The House on Black Lake (16 page)

The French maid steps up from behind Luna’s chair to peer over her shoulder into the full plate and casts an eschewing glance in my direction.

Roger stands, takes my hand from her, and raises it to his lips. I shudder as he turns it to reveal my open palm. As his coarse mustache scrapes against the tender skin, I am seized by a contraction in my throat and unable to breathe or swallow. A horrific panic rises up as I struggle against the strangulation.

“We look forward to seeing you again on the eve of the solstice,” he says, then releases me to return to his throne-style chair, where he resumes smoking the last of his cigar.

“Ruth... I’ll be waiting for you in the entry,” I croak, and turn to stride from the dining hall.

Seth opens the doors for me, and I break from the room and run through the corridor of slumbering knights and coffins filled with ancient treasures, run from the sound, the echo, behind me, the thud of thick-soled shoes hammering against the slate floor.

“Let me help you,” Seth says, coming from behind to hoist the door’s steel latch.

I tumble out into the crisp night air and release a wail like the plaintive cry of a wounded animal. The release of my frozen vocal chords causes a spasm of coughs, mixed with horrid bleats. My sounds join those of the crickets and the frogs who have made homes in rocks and on the lily pads floating in the water deep inside the moat that surrounds the castle.

“Straight down,” says Seth, who now, as by magic, holds a cordial glass filled with an amber liquid. I take the vial from his gloved hand and drink the warm liquid in one hearty swallow.

“That helped. I feel much better.” I look up into the eyes of a child lost inside the body of a hapless giant. “Thank you Seth,” I say, and gently touch his arm in gratitude.

The front door flies open and Ruth rushes madly out the door. Passing us without a word, she races, swerving her body in awkward jerks and fluttering her arms, nearly taking flight, if that were possible—to where her car is parked. I race to catch up with her, stumbling, nearly falling to my face, as I catch my heel in a crevice between the stones. She has already started the engine when I open the door and scramble onto the passenger seat. The car takes off, with the door wide open and my leg precariously dangling outside, and screeches around the horseshoe driveway, roaring up the road, past the winged guardians.

A final quick view, a reflection in the rearview mirror, offers a vision of Ramey striding out of the house with an oblong leather satchel hung from his shoulder as he moves to the open door of a waiting sedan.

B
ACK IN MY ROOM, DIZZY AND EXHAUSTED,
I
WANT NOTHING MORE
than to lie down and go to sleep. But I see Sammy lies wedged into a corner of the couch, shivering and weeping, covered in rumpled sheets and clutching the corner of a native blanket that trails from the bed onto the carpet.

“Darling, what’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

“The kids were mean,” Sammy says in a quavering voice. “Why did you leave me?”

“What happened?”

“They said I was an astronaut and was going to the moon. Lizzie told me my hair was too long to be an astronaut, and Rand said he was the barber,” he says.

I examine his hair and find pieces have been cut to the scalp. “What else did they do?” I ask, and straighten the tangled sheets and blanket to cover him properly.

“They put me in a chair with a blindfold and rolled me around in circles until I was sick, because that’s what it’s like in space. And then they locked me in a closet and told me I’d fallen into a wormhole and would never come out.”

“Where were the au pairs, Samuel?”

“I don’t know.”

“They promised to watch you at all times.”

“Some boys came to the door and they were in the bathroom a long time.”

The boys were in the bathroom with the au pairs?”

“Only Amanda. Gabbie was sleeping while she watched television.”

“I will make certain the children are never mean to you again, I promise. Did you have dinner?”

Sam shakes his head. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“I’ll go upstairs and make you a snack. Let me change my clothes first.” I undress and pack away my evening clothes, then change into a tank and shorts, and walk upstairs to the kitchen.

Inside the refrigerator I find a platter of cold cuts and a fresh loaf of bread, and begin to make Sammy a sandwich. But I am unable to finish. My head spins. Images flash, like little dreams. I move in and out of consciousness. I’m disoriented and nauseous, and feel all at once like I am going to be sick. I rush from the kitchen, slipping along the slick hardwood floors, to the hallway bathroom.

A naked Ramey walks out the door and turns toward the master bedroom. He moves like a sculpture of a Greek God come to life, a series of tattooed symbols gracing the high arch of his perfectly formed backside. I turn quickly, but have only taken a few steps, when he grabs me from behind and shoves me against the wall, using the length of his powerful frame to keep me firmly trapped, as he hoists my arms overhead and pins my wrists.

“Where are you going, Alexandra?” he whispers in my ear.

“Downstairs.”

“Is that so?”

He frees a hand to gather up my hair and coils it up into a knot.

“What are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing,”

His hot breath saturates the air with the sweet stench of booze and cigar smoke, and the stubble around his lips, like fine sandpaper, scrapes my skin as his mouth moves down to make a necklace of kisses at the nape of my neck.

“Don’t, Ramey.”

“Tell me you like it.”

“No. I don’t like it. Let me go.”

He releases my knotted hair and trails his fingers down the length of my spine.

“Your body tells me a different story—your skin is on fire.”

“Where is Ruth?”

“Passed out. She won’t wake up.”

He rides his hand up the back of my T-shirt.

“I told you... I don’t want you.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t believe it. It’s not what I see in your eyes when you look at me, and it’s not what I feel when you move close. So, let’s check to make sure,” he says, and slides his hand beneath the waistband of my shorts.

I tense, arch backward and buck against him.

“You’re not getting away from me.” He roughly covers my mouth and firmly pins me to the wall.

“Stop playing games with me, Alexandra. It’s what you want. You’ve been sending me signals since you arrived—and don’t deny it. I won’t take you against your will, so you’re going to have to ask me for it.”

Baring my teeth, I gouge into the flesh of his palm.

He tightens his grasp on my mouth.

“Now that feels better, doesn’t it?”

I gasp for air and my muscles tense in wild anticipation.

“Settle down and relax. I’ll do all the work.”

My hair and skin are dripping wet, soaked with the salty glue of our combined sweat.

“It’s your choice. I won’t take you against your will. Tell me you want me. Say it, Baby.”

The playfulness lacing his crude seduction infuriates me.

“Open up, spread your wings and fly with me.”

“Let me go.”

“Say, ‘I want you to take me’.”

“Release me.”

Radiance enfolds me.

“We’ll be one forever.”

“Free me.”

I rise out of my body, soaring...

“Say, ‘I want to be one with you.’”

The voice is deep and melodic, it beckons, a figure, in the blue haze, shimmering in a crystalline glow. I’m losing myself, disappearing into the void. Lost. Like nothing I have ever experienced. Out of control, spinning at the edge, wanting, but not wanting, careening wildly.

“I want you to....”

“Mommy, where are you? Where are you, Mommy?” Sammy turns the corner and appears at the end of the hall as Ramey disappears into the darkness.

“I
LLUMINATE YOUR POSSIBILITIES, MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE,”
says the handsome captain as he leads me down the steel tarmac. My skintight white vinyl spacesuit makes squeaking sounds and towering boots echo through the tubular passageway. He motions for me to enter the hatch and guides me to a reclining chair centered in the spaceship, then buckles leather restraints around my wrists and ankles. “I am going to take you to a place no one has ever been, a new world that will be yours to discover.” There is a thunderous blast and the craft takes off, shaking madly as it gains altitude, working against the force of gravity to break free and soar into the abyss.

“Even if I die on the flight,” I cry out, “it will be worth the sacrifice, if only to experience this feeling once in a lifetime.” I laugh with the captain as he floats up and away, drifting in a pool of ecstasy to the edge of a dark, starless night, an empty void, to a glimpse of a sparkling oasis, a glorious new frontier!

A fierce explosion shatters the blessed quest, as the spacecraft blows apart and I am thrust into the oblivion.

I open my eyes to bare green walls. My arms are cinched in a straight-jacket, legs restrained to a hospital bed’s foot rail and am covered to the chin with a starched white sheet. My parents loom over me. “Oh, my dear God,” my mother says to my father. “Look, she’s finally awakened from her coma.”

“Alexandra, wake up,” Ruth says. “Sorry to get you up so early, but Matt is on the phone. I’m driving into Montreal with a few of the local women. You can use my car if you’d like to go into St. Agathe. Be sure to try Labat’s for lunch. Also, your attorney wants you to call him back as soon as possible. There is a phone on the desk.”

I nod in acknowledgement and Ruth retreats upstairs.

“Fucking irresponsible bitch,” Matt shouts. “Why haven’t you called as you were instructed?”

“The telephones weren’t working until today and there is no cell reception.”