Wicked Forest (48 page)

"You're imagining that conversation. I'll prove it to you after you let me out."

"No, you are the one who is confused. Willow.

I'll prove it to you instead. I'll ask Grace to tell you."

"Mother is dead. Linden. She died. You were at the hospital. You saw her. Think, remember."

"No," he said, still speaking in that hoarse whisper. "We did all that just to keep those busybodies away from us, and it worked. No one has come here. No one will come. either." He laughed.

"Your professor called to confirm his dinner date. and I told him you were gone. You had decided to visit your relatives and you were gone. I told him we had decided to move after all. He was very disappointed, but he won't be bothering us again. It will just be you and I. Willow, just as I've always planned for it to be, And Hannah, of course. Our Hannah. Rest," he said.

"Linden!"

He walked away. I could hear him descending the stairway, and then a deep and hollow silence fell over the big house.

I wasn't just a prisoner in my suite. I was a prisoner in Linden's very disturbed mind.

.

When it was a little after seven o'clock and Miguel had not arrived. I began to believe that Linden had told the truth concerning the phone call. Would Miguel have believed him? If he did. I could be in here for days, maybe weeks before anyone realized it.

In his madness. Linden could sound logical and intelligent to anyone who called and asked for me, even my attorney. Manon and the girls wouldn't challenge anything he said. I even wished Thatcher would come by for some reason, any reason, no matter how selfish it was.

With little to do except think and be irritable. I paced the suite. Vexed to the point of wanting to tear every piece of furniture apart or beat holes in the very walls that contained me. I fixed my eyes on the painting Linden had done for Thatcher and me as a wedding present. How it had annoyed Thatcher. I thought. I shouldn't have tolerated it above our bed like this. In a surge of rage. I reached up and pulled it from its hooks, tossing it to the floor. For a moment I stood over it, breathing hard, and then my eyes went to the wall where Linden himself had hung it For a moment it seemed as if all the air had left my lungs and been replaced with hot, steamy vapor. I thought I would explode.

There in the wall was a distinct hole. I stood on the bed and peered through it. I could see clearly into the suite Linden had once occupied before he decided to move out and permit it to be used as our nursery.

What good was a hole in the wall if a portrait in a frame was hung over it? I thought, and then got down and examined the picture. Very clearly, exactly where the hole was located behind the painting, the picture had an area so thin and sheer it was diaphanous.

Anyone could easily see through it. From the angle the portrait had been hung above our bed. Linden could easily look down at us and, most likely, was now periodically looking down at me.

So this was how he knew when to come into the room to put down a new tray of food. How eerie and terrifying cleverness and logic could be when they were housed within the walls of madness. I thought.

I struggled to get the picture back on the wall.

Surely he would be returning to spy on me. What I had to do now was convince him I was asleep. Then he would unlock that door. I crawled under the blanket, closed my eyes, and waited. Actually. I nearly really fell asleep waiting. Finally, close to seven-thirty, I could hear him in the hallway. I heard him tinkering with the lock and hasp, doing it as quietly and as gently as he could, and then, with my eyes barely open. I saw the door nudged, saw him peer in to study me. I closed my eyes tightly and held my breath.

Practically tiptoeing across the room, he carried a new tray of food to the serving table. He put it down and lifted the old tray away, bending down to put it aside so he could place the new tray on the table.

When he did that. I pushed him forward and he went spilling over the tray to the floor. I didn't wait. With the top sheet wrapped around myself. I leaped from the bed and charged at the door.

"Willow, No!" he screamed after me. I didn't hesitate a moment. I was out of the door and down the hallway, but at the top of the stairway. I stopped and stared down in utter shock. Every window before me had been painted over in black. The sight of it took my breath away. I had no doubt that every single window in the grand house had been so covered in black. Linden in his madness was shutting the outside world away, shutting us up in his own little world.

The gates and the high walls around our property were not enough to satisfy his paranoia.

I heard him scrambling behind me and hurried frantically down the steps, but in my haste, I stepped on the train of the sheet I had wrapped hastily around myself and lost my footing. I spilled forward, desperately trying to break my fall with my extended arms. but I spun too far to the right, smacking my head against the balustrade and tumbling down the stairway, falling like the Humpty-Dumpty I had considered myself to be after I discovered Thatcher's betrayals. My last conscious thought was. They will never put me together again.

.

I awoke in Linden's arms. He was carrying me back up the stairway. I groaned. My lower back ached where I had wrenched it. and I could feel the bruise on my forehead swelling into a bump. He walked mechanically, his eyes forward.

"Let me go," I whispered through a throat sore from shouting and crying.

He did not respond. I tried to struggle free, but his grip on me was iron firm. I was no better than a goldfish in a plastic bag. We were heading up the stairs, heading right back to my suite, where he would lock me in again.

"No," I moaned.

"You shouldn't have done that. Willow. You could have hurt Hannah. You could have hurt our baby. You have to listen to me. I know what's best for us now." he recited. He spoke like someone in a dream and reminded me of what he was like when I had first returned and he had gone sleepwalking on the beach. He couldn't hear anything I was saying. He was last in his own dream.

Just as we reached the landing. I heard the sound of breaking glass. He did, too, and he paused.

There was more of it, and then I heard the most beautiful sound of all. I heard Miguel call out my name.

Linden's face filled with panic. He turned me as if to start dawn the stairs again, then spun to continue upward.

"Miguel! Help me!" I shouted.

In seconds, he was at the bottom of the

stairway,

"Linden," he screamed. "Put her down. Put her down now." Linden turned and looked at him.

"Go away," he said. "This is our home. You don't belong here. Go away"

Miguel started up the stairs slowly.

You have to put her down, Linden. You can hurt her if you don't. Now, just put her down gently.

Everything will be all right if you do it slowly.

Linden. Go on," Miguel urged.

Linden shook his head.

"Don't come up here!" he cried. "You don't belong here. No one else belongs here but us. This is our home, not yours. Go away."

He stepped to his left, bringing me right to the balustrade. Miguel stopped and held out his right arm.

Linden lifted me higher and to the left, as if he was going to drop me over the balustrade.

"Careful with her," Miguel said sharply.

"Go away," Linden cried in response. "Go away." he repeated, his voice full of threat. He lifted me toward the balustrade again, and I cried out.

Miguel held his ground, obviously terrified. His fear revved up my own. My heart was pounding so hard. I thought I would pass out and not even know if I was dropped from this height.

"Okay," Miguel said after another moment. "I'll go away, Linden. You put her down."

He backed down a step to demonstrate his

retreat. Linden didn't budge,

"I'm going," Miguel said. "but you have to be careful with her.. Remember, she's pregnant. Linden."

"I know she's pregnant. I was the first to know, Don't tell me she's pregnant."

"Of course you knew," Miguel said. He smiled.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean you didn't know."

"It's our Hannah coming. Ours!"

"Oh, I know. I just stopped by to congratulate you. I want to be your friend, that's all. I'm here to help."

"We don't need your help and we don't need any friends, not from here. Just leave us alone and tell everyone else out there to leave us alone."

"Okay. If that's the way you'd like it."

"Yes, it is."

-"All right," Miguel said, backing farther down the stairs. "I'll just be going, then."

"Good," Linden said. ―Go.‖

Miguel and I looked at each other. I gave him a small nod to indicate I was all right and he should continue to placate Linden.

"Call me if you need anything," Miguel said, and turned, walking down the stairs and to the front entrance.

Linden watched suspiciously. Miguel turned again, waved, and unlocked the door. Then he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

"Good," Linden said. "See? Now they will all leave us alone."

He turned and continued up the stairway. I said nothing. He carried me into the suite and laid me on the bed,

"I brought you a good dinner." he said. "but you made me spill it all over the floor. You'll have to wait for me to get you new food."

"Okay," I said. He studied me.

You know I'm doing all this for us, and you know it's right and the best, don't you?"

"Yes, Linden."

He picked up the dishes and put them on the tray,

"I'll be back in a little while," he said. "Maybe I'll sit here and eat with you."

"I'd like that, Linden."

"Good," he said, and walked out. He closed the door and I heard the padlock scrape through the hasp again.

Only a few minutes later. I heard Miguel

working at the hasp. I heard him snap it off, and then he opened the door.

"Willow," he cried, rushing to me.

I threw my arms around him and burst into tears.

"I've called for help. The police and an ambulance will be here very soon."

1 don't want him to be taken to jail, Miguel."

"I know. I'll make sure he's taken to psychiatric."

"What's he doing now?"

"He's in the kitchen. He's talking as if..."

"What?"

"As if your mother were sitting there watching him."

"How sad."

"But how dangerous and horrible it must have been for you." Miguel said. "When I called and he gave me that story about you leaving. I knew something was very wrong. I actually called the police, but they said they had no justification for coming out here. They phoned, and he answered and sounded very reasonable to them.

"I came as quickly as I could, and then I had to scale the wall to get in. The moment I saw that all the windows in the house had been painted black. I went into a fit of terror and broke through the French door in the den."

I started to cry again.

"It's all right. Willow. It's all right now. I'm here for you. I'll always be here for you," he added.

He kissed the tears away from my cheeks and held me tightly.

I could hear Linden downstairs, moving in and out of his illusions, peopled by the same ghosts that had twisted and tormented him for so long.

It was time to drive them away forever.

I couldn't do it alone, but I had no doubt now that I would never be alone as I had often been before, even after I had come here,

Like Linden. I would drive my ghosts away as well.

.

Little Hannah proved to be as resilient as I had hoped. My fall on the stairway and my torment and turmoil did not do injury to my pregnancy. Almost to the day her birthing was predicted, she insisted on entering this world. Miguel rushed me to the hospital and she was born at 7 A.M., weighing close to eight pounds.

My divorce settlement with Thatcher provided for his visitation rights, although I had little expectation of his implementing them very much. In fact, when he was called and told of Hannah's birth, he did not appear at the hospital until the following day, and only on his way to a court hearing. Neither Bunny nor Asher ever made an attempt to see their grandchild, probably still clinging to the nasty rumors Whitney had spread.

Hannah was born with hair a shade or so lighter than mine, closer to my mother's hair, actually, which made me very happy, but which I was sure helped fan the flames of those horrible and disgusting stories the Eatans had spread to justify Thatcher's adulterous behavior.

I was too busy now to care. Despite my plans to return to my studies. however, I put off hiring a nanny. I decided I wanted to be with Hannah until she was at least a year and a half. I did hire a new maid, who was an excellent cook as well. Her name was Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Betty Davis, which was, of course.

funny, especially when she introduced herself as the real Betty Davis."

She looked nothing like Bette Davis the actress.

My Betty Davis was nearly six feet tall and stout, with rolling-pin forearms and graying strawberry-blond hair. She had freckles peppered over the crests of her puffy cheeks. She told me she was fifty-one, but when Miguel met her, he whispered that he thought she was more like sixty-one. She told me her husband had died more than fifteen years ago and left her with little or nothing. He was a hardworking but mediocre salesman who went from one commission job to another, never, by her own description, very ambitious. They had no children. She had been a librarian in a county library in Virginia before moving to Florida to live with her sister and brother-in-law, but, again according to her, soon felt like a third wheel and went out looking for work as a live-in maid. Her last employer had passed away, but she had excellent recommendations. Most important for me, she was very good with Hannah, so good, in fact, that I had my suspicions about her claim that she never had any children.

Miguel insisted I keep my hand in my studies and enrolled me in a study program that enabled me to pick up some credits after writing a paper. Soon after Hannah's birth, he and I began to see each other on a more romantic and regular basis and then. on Hannah's first birthday, he proposed and I accepted.