The Killing Room (4 page)

He wasn’t a guy who was easily spooked. He’d gone down in that shark cage off the coast of Maui many times and had witnessed plenty of fangs gnawing against the iron bars in front of him. He’d found it thrilling. On the merchant ship, he’d survived many storms; one time, they’d nearly capsized. Even when he’d found his mother’s lifeless body in the kitchen of their house, some ten months after his father had died, Douglas hadn’t freaked out. He was just fifteen years old, but he calmly called 911 and followed the operator’s instructions carefully. He shut off the gas, then checked for a pulse. When he reported that there was none, the operator told him to stay right there, that help was on its way. So he’d sat on the linoleum floor, holding his mother’s cold hand, for twenty-five minutes. He didn’t cry until the funeral, and then only for a moment.

But his famed self-control had taken a spill back there along with his bike. He couldn’t get that woman’s eyes out of his mind. Who was she? Why had she run out in front of him? Why had she stood there staring at him? And why hadn’t Murphy seen her?

Halfway up the cliff, the staircase was nearly obliterated by intrusive tree roots and years of rockslides. Still, Douglas managed, careful not to lose his footing even if his knees were really starting to ache. He thought maybe he’d scraped his thigh, too. He thought he could sense blood under his dark blue jeans.

He turned as the path led through an old cemetery. And not just any cemetery. Douglas knew it had been the private burial ground for the Young family for several generations. His parents weren’t buried here; they were back in Connecticut. But his grandparents were here, and lots of other old relatives dating back to the early nineteenth century. This was where Uncle Howard insisted he would be buried someday as well.

A big black crow alit on top of one old brownstone grave marker. It let out a caw and spread its wings, then folded them against its sides. Douglas squinted to make out the words that were engraved on the stone.

D
ESMOND
D. Y
OUNG

1880–1930

That was his great-great-grandfather. Uncle Howie’s father. He had passed on his middle name Douglas all the way down through five generations. Glancing around the cemetery as the crow let out another cry and took off into the air, Douglas shivered as the bird’s shadow passed across his face. Across the way stood a newer stone. This one marked his great grandfather, the first Douglas Desmond Young. Died 1940. And then, off to the right, a shiny marble slab, flush with the earth. This was Douglas’s grandfather. Died 1980.

They all died in the first year of a new decade,
Douglas thought. He’d never realized that until now.
The first year of a new decade—when the family reunion was held.

Like this year.

Douglas continued to make his way up the path. Dead leaves crunched underfoot. A blue jay seemed to scold him from somewhere in the trees above.

And then he saw it.

Through the trees, the great stone house on the top of the hill came into view. It was a house that seemed to grow bigger and more impressive every time Douglas saw it. Usually, places you knew as a kid seemed smaller when you saw them again as adults. But Uncle Howie’s house seemed to grow another wing every time Douglas visited. Of course it hadn’t. There was nothing new about the house, nothing at all, unless one counted that terrace out back that Murphy had said he’d worked on. Uncle Howie’s house was like a trip back into time. The stones worn smooth by decades of wind and salt air told the story of its long existence.

Crunching through the leaves up the final bluff, Douglas neared the great lawn of the estate. In the far distance he spied the barn, where Uncle Howie kept his stable of prize horses. To the right were the tennis courts; to the left was the greenhouse, where the old man tended his rare and exotic orchids. Here on top of the hill, the wind whipped hard against Douglas’s face. He could hear it howling through the eaves of the house as he got closer. He was happily anticipating the look of surprise when Uncle Howie saw him—a look that would turn to both joy and bemusement, Douglas thought. Joy because his little hoodlum had come for an unexpected visit, and bemusement when he saw the mud all over his clothes.

A small smile had begun to stretch across Douglas’s face when suddenly he saw her again.

The young woman who had run in front of his bike.

Douglas froze.

She stood across the lawn. She was just a tiny figure, about a hundred yards away. At this distance Douglas couldn’t see her eyes as clearly as he had earlier, but it was her all right. The same dark hair, the same filmy white dress, both blowing in the wind.

“Hey!” Douglas shouted.

She stood there looking at him.

“Hey! Who are you? Why are you following me?”

He began to approach her across the grass. He had made it about halfway when she suddenly turned and bolted. “Hey!” Douglas called again.

The woman ran along the cliffs. Douglas could see now that she was barefoot.

He ran after her.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” he cried. “I just want to make sure you’re okay! And find out why you’re following me!”

She just kept running toward the cliffs.

“Be careful!” Douglas shouted, slowing down himself. “Okay, I won’t come after you!”

But still the woman ran. She was just a distant speck on the far side of the cliffs by now, though her dark hair was still discernible in the bright sunlight. She ran as if she were terrified. She ran so fast—

Douglas blinked.

She ran straight off the side of the cliff!

“Jesus!” Douglas cried and began running himself again.

Had he seen right?

That crazy woman ran right off the cliff!

He reached the spot where she had gone over and looked down. There was no sign of a body on the rocks below. The water was just far enough beyond the rocks that there was no way she could have fallen into the surf. If she’d run off this cliff at this spot, she’d be lying right down there, mangled on the rocks below. It was at least a forty-foot drop. No one could have survived that, especially not at the rate she’d been running. There was no way she could have jumped off and then run down the beach. She’d have smashed onto the rocks. But there was no body anywhere.

It was as if she’d vanished into the air.

Douglas ran his hands through his long hair. “Jesus,” he whispered to himself.

Has he imagined the whole thing?

He remembered how stunned and dazed he’d felt back on the road, right after the accident. Had he hit his head and not realized it? He must have. This had all been a hallucination. There was no woman. At least not up here. Maybe there had been, down on the road—there
had
to have been, for
someone
had run in front of him—but not up here. Thinking rationally, Douglas concluded he was certain that he’d been alone as he climbed up the cliffside staircase. And if the woman had come by the road, there was no way she would have beat him here. The road from the village up to Uncle Howie’s house was long and winding. To walk it would take at least double the amount of time that it took to take the staircase. So there was no way the woman could have gotten here before him.

“Freaky,” he murmured to himself, looking down at the rocks. The only sound was the steady crash of the surf and the occasional call of a lonesome gull.

Finally Douglas roused himself. He began heading once again across the great lawn. He wouldn’t mention any of this to Uncle Howie. There had been a time, right after his mother died, when Douglas had smoked a bit too much pot. Aunt Therese had reported as much to Uncle Howie. The old man had sat Douglas down and lectured him against the dangers of marijuana. Douglas had nodded, pretending to listen, but it had been the magic of that wonderful weed that had kept him sane not only after Mom’s death but after Aunt Therese’s as well. A couple of times when Douglas came to visit Uncle Howie after that, his clothes had reeked of pot, and his uncle had noticed. There was a disapproving look for his little hoodlum.

For the last few years, however, Douglas had pretty much cleaned up his act. He’d maybe smoke a joint on a Saturday night with Brenda, but that was all. For this visit to his uncle, he fully intended to present himself as upstanding and serious. If he started telling tales of barefoot women jumping off cliffs, Uncle Howie would assume he’d been smoking that wacky weed again. So Douglas would keep his little hallucination to himself. The muddy clothes were going to be bad enough. Uncle Howie always worried one of these days his nephew would crash his motorcycle.

Douglas decided to blame it on a squirrel.

“I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel,” he said out loud, practicing the line he’d use with his uncle.

He smiled. He thought that would work.

There would be no talk of mysterious women who disappeared into thin air.

The look in Karen’s eyes was enough to shatter Paula’s heart, but there was
no way
—no way in heaven or, more appropriately,
hell
—that she was going to give in.

“All my life,” Karen was saying, “I’ve dreamed of having a baby.”

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

“I don’t understand,” Karen said. She was angry, but more tearful and sad than anything else. She was a simple girl, a farm girl from Nebraska. All Karen wanted was a home and children. She was old-fashioned like that. But as much as Paula loved her, there was no way she could give that to her.

What made it worse was that she couldn’t tell her why.

“You’re great with kids,” Karen argued, trying for nearly the hundredth time to convince her partner to conceive a child. “You’re a teacher! Your students adore you! I’ve watched you with them. You’d make a great mother.”

Paula sighed and looked out her window down onto Commonwealth Avenue. The day was warm, the air pleasant, so she’d opened all the windows of her apartment. Autumn would soon be here, and then winter—and the days of open windows would be over. From the street, taxicabs were bleating. Paula could hear a group of little children laughing. It broke her heart.

There was nothing she could say to Karen. Yes, indeed, she loved kids. In her job teaching English as a second language to immigrants from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Vietnam, and Mexico, she found great satisfaction and joy being with children. She agreed she’d make a wonderful mother, especially with Karen as co-parent. They could raise a wonderful family. If only things were different.

They’d been together five years now. Karen was the love of Paula’s life. There had been other girlfriends who had come and gone, but only Karen had truly captured her heart. Right from the start, Paula had wanted to give Karen the world. And she could. Paula had money—her father’s will had ensured that at least some of the Young fortune had already made its way to her. But Karen didn’t care about Paula’s wealth. She cared only about having a baby, a child to love and to raise. She herself was unable to conceive, which was the great sadness of her life. So a child was the one thing she looked to Paula to give her. But it was the one thing Paula could never do.

For a time, Paula had considered telling Karen a lie. She’d agree to go to the doctor and get tested. Then she’d come back and announce that she, too, was sterile. But surely then Karen would want to adopt. Paula had phoned her Uncle Howard and asked him if an adopted child would still face the family curse. He couldn’t be sure. Perhaps without the actual bloodline the child would be free. But he could give her no guarantee. That wasn’t enough assurance for Paula. She had seen what had happened to her father and to the others. There was no way she could ever bring a child into the family, through birth or adoption, to face that.

So she had told Karen that she simply didn’t want children. “A child would change our lives,” she said, over and over, a claim she repeated now.

“Yes, it would,” Karen said. “It would give us new purpose, a new direction.”

Paula turned away from the window to look at her. “Do we need a new purpose? A new direction? Aren’t you happy just with me?”

“I love you, Paula. Yes, I’m happy. But I don’t feel…complete.”

Paula couldn’t admit that she felt exactly the same way. When she was a teenager, before she’d learned about that room and the terrors it held for her family, she’d dreamed of having kids. Lots of them. How she’d loved watching over her little brother and her little cousins when the adults were inside Uncle Howard’s house, talking about those serious things that made them frown and sometimes cry. Paula hadn’t understood what all that had been about back then. She’d just been a kid romping in the grass.

Now she was nearly forty. Karen was telling her that her biological clock would soon run out. Paula countered that no kid wanted an old woman for a mother. But it was an argument that didn’t hold water. Karen’s own mother had been forty-two when she gave birth to Karen. “And Mom was the best mother in the world!” Karen told her emphatically.

A couple of times, Paula had come close to telling her the truth. But each time, she had chickened out at the last possible moment. The secret shamed her. What kind of family had to live with such a thing? She lived the years between those terrible family reunions in a state of denial; she imagined everyone in the family did. To think of it, to actually speak of it, would make it too real. What would Karen
think
if she told her? She might even leave her. At the time of the last family reunion ten years ago, they hadn’t met each other. So there had been no reason for Paula to tell Karen about the family’s terrible secret. Not until now—because next month she would have to drive up to Maine and face the chance that this time it might be
her
spending a night in that room.

No way would she ever let a son or daughter of hers face that.

“It’s just the way I feel,” she said to Karen, her eyes growing moist. “I’m sorry if that hurts you, baby. You don’t
know
how sorry I am.”

Karen said nothing more. Once again the discussion had gone nowhere. She just wiped her eyes and grabbed her purse. “I need to go for a walk,” she announced.

“Baby—”

Karen flinched when Paula moved to embrace her. So Paula stood back and let her pass, saying nothing more. The door closed hard on Karen’s way out.

Paula looked once more out the window. She saw Karen emerge from the building onto the sidewalk and hurry down the street. She thought she was crying. Paula’s heart broke.

She turned and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall. She looked hard. Closed off. She studied her blue eyes, hiding behind lowered lids. Her face was tight, the lines around her eyes more pronounced. Once, Paula had been very pretty. Her hair was still auburn, her eyelashes still dark and thick, but a light seemed to have gone out in her eyes. It was extinguished by the pain and disappointment that she had seen on the face of the woman she loved. Pain and disappointment she had caused.

Paula let out a long sigh. There was no way she could just sit here and wait for Karen to come back. She needed to talk to someone. Someone who would understand.

Paula grabbed her own purse and hurried out of the apartment, locking the door behind her and taking the steps two at a time. In the building’s garage, she hopped into her Mercedes CLK 350 and roared out onto the street. In a matter of minutes she was on the Massachusetts Turnpike, headed west. She flew through the suburbs, leaving behind the brownstone of the city for the soft rolling hills of the western part of the state. She dug her phone out of her purse and pressed a number on it, holding the device to her ear.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I’m on my way to see you,” she said when the person answered. “Is that okay?” She listened, a small, grateful smile creeping across her face. “Thanks. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

Her brother’s house was a sprawling white modern structure nestled deep in the woods. Dean had designed it himself. One of the top architects in Boston, Dean Young had been the best baby brother Paula could have asked for. He was the first person she told that she was gay. He had received the news with a warm smile and asked if there was anyone special in her life. At the time, there had not been, but now he and his wife and their kids adored Karen. Little Zac and Callie were always asking when they might have some cousins from Aunt Paula and Aunt Karen. How times were changing. Even in the midst of her distress, Paula smiled, thinking of her brother’s family.

But it was precisely because of those two children—Zac and Callie—that Paula needed so desperately to talk to Dean.

“Hey, sis,” he called to her from the side yard as her car crunched into the gravel driveway. “We’re out back. You’re just in time for a barbecue.”

She got out of the car and walked through the yard. Eleven-year-old twins Zac and Callie were splashing in the small lake on the side of the house, making their way through the tall cattails that grew there. Even from the yard Paula could see the dragonflies skittering above the lake. Dean’s wife Linda was placing a blue-and-white checkered tablecloth on the picnic table. Dean himself had returned to the grill, flipping some burgers and dogs. A typical weekend at the Youngs’ house. The perfect picture of a happy family.

As if something dark wasn’t lurking in the shadows, waiting to destroy them all.

“Where’s Karen?” Linda asked.

“Oh,” Paula said uncomfortably. “She had some…errands to run today.”

Flames crackled from the grill. “You want a hamburger or a hot dog?” Dean asked.

Paula smiled. “Neither, at the moment.” She glanced out at the kids in the lake. They were waving up at her, calling “Hi, Auntie!” Paula waved back. Again her heart seemed to splinter into a hundred pieces.

She took a seat at the picnic table as Linda poured her a glass of lemonade from a pitcher. “Something on your mind, Paula?” her sister-in-law asked.

“Well…” She hesitated, then smiled. She took a sip of the lemonade. “Yes, there is.”

“We figured, given how you sounded on the phone.” Linda moved around the table toward the grill. “I think it’s time I relieved the cook of his duties. Give you two some time for a good brother-sister chat.”

“Thanks, Lin.”

She watched as Linda, without saying a word, took the spatula from Dean’s hand and nodded for him to join Paula at the table. How comfortable their relationship was. How easy was their communication. There were no secrets between them. There couldn’t be. Linda had witnessed the family curse up close and personal. She had been there for the last family reunion ten years ago. She’d been there to watch their cousin Douglas enter that room in the basement. And she’d been there when they’d opened the door the next morning….

Paula shuddered.

Her brother was sitting down beside her. “What I’m
hoping
you’ve come to tell us,” he said, “is that you and Karen have finally set a date to get married.”

Paula felt her eyes moisten. “Oh, I
wish
that was what I was here for.”

Dean reached over and placed his hand over hers. “Talk to me, sis.”

“How do you do it?” she asked him plainly, looking at him directly.

His brown eyes held hers. “How do I do what?”

She gestured over at Zac and Callie splashing in the lake. “How do you go on, knowing that someday they will have to—” She couldn’t bring herself to speak the words.

Her brother sighed. “It’s a terrible burden. All I can do is pray that soon we will no longer have to deal with that room, that we will find a way to end the curse.”

Paula laughed bitterly. “End the curse? Eighty years, Dean! For eighty years—since our great-grandfather’s time—our family has tried to find a way to do that. But we have always failed.”

Dean’s eyes were fixed on his children. A look of profound sadness had settled over his face. “I know, Paula. Sometimes it feels as if there will never be an end.”

“How could you even bring them into this world, knowing what they would have to face?”

He turned to look at her sharply. “You know why! We had hope then! After Dad died in that room, we brought in that expert, Dr. Hobart. Remember? Remember how optimistic we were? It seemed as if the curse was over. When Aunt Jeanette—”

Paula raised her hands instinctively, almost as if to cover her ears. “Yes, Dean! I remember all that! Let’s not speak it aloud again!” It was too hard for Paula to remember. Such hope. It hurt now to remember that they all had had such hope.

He nodded. “All right. But it was during that period that Zac and Callie were born.”

She studied him. “There was hope then, yes. But there was no guarantee.”

He shook his head. “No. There was no guarantee.”

“And you and Linda had them anyway.”

Once again Dean glanced off at his children. He didn’t speak.

“Karen wants a baby,” Paula said after a silence of about a minute. “She’s been wanting one for some time. And I suspect this time will be decisive for her.” She paused. “She’s going to leave me if I don’t agree.”

Her brother moved his eyes back to her. “That’s it, Paula. That’s the answer to why we need the children.”

“What is?”

He smiled wanly. “We can’t stop living.”

“So you’re saying…you chose to have children even though there was no absolute guarantee that Dr. Hobart would rid the family of the curse? You chose to still have them because
we can’t stop living
?”

Dean nodded slowly.

“And did you ever regret your decision after it turned out that Hobart was wrong—that the curse was still as strong as ever?”

“Look at them in the lake,” Dean told her. Callie was splashing Zac and he was laughing, his tinkly little voice echoing through the trees. “How could I regret them?”

“You’ll regret it if you ever have to watch one of them go in that room!” Paula charged, her voice getting louder. “The way we watched Daddy! Do you want to open that door one morning and see Zac in there—or Callie—the way we saw Daddy? Or cousin Douglas?”

“Of course not!” Dean stood suddenly, angry now. “Of course I don’t want to see that!”

“I don’t want to see it either! So if it means losing Karen, then so be it! I will not bring a child into this world if it means that!”

Linda had approached the table. Her face was torn with concern and anguish. “Please,” she said. “Don’t let the children hear you.”

“I have to believe,” Dean said, lowering his voice, “that this time, it will end.”

“Why this time?” asked Paula. “What makes this time any different from all the other times?”

“Uncle Howard has spent millions in the last ten years. He’s met with all sorts of people. And this time he’s very encouraged. There’s someone up there with him now….”

“How do you know?”

“I phoned him a few days ago, and he told me he was expecting someone.” Dean sighed. “He seemed optimistic.”

Paula shook her head. “He was optimistic about all the others as well.”