Army Jacket swallowed, twisted the k.n.o.b, and yanked the door open, falling into a defensive crouch. The hallway was empty.
"Allergies," he yelled at her, then slipped out the doorway and disappeared.
Cynthia fell back on the pillows, sweat gathering on her brow. The beggar hadn"t taken him. The beggar had not been jealous. The beggar was too confident, too patient, to be jealous.
She clutched the blankets as the afternoon sun sank and the shadows grew long on the bedroom wall. She should have fled while it was still light, but her limbs were limp as sacks of jelly. Fleeing was useless, anyway. He"d always had her.
Dusk came, dangling its gray rags, shaking lint over the world.
Under the bed, stirrings and scratches.
Under the bed, breathing.
Cynthia whimpered, curled into a fetal position, nude and burning and vulnerable. Waiting, like always.
The hand scrabbled along the side of the mattress. It clutched the blankets and began dragging the body that wore it from the vague ether. Cynthia closed her eyes, tight like she had as a small child, so tight the tears pressed out. She trembled, her sobs in rhythm with the horrible rasping of the beggar"s breath.
She could feel it looming over her now, its legs formed, the transition from dust back to flesh complete. Cynthia held her breath, the last trick. Maybe if she could hold her breath forever . . .
The hand touched her gently. The skin was soft, soft as velvet.
Cynthia almost screamed. But she knew what would happen if she screamed. Because Mommy might hear and things like this are secret and it"s okay to touch people who love you but some people wouldn"t understand. Bad girls who scream have to be punished. They have to be sent into the dark place under the bed.
And they have to stay under the bed until Daddy says it"s okay to come out.
So Cynthia didn"t scream, even as the hand ran over her skin, leaving a trail of dust.
She didn"t make a sound as the beggar climbed onto the bed. If she was a good little girl, then the beggar would go away after he finished, and wouldn"t drag her into the underthere.
The dust settled over her, a smothering blanket of velvet.
If only she could hold her breath forever.
THE WHITE HOUSE.
By John Everson.
"There is no poetry in death," Mrs. Tanser said. "Only loss and rot, stink and waste. I never could understand those gothic romantics who celebrate the dark and l.u.s.t after the cycle of decay."
The little girl in front of her didn"t say a thing, but nodded creamy, unblemished cheeks as if she understood.
"I suppose that doesn"t make much sense to you," Mrs. Tanser continued, running a powder-coated finger up the girl"s cheek. "You came here hoping to sell cookies and to visit my nieces, and here I am talking to you about death! But I can"t deny death, mind you. Everything has its place. And every place, its thing."
The older woman laughed, and stood up from the table. Her plate of thinly sliced apples remained untouched, uneaten, the brown creep of time already shadowing the fruit. The girl"s plate, however, glistened with the juice of apple long gone.
Mrs. Tanser ground a pestle into a tall bucket that squeaked and shifted on the counter as she worked.
"Well, I"m sorry my nieces Genna and Jillie aren"t here any longer. They only came for a visit, so I"m glad you got to meet them. Perhaps you"ll have the chance to be with them again soon. But I talk too much and time pa.s.ses. Too fast, too fast. Eat my apples dear. Waste not, want not."
The plate slid across the table. Mrs. Tanser raised a silver eyebrow as it did.
"You are afraid of this house, aren"t you?"
The child nodded, slowly. Her eyes were blue and wide, and the reflection of the older woman"s methodic grinding and pummeling of the substance in the bucket glimmered like a ghost in their mirror.
"I can"t say that I"m surprised. Quite the reputation it has. I didn"t realize that when I moved in, but now it makes sense what a steal it was. I knew there was something wrong when the realtor quoted me the pricea"you could see it in her face. She was afraid, that silly woman was, not that she knew why. A beautiful old mansion like this, perched on the top of the most scenic hill in town? I have to admit, I didn"t care what was wrong with ita"for that price, I thought, I could fix it. And then I moved in, and started teaching down at Barnard Elementary, and I found out why that girl was scared. You know, she wouldn"t even walk into the house past the front foyer?"
Mrs. Tanser laughed. The pestle clinked against the top of the bucket, and a hazy cloud puffed from the opening like blown flour.
"The one warning that woman said to me was, *You know, it"s a bad place for children." I didn"t even ask why. *I don"t have any," I told her. That shut her up. Or maybe it didn"t, I didn"t care. I walked up those gorgeous oak stairs that wind out of the living room and up to the boudoir. I wanted to see it all, with or without her help. She didn"t come with me."
Mrs. Tanser stopped her grinding then and considered. "Would you like to see the upstairs?" she asked.
The little girl shrugged, and the older woman dropped the pestle.
"That settles it. Genna and Jillie aren"t here, but I can still show you the house. Come on upstairs. I"m going to show you the most beautiful four-poster bed your little eyes have ever seen. The girls loved it! It may be the only four-poster bed your little eyes have ever seen."
The girl rose from the table, hands held straight at the sides of her red and green striped skirt. She wanted to leave, felt embarra.s.sed that she"d been coaxed into staying somehow. Her freckles threatened to burst into flame as she waited for Mrs. Tanser to wash her hands in the sink.
"C"mon then," Mrs. Tanser said at last, and led the girl back towards the front door she"d come in. Her backpack from school still lay abandoned on the floor nearby. Mrs. Tanser put a foot on the first varnished step, and then paused.
"What"s your name again then, young lady?"
"Tricia," the girl answered, in a voice high as a flute song.
"Tricia," Mrs. Tanser announced, waving at the crystal jewels of the chandelier above, and the burnished curves of the banister on the second floor landing above.
"Welcome to White House," she said. "Welcome to the House of Bones."
At the top of the landing, Mrs. Tanser stopped again. "This house was built in 1878 by Garfield White," she announced. "I looked it up. He was a railroad man, made his living helping folks move their steel and wood and food and such from one place to the next. Why he settled here, in the middle of nowhere, I"ll never know, but there you go. Every thing has a place, and every place a thing. He built this place, and put his wife here in it to raise their son. Maybe he thought she"d give the boy a good upbringing here, away from the corruption and sin of the cities."
Mrs. Tanser motioned the girl to follow her down the hall to the dark rimmed doorway of a room.
"That woman spent her time in here, so the stories go, day after day after day while her Garfield rode the rails making his fortune. He stayed out on those rails more and more, hoping maybe to gain his son an inheritance."
The older woman stepped with a click and an echoey clack into the room. The walls were papered in a pattern of whirling pinks and blossomed yellows. But the garish sidelights did little to detract from the majesty of the enormous mahogany bed that dominated the center. Its rich posts rose from lion claw paws on the floor to taper in spears to within inches of the faded ceiling. A translucent gauze of yellowed lace hung between the posts and darkened the s.p.a.ce with ghostly light.
"The more her husband stayed lost on the trains, the more his wife stayed lost here, in this very bed," Mrs. Tanser said. "Go ahead, sit on it yourself and see why!"
Tricia stepped into the room but stopped at the edge of the mattress, which was nearly as tall as her.
"Use the step," Mrs. Tanser said, pointing to the dark wooden box near the girl"s feet. "In those days, you wanted to sleep as high above the ground as you could. Rats, you know."
Tricia hopped up on the step with the mention of rodents, and rolled her body onto the heavy down mattress, smiling at the caress of the silken blue comforter that covered it.
"They called it the White House, and not because it was in Washington, D.C.," Mrs. Tanser said. "But it was anything but white inside. Mrs. White kept all of the drapes pulled shut, and spent more and more time here, in this bed. They say she was trying to make it feel like nighttime inside, so her son would sleep. Had the colic, and cried all day long. But pulling the drapes did nothing to calm the boy, and after awhile, Mrs. White went a little bit mad, I think. Day after day, night after night, her baby cried, cried, cried and she paced this floor with him, pounding his tiny back and begging him to burp and then screaming at him to burp."
Mrs. Tanser shook her head.
"That boy never saw that nest egg his father was out putting away. When Mr. White came back from one of his long trips down the rails, he found the house dark, and all the shutters pulled. I probably shouldn"t be telling you this, you being a young girl and alla"but you"ve probably seen worse on TV. Oh the things they show on that tube." Mrs. Tanser shook her head brows creased in dreadful sadness.
"When Mr. White came home that day, he walked up those same stairs you and I just did, and knew right away something was wrong. I won"t say more than this, but the smell was in the air, and he was no fool. He rushed to the bedroom and threw open this door anda"
Tricia"s eyes widened as the story unfolded.
"awhen the light streamed into the pitch-black room, he found his wife and his son, here in the shadows. Only they were in no condition to leave. The poor boy was hung from his tiny neck right off of that pole there," Mrs. Tanser pointed at the right pole at the foot of the bed. "Mrs. White had tried to quiet him by wrapping a sheet around his heada"but when he didn"t quiet, she"d finally snapped. She hung him by his tiny neck like a Christmas ornament at the foot of the bed, and when he finally quieted, she laid down on the pillow and went to sleep. When she woke, and realized what she"d done, she took her own life, using her husband"s straight razor.
"If I took the sheets off this bed you could still see the marks of her blood. n.o.body"s ever changed that mattress. She laid down right there, where you are, and cut her self again and again and again until she couldn"t cut or scream anymore."
Tricia leapt from the bed as if it had turned to a stove burner.
Mrs. Tanser grinned, wrinkles catching at the corner of her eyes like broken gla.s.s.
"She used that blade so much, they say she had to have a closed casket. Can"t imagine cutting your own face with a razorblade myself, but, I can"t imagine hanging your own baby, neither!
"There"s a reason they started calling this place the House of Bones. But that came later. Mr. White kept this place for almost 30 years after his wife killed their son, and herself here. And he never remarried. In fact, he may have been dead for a year or more before the town grew the wiser. He was gone for long periods at a time on the railroad, and it was only when the spring winds brought a tree down on the west wing of the house that someone from the town realized it had been months and months since Mr. White had been seen. When they looked into it, they found out that he hadn"t been out on a rail for more than a year, and that"s when someone thought to look in the bas.e.m.e.nt."
Mrs. Tanser looked at the trembling girl and shook her head.
"I"m sorry, I"m scaring you. My home does not have a cheery history, I must admit. But it"s fascinating too, don"t you think?"
The old woman shook her head. "C"mon downstairs, and I"ll buy some of those Girl Scout cookies. A lady needs her vices, huh?"
The doorbell rang. But there was no silhouette showing through the stained purple gla.s.s in the front door of White House.
Mrs. Tanser answered the ring, nevertheless, and smiled as she saw the pale features of the girl on the landing, shivering and yet waiting outside. So small, she couldn"t even send her shadow through the gla.s.s.
"Come in, child," she insisted. "You"ll catch your death of cold. I don"t believe your mother lets you go out like that in the fall chill."
Tricia entered the house again, driven by a feeling she could not have explained. The house scared her to death. Mrs. Tanser was strange. But interesting. A welcome diversion after a boring day at school.
"I didn"t think you"d come back after the story of Mr. and Mrs. White," the teacher exclaimed. "Sometimes I feel like I am just the steward for this house. I have to give its history, no matter how twisted it may be."
She motioned the girl into the kitchen, a room colored in orange walls and burnished counters.
"You"re probably hoping for my nieces, but I"m afraid they"re not around to play with you right now. Can I cut you an apple?" Mrs. Tanser asked again, and Tricia nodded.
"Good."
After awhile, the older woman went back to her grinding, pounding work at the counter, and talked to Tricia from across the room.
"Hmmmawhere did we leave off last time? How it all began, I think. Yes. I suppose you"re wondering, what happened after the Whites lived in White House?"
The girl nodded, and Mrs. Tanser barely waited for that response.
Mr. White was found in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I won"t go into how his disposition was, other than to say that the bones of Mrs. White and Baby White were found with him. The house was eventually sold to another family, and life went ona"for a time."
Mrs. Tanser brushed the dust from the lapels of her maroon collar. It smeared like dried milk across her chest.
"You can"t hide the past," she said. "Nor can you hide from the past. What is, is, and what was, was. The next people who bought this house pretended that the Whites hadn"t killed themselves here, and as a resulta"
Tricia looked up from her slice of apple with a keen gaze of expectation.
"Well, they didn"t consider the fact that they might also spend their livesa"and deathsa"here."
"Sometimes," Mrs. Tanser said, eyes looking far, far away. "A mother"s love is not endless. In fact, it doesn"t even really begin."
The older woman rubbed a tear from the wrinkles at the side of her eye, and forced a grin. "Silly old woman I am," she said. "You"re just a girl and you can"t even begin to understand the twists and cul de sacs of a mother"s love. I had a tough one, is all, and even now I can hear her scolding me. I"ve met your mama at the PTA, and she"s not like that. Not like that at all. You"re a very lucky girl.
"So where was I? Oh yes, the next family. A pastor, the father was, come here all the way from Omaha. Why here, again I"ll never know. This must be the end of the line for some folks, and they just don"t know it. h.e.l.l, why would they come here if they did? Something draws them though, because no matter how many young folks try to escape this town after they graduate, the place keeps growing. Back in those days, before the Great War, there were just a couple hundred here, and the Martins moved into this house with a huge welcome from the townsfolk. For a time, Pastor Martin even held services right here in this housea"in the sitting room, I believea"until a proper parish chapel could be built down in the center of town."
"All that holiness didn"t settle things apparently, though, in White House. Because the pastor and his family came to a similar end as the White"s did. Things were happy here for a few years, and the Martins had two children, Becky and Joseph. But, just like Mr. White, Pastor Martin"s vocation began to consume him, leaving Mrs. Martin here in the house all alone with the children day after day. The story goes that Mrs. Martin got bit by the green bug, and started thinking that Pastor Martin was spending far too much time down at the new chapel in town. There"s no telling if it"s true or not, but she thought the pastor was making time with a pretty little hussy in the back pew, while she was trapped here, in this old, cold house with two screaming kids.
"I"m talking too big for you, aren"t I?" Mrs. Tanser said noting the confused expression on the girl"s face. "The pastor"s wife thought he had gotten a girlfriend, is the thing. And he was married to her and she didn"t want him to have a girlfriend. So she started locking little Becky and Joseph into a small room at the back of the house. Someone, probably Mr. White, had added on, and built the room by hand. It wasn"t completely true. Sometimes, Pastor Martin would come home at night and hear those kids screaming in the back of the house, and when he"d let them out, they"d tumble into the house proper shaking and blue with cold, because none of the seams of that room were level. The outside could leech in easily, you could see the gra.s.s waving in the wind through the gaps and the draughts on this hill in the winter are something horrible, I have to tell you. Even asleep in that big four-post bed upstairs, I put an afghan on top of the covers in December. Can you imagine how cold it must have been for those children when they could actually see the outside through the cracks in the walls?
"Anyway, Pastor Martin yelled at his wife many a time for how she treated those children, yelled so loud the people a mile down the hill in town could hear him and mark his words. And she"d yell right back and accuse him of taking the Lord"s work to the devil, not to mention that tart Beatrice Long. She thought he was making time with a church wh.o.r.e."
Tricia put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn, and Mrs. Tanser pushed the plate of apples closer to the girl.
"I"m going on too long, aren"t I? Let me speed it up for you some. An old woman can go on. One day Pastor Martin came home and for once, the house was quiet. His wife told him the kids had gone to stay with friends in town for the weekend, and he heaved a sigh of relief. The noise had really begun to get to him, and that, as much as anything, was why he"d been spending more and more time at the chapel. The Martins reportedly had a lovely dinner, and even broke out a bottle of wine to celebrate their brief *vacation" from the children. Pastor Martin tried to get romantic with his wife, but she waved him off of that. *You wouldn"t want to make more of the little screamers, would you?" she said."
Mrs. Tanser paused, looking quizzically at Tricia"s moon-round cheeks. "That probably doesn"t mean much to you yet, does it? Hmmm."
"Well, it came to Sunday, and Pastor Martin spoke after the church service with the folks his children were supposedly staying with, thanking them for their hospitality. But they looked confused at his thanks, and told him that they would be happy to have Becky and Joseph over any time, but they hadn"t seen the kids these past few days.
"Pastor Martin was upset by that, and after the last service, headed home in a rush. He wondered if he"d gotten the family wrong that the kids were staying with. When he entered the house, for the third day in a row it was completely silent, but Mrs. Martin waited for him at the table.
"*Sit," she insisted. *Eat."
"He sat, but asked her where the children were. Mrs. Martin smiled sweetly, and ignored him, fixing herself a sandwich and then pushing the plate towards him. *Light or dark?" she asked.
"*Both," he said absently, and as she put the meat on his plate, along with a long crust of bread, he asked her again. *Where are the kids?"
"Mrs. Martin smiled that strange little grin again and nodded, as he lifted the bread to his mouth and chewed.
"*You"re eating them, dear. Becky"s light, and Joseph"s dark.""
Tricia"s eyes went wide and she set the piece of apple she held back on the plate, uneaten.
"Horrible, hmmm? Apparently Mrs. Martin had used that back room to turn her children into cold cuts. When he screamed and beat on her for her horrible crime, she only smiled and smiled, and told him to make more with Beatrice Long. Back then, in a town this size, they didn"t have asylums, and so Mrs. Martin never actually left this house. Pastor Martin locked her in the room she"d killed her children in and fed her meals at morning and night. She never came out of there again, and whenever he"d break down and cry and ask her *Why?", all she would say was *The house needs strong bones.""
Mrs. Tanser grinned. "Creepy, hmm? Want to see the room?"