 page)

For a moment everyone fell silent.

“John can't be dead” Uncle Phil cried, passing a hand over his brow. “Did you take his pulse? Here, let me through.” He pushed through the group and examined Mr. Mueller. “He's still alive! There's a pulse.”

Mr. Crossland sniffed suspiciously: “Is this some kind of joke?” then looked over at Madame Zelda and demanded, “What is the meaning of this?”

Could it have been a curse? They spoke in hushed voices, all still in a state of shock. The ambulance and police had come and gone. Having made their way back to the main house, they all stayed close together; no one wanted to be left alone. Mr. Mueller was resting in a guest bedroom on the second floor. Mrs. Paradis, who had not seen what happened in the barn, tried to console Mrs. Mueller: “Oh, honey, he'll be all right. The heat and the smell in that barn would knock anyone off their feet. No wonder he collapsed.” Mrs. Mueller looked numbly about, tears welling in her eyes. The well appointed room, which hours before had been the centre of warmth and good feeling with its large gilded mirror over the arched stone fireplace and even the big Impressionist paintings in muted hues of blues, yellows and greens hanging on the walls now wore a ghostly air. The rising flames, crackling in the fireplace threw uncanny moving shapes and shadows across the wooden beams and onto the ceiling. Jillian, with her vivid imagination, was sure she could see grotesque heads of vampires and other sinister creatures with fangs flashing before her.

Aunt Jean tried to reassure her guests: “It could be anything— high blood pressure. It's obvious that John is grossly overweight. The séance had nothing to do with it.”

Uncle Phil shuddered, passing a trembling hand over his forehead. “What a nightmare!”

Mr. Crossland was staring grimly at Madame Zelda and thereby drew all eyes in her direction.

“Oh, this is getting ridiculous! Leave Madame Zelda out of this. She is merely a vessel in our attempts to communicate with 'the other side',” cried Aunt Jean. She rapped on her wine glass for silence, nearly breaking it, then announced, “May I please have your attention— everyone? I would like to thank Madame Zelda for coming, and we pray that our dear friend, John makes a full recovery. I'm sure he will. As we all know, he was already in bad shape, and I guess— well, the events of the evening may have pushed him over the edge, shall we say.”

Madame Zelda, who had remained eerily quiet as if wrapped in her own thoughts and somehow oblivious of Mr. Mueller's collapse, avoided everyone's gaze as she headed towards the front door. But suddenly she stopped, raised both her hands as if in prayer, looked back over her shoulder and hissed in a throaty voice, “A curse has been unleashed!”

Uncle Phil's smile vanished, and his look became vague and uneasy. He and Aunt Jean quickly approached Madame Zelda, thanked her for coming and escorted her out to her car.

“Unbelievable!” cried Mr. Paradis with disgust, looking out the window to make sure his words were out of earshot of Aunt Jean and Uncle Phil. “John is upstairs half unconscious, his wife is heavily sedated and Jean is blaming all this on his obesity, when we all know for a fact it was the witch. I nearly shit my pants in there. And what's this about a curse?”

“There is no curse!” replied Adam with finality.

Jillian looked at her father, who was standing rigid in the centre of the room, staring forward— at no one in particular, as if in a trance or deep in thought. His eyes were wide and the pupils had shrunk to pinprick size. He was holding a wine goblet and rocking the clear red liquid inside it back and forth, while his right forefinger lightly tapped against the glass; the clink kept beat with the metronome ticking of the grandfather clock in the vestibule, whose sound drifted into the living-room like the mist into the barn. Jillian had no idea what time it was— around midnight? she asked herself. The night outside was dark and seemed so still.

She dreamt of water— crystal-clear water, the colour of indigo. It could have been in Greece, but she had never been there. More likely it was simply a recollection of bits and scraps of photographs in magazines or scenes in movies of azure blue skies and whitewashed villas that shaped her thoughts. She alone was the heroine, standing on high steep rocks, looking out towards the horizon as the waves lapped gently against the rocks on the shoreline, her long flowing white skirt blowing and the warm breezes enveloping her legs. She could hear the cries of seagulls and taste the salty air. There came a voice that mingled with the sound of the waves and called out her name:
Jilly, Jilly-Bean, can you hear me?
All she could see were shadows through half-shut eyelids. She could see no face or discernible features; however hard she tried, she simply could not. She stretched out her hands in the direction she thought the voice was coming from, but they disappeared into a heavy mist, as if they had been cut off. She lost her footing and was suddenly falling slowly, slowly into a dark bottomless tunnel ....

She started from her sleep, awakened by the jerky, unnerving sensation of falling. She turned over on her pillow and stared straight at the digital clock on the side table, not registering the numbers at first and trying to adjust her eyes. The flashing minutes were blinking red; it was nearly 2 a.m. She had only slept for one hour. She heard the trickle of rain dripping from the eavestrough outside her window, a pinging sound like metal. The events of the evening suddenly came back to her, and she remembered she was not in her own bed but in one of her Aunt Jean's guestrooms. She pulled the covers over her head and tried to get back to sleep.

The floors creaked; was that a stealthy footstep or just the rain? The sound was so faint. She could have sworn she heard the sound of footsteps on creaky hardwood floors. Was someone else in the room with her? Hadn't she locked the door? She lifted herself up on one elbow and stared into the darkness. The sheer curtains were moving intermittently, perhaps catching a gust of wind from the cracks in the caulking of the window. This was an old house, she remembered, built in the 1800's. The previous owners had been a bit reclusive and had had no children. In their old age, tragedy had struck when the couple were found shot dead in their beds. All at once her senses grew heightened, and she became aware of the sound of her own laboured breathing and heard her timid frightened voice calling out “Is anyone in the room?” With shaking fingers she switched on the lamp beside the bed; its dim rosy light spread long grotesque shadows on the walls behind her. Nothing, nothing but nerves; only the rain and the clank of the single radiator in the room.
I mustn't imagine things,
she told herself;
it's just the wind or a branch hitting the side of the house.
She sat upright in bed, waiting patiently for the voice and at the same time trying to reassure herself that there was nothing out of the ordinary. After a while she turned off the lamp and reluctantly tried once again to get back to sleep.

That was all she needed— just some sleep. It was all nerves. She was on the point of drifting off when she heard the man's voice again; it sounded closer this time: “Jilly Beeeen.” Her eyes flew open, but her body lay rigid and refused to budge from beneath the covers. She had definitely heard a wailing man's voice but wasn't sure whether it had been real or she had dreamt it. She kept very still and listened intently, straining to pick up sounds. “Ahhhhhhh Jillian!” This time she was certain someone was calling her name. It was a man, and he was in pain; he had been injured. He was in the room with her! She switched on the lamp again and sat straight up in bed, her senses now wide awake and alert. She glanced towards the door, and what she saw made her heart pound in her chest as if it were trying to break free. Her eyes grew wide with terror; she could have sworn she saw a man entering her room! Yet the door remained closed; he had come right through it! She flung herself back on the pillow and covered herself with the blankets, leaving just the top of her head and eyes peering out. “I'll scream!” she cried. “I have a gun!” The figure walked towards her, and then she realized that it was Mr. Mueller! He looked troubled. “Mr. Mueller, are you all right?” But wait, she could see right through him! The phantom approached noiselessly, then stopped abruptly as if he were unsteady and about to collapse onto the floor in front of him; but the next instant, he vanished into thin air. “Jesus bless me, was that a ghost?”

Jillian threw back the blankets and got up. Her first thought was that Mr. Mueller was in trouble. She almost stumbled out of bed; her legs felt weak, and her teeth were slightly chattering; a sweat was trickling down her face and neck. She tried to convince herself this was some kind of mistake or that maybe just a dream. She threw her dressing-gown around her shoulders and stepped out into the corridor, looking about; the whole house was eerily quiet and seemed wrapped in sleep. With a heightened sense of apprehension, she swallowed hard and slowly made her way past the closed doors, down the dark narrow hallway, like a sleepwalker. At last she reached the top of the stairs and stood there, squinting out into the darkness.

She was looking down into the entrance hall, which lay in complete darkness except for a dim shaft from the porch light coming through the front-door window. She could make out the shadows of furniture and the big grandfather clock in bold relief, its
tick, tick
reverberating in rhythmic continuity, and for a moment she wasn't sure it wasn't the sound of her own heartbeat thumping against her chest. As if awoken from a bad dream, she grew suddenly aware of being very much alone in a strange house, standing at the top of the stairs in nothing more than her nightgown. She felt a terror creep into the very core of her being; the hairs on the nape of her neck immediately stood on end when she heard a frantic scratching coming from the front door. She wanted to scream, but her throat had tightened up. Her heart was beating wildly. She wanted to turn back; she wanted to flee the scene, but her legs refused to move. It was too late to turn back! She felt giddy and feared she was about to fall down the stairs; so she steadied herself with one hand, leaning against the wall and felt at once a familiar object— a light switch. She drew a deep breath and flicked it on. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the sudden brightness; she scanned the scene before her, and there at the bottom of the stairs was a large human figure lying on the floor. She stared in disbelief, then exclaimed “Oh, Mr. Mueller!” She could barely hear his wheezing laboured breathing as he lay sprawled on the floor like a clump of clothes. His arms and legs looked unnaturally contorted.

Again she felt giddy, felt the blood rush from her head. It took all her energy to scream out: a scream that shattered the stillness of the house.

When she came to, she felt a warm hand on her shoulder; someone was smoothing her hair. She looked up and saw Mrs. Mueller gripping the banister as she made her way down the stairs in a pink silk nightgown that strained across her heavy breasts, her hair dishevelled from sleep. “John? Oh, no! Is that my John?” she whimpered. Aunt Jean was trying to comfort her, gripping her hand: “He'll be all right, Joyce. I think he fell down the stairs. The ambulance is on the way.”

Looking as if he had woken from a bad sleep, her father demanded angrily, “What the heck is going on here?”

“John's had an accident,” replied Aunt Jean. “It looks like he fell down the stairs.”

Within minutes the police and paramedics arrived on the scene for the second time.

Jillian's mother couldn't be consoled. She was in hysterics: “Oh, but didn't Madame Zelda predict an omen of sorts? And there was a warning that John should avoid high altitudes?”

“What high altitudes? He was walking down the stairs!” replied Adam angrily.

Mr. Paradis, looking like a defeated man, was pacing back and forth, sweat gleaming on his forehead, his fingers opening and shutting convulsively. “Well, this has turned out to be quite an evening. If the papers get a hold that there was a witches' mass here this evening, I'll be a laughing-stock.” He stopped and looked abruptly around the room, but everyone was evading his gaze, looking away or at the carpet, afraid to acknowledge that there might be some truth to his words. He ran his fingers gingerly over the top of his head; “This could ruin my political career,” he whispered under his breath.
Ah,
thought Jillian,
now the truth comes out; he cares more about his precious career than poor Mr. Mueller.
She remembered that Mr. Paradis was an important man in politics. He had fancies of becoming prime minister of Canada one day.

Numbly, Olivia asked, “Do you think we'll be implicated in any of this?”

“How could you talk like that? No one is going to be 'implicated' in anything,” retorted Mr. Crossland matter-of-factly.

“Are you kidding me?” exclaimed Mr. Paradis. “The authorities will have questions about these goings-on if— if John should happen to— I can't even say the word— die.”

Adam interrupted him, “and who would be the murderer: Satan?”

In the days leading up to her high-school graduation and dance, Jillian could barely think of anything else. She was in a state of keen anticipation, agonizing not only for herself but also for her mother, who would look at her with anxious, troubled eyes, worried that her daughter was about to embark on a new phase of development— adulthood— or that maybe there was a curse lurking just around the corner and about to claim her. Jillian hurried about the house, humming under her breath. Her nights were enlivened by vivid dreams, and when she awoke the next morning, she was certain they foretold future events or solved some life riddle.

Friday afternoon: a warm scent of wet summer grasses wafted through the auditorium of Humberview High School. The metal doors had been propped open to give some air to the throng of parents and children crammed into such a small space. Even so, the air in the small auditorium had become stifling hot; most people were fanning themselves with their programs. The graduates, sitting in the first two rows, were wearing black gowns and caps, looking more like comical figures or what Amelia Hartmann laughingly referred to as the Humberview High black ghosts. Sitting behind them in fold-out metal chairs were the relatives and friends of the graduates, who had pushed and thrust their way along the aisles and squeezed and bumped past each other; their chat and laughter echoed into the far reaches of the school corridors and basement.