The Secret (14 page)

“Kate was a liar,” Elizabeth murmured. “Frank did not love Kate. Frank loves Elizabeth.”

She lifted her head to search for Frank. Her eyes met the horrified stares of her parents instead.

“Why are you staring at me that way!” she screamed. “I did not kill her! I swear it!”

Her mother and father said nothing. Elizabeth rocked again.

They do not believe me, she thought bitterly. It is written all over their faces. They think I killed my own sister. They think I stabbed Kate with a knitting needle.

Frank was at her side now, kneeling beside the rocking chair. He took her warm, sticky hand in his. His hands were so cool, so calm and soothing.

“Elizabeth is the gentlest creature I know,” Frank said to her parents. “She could never kill anyone.”

Still her parents said nothing. Her mother's face was twisted in grief, fear, and confusion.

Elizabeth focused on Frank only.

Frank's handsome face was calming. He gave her a tiny, encouraging smile. At once she felt better.

I would be all alone in the world without Frank, she thought.

Then she said to her family, “Frank believes in me. He knows I am innocent. Why dont
you
believe me?”

No one said a word, but Elizabeth could see it on their faces. They blame me for Kate's death, she thought. They blame me
and
Frank.

Mr. Fier stormed out of the room. Mrs. Fier hurried after him. Then Simon, too, strode out, disgust registered on his face.

Elizabeth dissolved into tears and continued to rock back and forth, back and forth, crying.

“Hush,” Frank whispered. “Hush, Elizabeth. Forget about them. There is nothing you can do to make them believe you.”

He gave her a white handkerchief. She dried her eyes. “My own family,” she whispered. “They will never believe in me. They will never speak to me again, I suppose.”

“You are too hard on them,” Frank said. “They do not want to accept the truth. They
cannot
accept it. That is why they will not believe you.”

Now he took both of her hands in his. “But I believe in you, Elizabeth. I always will.”

She stopped rocking and smiled at him gratefully.

“It is hard for a mother and father to imagine their own child killing herself,” Frank went on. “But I know that is what happened. Kate killed herself. Your parents did not see it, Simon did not see it, but you and I could see it. Kate was going mad.”

Elizabeth nodded. All that strange behavior. It was the only logical explanation.

“Kate was jealous of you,” Frank said. “You know I never told Kate I would marry her. How could I? I am in love with you.”

He kissed her hands. Elizabeth drank in every word he said.

“Kate made it up,” said Frank. “She made up that whole story about our engagement. She ran right to you to tell you first. I think she really believed it was true. She was mad, truly mad, the poor girl.”

“Poor Kate,” Elizabeth whispered.

“She was capable of anything,” said Frank. “No one could help her.”

Elizabeth knew he was right. She sighed and started rocking again. “Frank, I cannot stay here. They all hate me.” She gestured toward the second floor, where her parents and Simon had gone. “I must get away.”

“I know what to do,” Frank said. “We can run away together. We shall elope.”

He gently took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward his. “Elizabeth Fier, will you marry me?”

They were the most wonderful words Elizabeth had ever heard. She felt a little of her old spirit come back.

“Yes,” she said, throwing her arms around Frank's neck. “Yes. We will leave tonight.”

Elizabeth's touch gave Frank a cold chill, but he did not let it show.

Yes, he thought to himself. We shall elope. We shall leave this house tonight, Elizabeth and I.

But only one of us will return. And it will not be Elizabeth.

This trusting girl will pack up all her belongings, he thought gleefully, and follow me wherever I go. I will Lake her into the woods to kill her, just as I killed her sister.

Kate's face was so wonderfully surprised at the end, he thought. When she saw me coming, she smiled. She opened her arms to me. Even when I raised the knitting needle over my head, she did not understand. She had no idea what was happening—not until the very last second.

Then she understood it all. It came to her in a flash.

The horror of betrayal.

The Fiers need to learn what that feels like. They will all know soon enough.

S
imon paced the house as if in a daze, weighted down with grief and sadness, his mind whirring with thoughts of Kate's death.

His parents were locked in their room. Through the door he could hear his father's heavy boots on the floor, his mother weeping and wailing for her daughters.

Elizabeth, too, was shut in her room. Simon put his ear to her door. He heard her scurrying around.

What could she be doing? he wondered. He was afraid she had lost her mind.

Evening fell. No one prepared supper, no one thought of eating. Simon's grief gave way to uneasy restlessness.

I
have
to get out of this house, he thought, or I will go mad!

The sky was still hovering over the trees as Simon
made his way out of the house, but once in the woods the darkness surprised him. It was midsummer, and the leaves were at their thickest. They blocked out most all of the fading sunlight.

Simon found the woods unusually still, The daytime animals had already hidden away for the night. The nocturnal creatures had not yet crept out of their dens to hunt.

Simon walked on, deeper and deeper into the woods. All he wanted was to put his house and family behind him.

He found himself at the clearing with the two flat stones. The woods were almost completely dark now. Simon sat on the bigger stone, the one that had once been his throne. He patted the smaller stone beside it. That had been Kate's.

Kate was dead now.

Kate is dead.

He realized he could not escape from his grief.

Simon peered through the darkness, staring at the spot where he had found Kate's body. A cold chill ran down his back as the ugly sight returned to him: Kate's eyes, so glassy, so empty. The needle poking out of her chest. The blood had spread across the front of her dress.

The blood had spread like evil, Simon thought. And now there is evil everywhere. It lives inside my family's house, right now. Evil lives inside Elizabeth and Frank. It lives in these woods, in the air around me.

He took a big gulp of air, then exhaled.

It lives inside me, too, he thought. I feel it. There is evil living inside me.

Then the deep silence of the woods was broken. Simon heard a noise. The snap of a twig, somewhere nearby.

Simon froze. He listened.

Was it an animal? A deer?

Snap
. The noise was behind him.

How had it moved so quickly, so quietly?

Simon wanted to turn, to look. But he was para. lyzed with fear.

Something grabbed him from behind.

A claw!

Pain shot through his shoulder. The claw dug deeper.

Simon turned at last. He took one look at his attacker, and the blood drained from his face. He screamed.

O
ld Aggie!

Simon felt the blood throb at his temples. He had never seen the old woman so close up.

Her face was hidden by a black hood. In one wrinkled hand she held the cane she always carried. The fingers of the other hand were covered with rings. They dug into Simon's shoulder. Aggie was so stooped that her head was even with Simon's as he sat before her.

Simon tried to stand.

But with one wrinkled hand, the old woman held him in place. The pain in Simon's shoulder deepened

“Do not go,” she commanded in a gravelly voice.

Shaking, Simon tried to calm down. It is only an old woman, he told himself. Only an old woman.

“S-sorry I screamed like that. You startled me,” he stammered.

Old Aggie slowly let go of his shoulder. Simon felt her long fingernails pull out of his skin.

She held out her bony, jeweled hand. “Give me your hand,” she croaked.

Simon hesitated. He saw her black eyes glowing like coal under her hood.

“Your hand,” she repeated in her deep, raspy voice.

Simon obeyed. He offered her his trembling hand.

She took it firmly in her own and bent close to his palm, her long, crooked nose almost grazing his hand.

Finally she released his hand and trained her eyes on his face. Simon's heart pounded as he waited to see what would happen next.

The children said she would kill us and eat our hearts, he thought, remembering his childhood fears of Old Aggie.

But that had to be a foolish childhood tale.

Aggie cleared her throat. “Hear me, Simon Fier, and hear me well.”

How does she know my name? Simon wondered. He did not dare to ask her.

“You have allowed a man named Franklin Goode into your home. Am I right?” croaked Old Aggie.

Simon nodded.

“That was foolish of you. He will destroy you all. You must stop him.”

Simon swallowed.

Old Aggie continued. “Franklin Goode killed your sister Kate. At this very moment he plots the death of Elizabeth.”

Simon was shaken. Could the old woman be speaking the truth?

“Fier,” Old Aggie murmured. “Fier. Fier. A terrible name. A cursed name.”

“What do you mean?” Simon demanded. “Why do you say that, old woman?”

“Your fate lies in your name,” Old Aggie replied, her face hidden in the darkness of her hood. “The letters in your name—they can be rearranged to spell
fire
. Fier. Fire. Fier. Fire.” She repeated the two words several times in her croaking voice, chanting them to sound like curses.

“I do not understand,” Simon confessed.

“That is how your family will come to its end,” Old Aggie rasped.

“What? How?” he demanded. “How?”

“By fire,” she murmured. “Fier. Fire. You shall meet your end by fire.”

Simon gasped as Old Aggie pointed a long, terrible finger into his face. “You are under a curse!” she cried. “A curse cast by the Goodes, and by your own evil history. Now you have allowed a Goode into your home, into your family. Your suffering will know no end, Simon Fier.”

“But wh-what can I do?” Simon choked out in a shrill, tight voice. “What?”

The old woman reached into the folds of her long black robe and pulled out a small silver dagger, its handle studded with dark rubies.

“Take this dagger,” she whispered. “Its tip is poisoned. You have only to scratch the skin of your enemy with it, and he will die.”

Simon took the dagger from her with a trembling hand.

“Be careful,” she warned him. “The dagger will only work once. Do not waste the poison.”

“I—I will not,” Simon promised, gazing at the dagger as if it were alive.

Old Aggie nodded. “Go now. Hurry, before it is too late.”

Simon jumped up and began to run through the dark woods.

When he glanced back at the clearing, the old woman had disappeared.

Had she told him the truth?

Was the rest of his family in danger? In danger from Frank Goode?

Or was the old woman as crazy as the children always claimed?

A yellow glow led him back to his house. He emerged from the woods and saw the kitchen ablaze with light. The rest of the house was in darkness.

Simon burst into the kitchen doorway and stopped.

He stared down and saw his mother sprawled in a dark puddle of blood on the floor.

Simon's father was slumped over the kitchen table. Bright red blood had flowed from a wound in his side and lay pooled on the floor.

“Simon!”

Elizabeth's voice.

Simon raised his eyes from the horrifying sight of his murdered parents.