The Back Door of Midnight (23 page)

“It was so easy,” Marcy went on. “I knew they wouldn’t do an autopsy, not in this backwoods place, not on a man with a serious heart condition whom everyone seemed to like too much to kill. The lack of bleeding after the accident confirmed their belief that he had died of a heart attack just prior to it.”

While talking, she moved herself between the garden exit and Aunt Iris and me, trapping us. I looked back at the house. Marcy must have entered the garden through the large double doors; it appeared that one was open, but it was dark inside. I thought about the way the outside lights were instantly extinguished: Had she cut the electric power? Did she know how to turn off the security alarm? If I ran through the house, would the front gates open?

“Mick was an interfering old fool,” Marcy continued, “spying on me and telling my parents every little thing I did. They came to hate me, thanks to him.”

I needed to keep her talking while I sorted out my options. And I needed to separate myself from Aunt Iris. She could sit up on her own now.

“I don’t see how one employee could make parents hate their child.”

“True enough. My adoptive parents were inclined that way from the beginning—or rather, from the time my brother was born. Once they held in their arms the spitting image of a blond Fairfax, they wanted me out of their lives. They stuck me in a corner with Audrey. And they spoiled my brother—they gave him things that I should have had.”

“Like what?” I asked, but she didn’t need encouragement.

“Whenever I got the opportunity, I took back. I took my
share. Then Mick would go running to them, tattling on me.”

“Maybe he was trying to help,” I said, defending him, baiting her. “You were his child, and he wanted you to grow up right. I think it was Mick’s way of loving.”

“He feared me! I could see it in his eyes. He hated and feared me, and he persuaded everyone else to, with one exception: Audrey.” I heard the scorn in her voice. “Mick hadn’t a clue how to handle Audrey.”

“But you did,” I replied. “You’re good at manipulating people.”

“Thank you.”

I hadn’t meant it as a compliment. “It’s you, not Aunt Iris, who needs to be committed. You’re crazy.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m certainly not
psychic.
And you know the choice that we O’Neill women have.”

Psychic or psychotic. Uncle Will had known that too. The child whom he and Aunt Iris had argued about was Marcy, not me. What he feared had come true: Living close to her child had caused Iris great pain.

“When Uncle Will found my mother’s client book, he realized that you had killed Mick. He poached here, and he recognized the images in my mother’s psychic reading.”

“William always hated me. Last month, when he figured it out, he rather stupidly told Mommy Iris, told her what she already knew. It didn’t take much for me to discover why she
was suddenly so upset. Have you decided what it is going to be for you?”

I looked at Marcy, puzzled.

“Psychic or psychotic?” she asked, her voice pleasant, as if she were inquiring about a preference for regular or decaf.

Aunt Iris,
I said silently,
if you can hear me, I need you to distract Marcy.
Aloud I said, “I don’t think a person chooses to be either.”

“Perhaps not chooses,” Marcy responded, “but allows it, nurtures it.”

Aunt Iris, please help me. I need a running start.

“Who’s there?” Aunt Iris murmured, turning her head slowly toward the gazebo. Marcy and I followed her gaze. “Is it you, William?” she asked.

It’s me, Anna.

“William,” Aunt Iris murmured.

No. Anna!

“William, let it rest,” she moaned. She moved her head from side to side, grimacing, but kept her eyes fixed on the space above the trapdoor. With the bright moonlight reflecting off the gazebo’s roof, its interior looked dark and murky.

“William,” she groaned.

Her eyes shimmered in the silver light, then began to rise under the wrinkled tent of her eyelids.

“Stop it!” Marcy said.

“William . . . William . . . William!” Aunt Iris cried, her voice climbing higher each time she spoke. She rocked back and forth.

“William . . . William . . . William!”

The sockets of her eyes shone white, like those of a marble statue.

“Stop it, Mommy Iris!”

Her mouth twitched, stretched, had a life of its own. Then her eyes rolled forward again, and another face, a stranger’s face, looked out of my aunt’s.

“Stop it now!” Marcy demanded.

Run, Anna.

I blinked.
What?

The stranger’s face retracted, grew back into Aunt Iris’s. Her body shuddered, as if she were going to vomit whatever had possessed her.

Run, Anna.

I stared at her in amazement.
This is for me?

Her mouth stretched again. She looked like a snake about to swallow something larger than itself.

Marcy crouched with fear. “Stop it, Mommy! Stop it!”

Run, Anna, run.

I took off.

I RACED TOWARD
the house and found the door open. Behind me I heard Iris wailing and Marcy shouting at her. How long could Iris keep Marcy distracted? Long enough for me to get to the front door and up the driveway, that’s what I needed.

The moment I stepped into the dark house, I remembered that my flashlight was under the gazebo. There was no time to wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I plunged ahead. I didn’t know the floor plan, didn’t know even the basic shape of the house, having seen only the section of it that backed up to the walled garden. But big houses often had center halls. If the pond and the children’s garden were centered, it was likely that I had entered the hall that ran straight to the front door.

I ran straight into a wall. For a moment I was stunned, then I felt the surface in front of me—wood—a door. I groped for a handle. When my fingers touched the metal knob, I wanted to yank open the door, but I forced myself to turn the knob slowly,
quietly, then I tiptoed through and closed the door again, just as slowly and quietly, not wanting to call attention to myself.

There wasn’t a pencil line of light visible. I moved forward steadily, trying to walk straight, my hands out in front of me. I felt as if I had stumbled into a room the size of a gymnasium. In a house like this, the rooms could be large, I thought, and so could the halls.

I heard footsteps. Marcy had entered the house. I heard her walking in the room behind the door. I fought the urge to race through the house: I was a mouse in a pitch-black maze being pursued by a cat who knew the maze by heart. The moment I made a noise, I had better be close to an exit. I moved steadily forward, listening for Marcy, wondering why she didn’t burst through the door between us.

Because she knew other doors, other ways to get to me, I thought. She wasn’t going to give herself away, not until she had me where she could strike quickly and easily—from behind, her favorite method.

I kept walking. My legs felt strange and rubbery. With each step, my sense of direction became less certain. My hand touched something that felt like wood and was shaped like a thick rod. I felt to the right and left of it—the spindles of a staircase. The banister they supported was wide, like that of the main stairway of a large house. But the stairs weren’t straight
ahead. They didn’t point to what I had hoped was the front door, or maybe they did and I had veered off course. I was confused.

Having nothing else to follow, I followed the stairway wall, losing track of the steps as they rose. I came to another wall with a door in it. Finding the knob, I turned it quietly, pushed against the door, and stepped through. I lurched forward, hanging on to the door handle and swinging wildly. Another set of steps. The door had saved me from tumbling headlong down them.

Regaining my balance, I took one step down and groped in vain for a railing. The walls on either side of me were close, like those of a stairway down to a basement, but the air didn’t smell like a cellar’s. I took two more steps, then jammed my foot against a level floor.

I was just four steps down, in a wing of the house, I thought. Wings were often smaller, at least in the historic houses I had seen; I reasoned that it would be easier to find an exit. I’d do it methodically, feeling my way around a room till I found a window. I quietly shut the door to my wing and moved along the hallway.

I felt a door frame and turned right, assuming that I was in the first room of the wing. I kept thinking I’d see a crack of moonlight somewhere, but it was so dark, I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face.

Starting with the wall immediately to my right, I felt a smooth wood surface and a vertical groove, then another smooth surface and another groove: paneling. I worked my way around a chair, then past a corner, continuing till my hand touched a wood ridge. My fingers followed the ridge up to a shelf about chin high and surprisingly long. I tripped on a rough surface: a fireplace.
An outside wall!
I thought triumphantly, then remembered that some houses had chimneys inside. I bumped into a table placed next to the fireplace and, taking a half step back from it, moved sideways till I reached a second corner in the room.

I turned the corner and prayed for a window. At last my hands grasped loose fabric. I felt behind it, shoving back what seemed like yards of material. The walls of the house were thick, the windowsill deep. My fingers searched for cool panes of glass but touched wood—a set of inside shutters. I felt for the center, tried unsuccessfully to pry the pair open, then ran my hands up and down the crack, hunting for a fastener. My fingers grasped a knob, and I pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge. I felt around the knob and discovered a metal circle with a jagged edge inside.
Terrific!
—they had locks on their shutters, locks that required keys. This place was secure, even with the electricity off.

I sagged against the deep windowsill for a moment, then straightened up and listened, my attention caught by a sound
that seemed to come from behind the fireplace. A heavy object was being dragged across the floor in the room behind the one I was in.

I should have realized then that if Marcy was ignoring me, it was because she had something more important to do at the moment. I should have stopped to think things through. But when someone has made it clear she wants to kill you, the instinct to flee pushes out all other thoughts, and you keep moving.

After the window, I reached the corner quickly, which indicated I was in a small room. Turning the corner, I felt a built-in bookcase, shelves with binders and folders. Expecting nothing but office materials, I got careless. My hand suddenly struck something tall and smooth to the touch. It crashed into the furniture behind me and shattered. Through the fireplace wall, I heard a loud, raucous laugh. Marcy knew where I was now. I backed into a chair and desk, turned myself around, and headed toward what I thought was the room’s exit.

I was back in the hall. I knew because when I took an extra step to the left or right, I could touch the walls. I felt the frame of a doorway and entered the next room, walking straight ahead this time, hoping for windows. I banged my shin on a low table. It was all I could do not to kick it aside. I had passed the point of daunting fear and was getting reckless and desperate. Then
I heard the sound of a door opening, the door into the wing. Marcy was coming for me. I moved quickly around the room, hoping for a window with unlocked shutters. I prayed to God and to Uncle Will. I groped and found the mantel of another fireplace.

“Where are you, baby?”

Baby?

I felt for the tools usually kept by a hearth. There were none.

“Are we playing hide-and-seek, baby?” Marcy’s voice sounded high-pitched, peculiar.

I kept searching for something to defend myself with. Next to the fireplace my hand grasped a knob. I pulled on it—
Yes! Stairs!
Maybe the second-floor windows weren’t locked. I tiptoed up two steps and reached back to close the door behind me.

“All right, I will count, and you hide.” Her voice chilled me to the bone. “O-one, two-oo, three . . .”

I scurried up the turning steps, hoping the door hiding the stairway and her loud counting would muffle the noise I made. At the top of the steps I stopped to remove my shoes so she wouldn’t hear me walking above her head.

I stood still for a moment, trying to orient myself, which was impossible since it was as dark upstairs as down. I didn’t understand the lower floor plan, so I couldn’t imagine a
duplicate much less a variation of it for the second floor. But I did know I was in a wing, and if I found a short stairway, it would indicate that I was moving back toward the center of the house. If Marcy came up the turning stair and I could find the main stair, I’d be able to race down it and, with a little luck, find the front door or the exit to the garden.

I started toward what I thought would be the center portion of the house. Marcy had stopped counting. I heard a noise, footsteps in a different place than I had expected hers to be.

“Anna?”

Zack!
It was Zack’s voice, calling from below.

“Anna? Anna!” he cried.

I had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting back. Marcy was silent, listening. If I answered Zack, she’d know where I was. But if I didn’t warn him, she might lie in wait for him. Two against one, we had a chance; somehow, Zack and I had to find each other.

I prayed.
Help. Help me know where he is.

Zack had become quiet, as if he had figured out the nature of the game being played. The silence of the house was like a roaring in my ears.

Maybe I could send my mind out, I thought, send it on a journey like I did during an O.B.E. Guessing that Zack had entered the house the same way as I had, I imagined the room
off the garden, picturing in my head how I would move along its walls, searching it with mental hands.

There was a door—not the door I had gone through, a door to the left.
Are you there, Zack? Yes!
I knew it in the place I call my “heart.” And then he wasn’t. I had lost him.