The Unloved (38 page)

There was a sudden lull in the storm outside. The wind dropped off, and the rain slackened to a soft drizzle. And then, out of the strange silence that fell over the house, the ominous sound of Marguerite’s uneven gait resounded hollowly as she began to climb the stairs.

Jeff—cowering back against the window, his eyes round and terrified—gazed up at his sister. “What are we going to do?” he whispered. “She’s coming!”

“Maybe she’s not,” Julie whispered back, but her voice held no conviction, for she was now as frightened as Jeff.

They heard Marguerite reach the top of the stairs, then pause. A moment later the footsteps began again. Holding their breaths, Julie and Jeff listened.

And the footsteps grew quieter; Marguerite was going the other way. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, they heard the door at the far end of the hall open and close, and they knew that their aunt had gone back to her mother’s room.

“What should we do?” Jeff pleaded.

Julie’s mind churned. Outside, the wind was coming up again, and once more the rain pounded on the windows. A bolt of lightning rent the night, followed by a sharp clap of thunder. She looked fearfully toward the window, not certain what was more frightening—the idea of staying in the house with her aunt, or going outside to face the wrath of the storm. “I don’t know,” Julie said at last. “M-Maybe she’s forgotten about us. Maybe she went to bed.”

Jeff pressed his ear against the door, listening, but could hear nothing above the renewed fury of the storm. And then
there was a sharp knock on the door and Jeff leaped back, his face turning ashen.

“Open this door!” Marguerite commanded, and both children knew at once that something in their aunt’s voice had changed. It had risen sharply from its usual tone, and taken on a rasping harshness. “How dare you try to lock me out! How dare you!”

The children watched as the knob turned back and forth and the door rattled in its frame as Marguerite shook it. Then the rattling suddenly stopped and there was a moment of silence.

“W-What’s she doing?” Julie stammered.

Then a faint tinkling sound drifted through the door, and they both knew.

“It’s the keys,” Jeff wailed, and as if to confirm his words, they heard a metallic scraping and saw the key to Julie’s door drop to the floor as another key slid into the slot from the other side. Jeff held his breath once again as Marguerite tried to open the lock.

The key didn’t fit, and a second later they heard it being withdrawn, only to be replaced by another.

“We have to
do
something,” Jeff wailed. He was sobbing with terror now, his eyes darting back and forth between his sister and the lock that was the only thing between him and his aunt.

Once again Julie wracked her brains, and then knew what she had to do. Her legs trembling, she crossed the room and picked up the key that lay on the floor. A moment later, as Marguerite withdrew the third key from the lock, Julie quickly inserted her own and twisted it a quarter of a turn.

“What are you doing?” Jeff demanded, his voice strangling on the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. “Don’t unlock it!”

“I’m not,” Julie whispered back. “I just turned the key a little bit so it won’t fall out. But now she can’t get one in from the other side! We’re safe!”

As if to prove her words, there was a scraping sound from the other side of the door, and the key that now protruded
from the lock beneath the doorknob wiggled but didn’t drop out.

A moment after that Marguerite began pounding on the door, shouting her demands that the door be opened at once.

Her eyes wide with terror, Julie grasped her brother’s hand in her own and backed away from the door.

The pounding went on, and Marguerite’s furious voice continued to rave, but her words were indistinct now, lost in the raging fury of the storm.

“We’re safe,” Julie whispered. “It worked—she can’t get in!”

They sat on the edge of Julie’s bed, huddled together, trying to shut out the manic pounding at the door. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the pounding stopped. Julie tensed, waiting for it to begin again, but the seconds ticked by and all they heard was the raging of the storm.

“Wh-What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know,” Julie whispered, her mind racing. Then, in a flash, she knew.

Her little bathroom that connected to the room next door! Was the other door locked? She didn’t know!

Yelping as she realized that her aunt must have remembered the connecting bath, too, she let go of Jeff and raced to the bathroom door. She twisted the knob and pushed, but the door stuck for a moment. She hurled her weight against it then, and it flew open.

Ten feet away, at the other end of the small bathroom, was the other door. There was no key in this lock, only a small knob that threw a bolt. If she could just get to it in time—

She threw herself toward the door, her fingers reaching for the knob.

Too late.

Just as she reached it, the door opened.

Marguerite, her face lit eerily by the small hurricane lamp in her hand, stood staring at Julie, her eyes smoldering with madness.

*      *      *

Kerry heard the murmur of his parents’ voices in the parlor as he slipped through the kitchen, then pushed the back door open to duck out into the rain. The wind, coming straight out of the east now, drove a stinging lash of rain into his face, and he tucked his head low as he ran the few steps to his car and jumped into the driver’s seat. He slammed the door shut and twisted the key in the ignition.

The motor ground for a few seconds, coughed, then caught, and he pumped the accelerator a few times, then put the car in gear. Backing down the driveway, he slewed the car into a sharp turn, slamming the transmission into low gear, then letting the clutch pop. The rear tires, already nearly bald, lost their grip on the wet pavement, and the car skidded wildly for a moment before Kerry regained control of himself and eased up on the gas pedal. The engine slowed, and a moment later he felt the tires catch. The car surged down the street.

He was on the main highway, approaching the intersection with the causeway road, when a gust of wind suddenly clawed at the torn canvas top of the car. There was a loud tearing sound, and suddenly the top was gone, nothing left of it but tatters of canvas lashing wildly in the wind. The rain poured down on Kerry now, but he ignored it, squinting his eyes against both the dark and the rain as he struggled to see ahead.

The intersection loomed up, and he pulled the car into a shuddering right turn. Once again the tires threatened to lose their grip on the pavement, but Kerry eased up on the gas, and the wheels held steady. And then the causeway was ahead of him, all but lost in a wind-whipped lather of rain and foam.

He slowed the car, leaning forward to peer through the windshield, but could see nothing. Finally he brought the car to a halt, then stood up, thrusting his head and shoulders through the scraps of canvas that still clung to the metal skeleton of the convertible top.

A bolt of lightning flashed, and for a split second Kerry could see the causeway clearly. It was awash with water, but he was almost certain he could see the pavement all the way across to the island. He dropped back into the driver’s seat,
then hesitated as he remembered what had happened to Anne Devereaux only a few weeks ago. But this storm was different, he realized.

The storm that had claimed Anne, and Mary-Beth Fletcher, too, had boiled up from the south, the winds running parallel to the coast, pushing water ahead of them. Those surges had built up the waves that broke over the roadway, sweeping Anne’s car with them.

But tonight the wind was shifting wildly, right now it was coming out of the east, so that it was the island itself the pounding waves were battering. Here, in the temporary shelter of the mass of Devereaux Island, there was a momentary respite from the most dangerous waves.

Making up his mind, Kerry put the car in low gear and eased the clutch out. The battered convertible trembled as a gust of wind hit it, then began moving slowly out onto the causeway.

Julie stared at her aunt, her heart beating wildly. Marguerite seemed to have aged in the hour since Julie had last seen her, and there was a haggardness about her face that even the thick layers of fresh makeup didn’t cover.

Her eyes, heavily circled with dark shadow, burned brightly, and her whole face seemed to glow in the candlelight like some strange Halloween mask that was lit from within.

She wore one of her mother’s dresses, with a red skirt that flowed nearly to the floor, and a black lace bodice, buttoned to the neck, with long sleeves that ended in festoons of more lace around her wrists. The string of jet beads hung around her neck, their facets glinting brightly as they caught the light of the candle.

“How dare you?” Marguerite demanded, her eyes fixing furiously on Julie. “When I tell you to do something, I expect to be obeyed!”

Julie shrank back, but Marguerite’s right hand snaked out and grasped her by the wrist. “I—I’m sorry, Aunt Marguerite,” Julie whispered. “I—I couldn’t hear you.”

“Couldn’t hear me?” Marguerite parroted, her voice taking on the mocking edge of sarcasm that had been one of her mother’s most effective weapons. “If you couldn’t hear me, it was because you weren’t listening, wasn’t it?” When Julie’s response was not instantaneous, Marguerite’s grip on her niece’s wrist tightened. “Wasn’t it?” she demanded once more.

“I—I guess so,” Julie stammered. Her mind was reeling now, as panic welled up inside her. What could she do? Her eyes searched the tiny bathroom frantically, searching for something—anything—she could use as a weapon. But Marguerite jerked on her arm, whirling her around to push her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, where Jeff, nearly paralyzed with fear, stood at the head of Julie’s bed, his arms wrapped around the bedpost.

“You,” Marguerite said, her voice dropping sharply, her eyes fixing accusingly on the terrified child. Jeff shrank back against the wall.

Dragging Julie with her, Marguerite crossed the room, her right leg moving stiffly, only barely supporting her weight. Setting the hurricane lamp on the bed table, she grasped Jeff’s arm and started toward the door, “Open it!” she commanded, shoving Jeff forward. A small cry of pain escaping his lips, Jeff fumbled with the key, then managed to twist it in the lock and pull the bedroom door open. Pushing the children ahead of her, never releasing her grip on their arms, Marguerite herded them into the candlelit hallway. “What am I going to do with you?” Marguerite mumbled as she limped painfully down the long corridor.

“D-Don’t hurt us, Aunt Marguerite,” Julie managed to gasp, and slowly Marguerite’s head swung around and her eyes fixed on Julie. Her lips twisted into a strange rictus of a smile.

“Hurt you?” she asked. “I won’t hurt you, my darling. Why would I hurt my darling little girl? I love my little girl. My little girl is all I have and all I love—”

She stopped abruptly and her eyes clouded as she stared at the closed door to the nursery. Once again her hand tightened on Julie’s wrist, her fingers, like claws, digging deeply into
the flesh of Julie’s arm. “Open the door,” she whispered, her voice suddenly trembling as her breath began to come in panting gasps.

Silently Julie obeyed her aunt’s instructions, removing the heavy ring of keys from the pocket of Marguerite’s dress, then trying them one by one in the door until finally one of them fit and she felt the bolt of the lock click back, Her hand shaking, she turned the knob of the nursery door and pushed it open.

With sudden violence Marguerite hurled Jeff into the little room. Losing his balance, he sprawled on the floor and screamed with pain as he felt a sharp twist in his ankle. Ignoring his cries, Marguerite pulled the door shut, locked it, then dropped the keys back in her pocket.

“Wh-Why did you do that?” Julie quavered. “Why did you lock him in there?”

Marguerite gazed at Julie contemptuously. “What would you have me do with him?” she said. “He’s just like all little boys. Always poking their noses in where they’re not wanted, always in the way.”

Then she was moving again, part of her weight leaning heavily on Julie, dragging her right leg forward until it was even with her left, then striding ahead on her left leg, only to drag the right one forward once more. When they came to the landing, she paused, drawing in deep gasps of air as she tried to catch her breath. “Upstairs,” she said at last, and with renewed strength began climbing the flight of stairs that led to the ballroom.

Julie, her mind almost numb with fear now, let herself be guided up the stairs and into the ballroom itself. Marguerite reached into the pocket of her dress and brought forth a box of wooden matches. Striking one, she lit a stub of a candle that stood on top of the piano and turned to glare at Julie. “Are you ready?” she asked.

“R-Ready? For what, Aunt Marguerite? Wh-Why are we up here?”

“To dance!” Marguerite spat the words at Julie. “We have to rehearse, my darling. You don’t want to look bad tomorrow, do you?”

Julie stared blankly at her aunt. What was she talking about? Tomorrow? There wasn’t anything happening tomorrow, was there?

As if reading her thoughts, Marguerite’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you remember? You have a recital tomorrow. All your friends will be here, and you are going to dance for them!”

She seated herself at the piano and opened the lid over the keyboard. For a moment Julie wanted to flee, wanted to run out of the ballroom, down the stairs and out of the house. She could hide in the storm, hide all night if she had to—

And then she remembered Jeff. If she left, what would her aunt do to her brother?

She couldn’t leave, not as long as Jeff was locked in the nursery.

A moment later, as Marguerite struck the first chords on the out of tune piano, Julie forced her feet into the unnatural pose of the first position of classical ballet.…

Kerry was almost across the causeway when the wind suddenly shifted and the car shuddered as a mass of air struck it. Hands tightening on the wheel, he slowed the car to little more than a crawl. He was feeling his way along the narrow strip of pavement, the blacktop completely invisible beneath the torrents of rain and wind-whipped foam. The headlights glowed brightly, but the glare of the rain nearly blinded him, and the windshield wipers were useless. Just as he felt the tension inside him reach the breaking point, he felt a slight bump as he left the blacktop of the causeway and dropped onto the dirt road of the island. He pressed the accelerator then, and the car shot forward before skidding madly in the soft mud of the road.