A Family Affair: A Novel of Horror (8 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the time Aunt Christine arrived to announce dinner, Jennifer was ready to admit defeat. Pride or no pride, she was literally starving to death. Certainly, she assured herself as she came downstairs, they had finished with their preposterous joke and were ready to begin treating her as a guest should be treated. They must see the harm they were doing.

“Oh, there you are,” Aunt Christine greeted her as she entered the dining room. This time Jennifer had come along the hall to the right doorway, and had found the dining room without incident.

“We had begun to worry about you,” Aunt Abbie said.

“I should think you would, you nasty old women,” Jennifer thought; “I have been starved almost to death, nearly killed in a fall, and all but assaulted in my own room.”

Aloud, she said, “Thank you, I'm afraid I haven't been very good company.”

“Helen prepared this dinner especially for you, because you seemed to be unhappy this morning,” Aunt Christine explained. “I hope you like it.”

“I'm certain I shall,” Jennifer said. She was prepared to
like virtually anything that was set before her. She could not remember when she had ever been so hungry. She seated herself quickly, ignoring the empty chair beside her, saved for her mother. She nodded to the others about the table. Aunt Abbie leaned toward her.

“Didn't your new robe fit either?” she asked, indicating the gray suit Jennifer still wore.

“I'm afraid not,” Jennifer said coldly. That was one point she refused to give in on; but she did not want to provoke a quarrel, not before she had eaten. Later, when she had some food in her, she would clear things up.

“Oh dear,” Aunt Abbie replied, shaking her head sadly. “Then I don't see how you can take part in the rites.”

“The rites?” For a moment Jennifer did not understand. Then it came back to her, that odd dancing on the lawn that she had witnessed on her arrival. Aunt Abbie had called them the rites. “Oh, yes, the rites,” she said lamely.

“Of course, if Christine thinks it will be all right,” Abbie offered, glancing questioningly toward Aunt Christine at the head of the table.

“Now Abbie,” Aunt Christine said, wagging a finger at her. “You know the rules as well as I do. We shall simply have to find another robe for Jennifer.”

“But she'll miss the rites,” Abbie argued. She turned back to Jennifer. “They're right after dinner, you know. There simply wouldn't be time to find a robe for you before they began.”

“I think,” Jennifer interrupted the family disagreement, “that perhaps the best solution all around would be to give me my own clothing. If someone would just lead me back to my car, where my luggage is still waiting....”

“Oh, that would never do,” Abbie said, her voice rising to a shocked level. “We will have to find a robe for you, that's all there is to that. No, I'm afraid your own clothes would never do for the rites. Everyone must wear a robe. It's always been like that.”

Jennifer sighed aloud. Now how had she gotten herself
involved in all this nonsense over the rites, in which she was not at all interested?

“I think we may start dinner now,” Aunt Christine suggested, handing a platter to the woman at her left.

Jennifer was not at all surprised to discover that again the platters and bowls were all empty. They were not yet ready to end their fun. They had probably already eaten their dinner, sometime before she was called, and they were now going through the same elaborate pantomime as at breakfast, pretending to eat from empty dishes.

Marcella had handed Jennifer an empty bowl. Jennifer let it slip through her fingers. It fell to the table with a crash, breaking into several pieces. There was a stunned silence about the table; all eyes were upon her. At any minute she expected them to begin laughing.

“I must have food,” she said aloud. “I demand that you give me something to eat.”

There was a long pause. Jennifer was prepared to stand her ground now. She had never before had to stand up for herself, but necessity gave her the strength to do so now.

Aunt Christine got swiftly up from her seat. “Why certainly, dear,” she said. “I'm so happy that you're hungry again.”

For a moment Jennifer felt relief. They were going to give in after all, without the necessity of a fight. All it had taken were a few firmly spoken words.

Aunt Christine came hurriedly along the table, to where Jennifer sat. She reached past Jennifer, seizing a large, empty platter.

“Here,” she said, deftly spooning out whatever was supposed to be on the platter onto Jennifer's plate. “I think you'll like this, dear, Helen fixed it especially for you.”

Jennifer opened her mouth to speak, anger rising within her. But the words did not come. She was gripped by a sense of frustration, of hopelessness. It was no use, they would not give her the food she wanted. She could feel reason slipping even further from her, and a sense of helpless panic came over her.

Wordlessly she stood and started from the room. Perhaps she thought dizzily, it is I who am mad. Perhaps there really is food on the table and the chairs are not ruining my skirt with filth.

“Jennifer?” Aunt Christine called after her.

Without looking back, Jennifer left the room and ran to her own bedroom. She threw herself across her bed. Impossible though it seemed, she was the victim of some monstrous scheme concocted among them for purposes she could not fathom.

“I will not beg,” she promised herself. “I will sit in my room until they promise to give up this nonsense and serve me some real food.”

“If I haven't died in the meantime of starvation,” she added. She truly did not feel well. She was weak and frightfully tired. That was the lack of food, undoubtedly, and her nerves too. Her tranquilizers were in a case in her luggage, where they were doing not the slightest good.

She lay for a moment staring at the ceiling. They were all mad? Or—and this was a chilling alternative—or she was. It was difficult to believe that this was only a joke. The entire family seemed so earnest in their belief that there was food on the table. They saw it, and she did not. Either they were crazy, or she was.

How did one tell?

She closed her eyes, feeling fatigue washing over her like the waves of the sea. She knew one thing. She had had no delusions before she came here. And there was no mistake about the fact that they were trying to keep her from leaving. Every mention of her car and her clothing was shrugged off.

They could not keep her a prisoner here, though. She would leave. “In the morning,” she promised herself as she drifted off to sleep, “I will leave on my own. I will start through those woods and I will not stop until I have found the road again, and my car.”

* * * *

The cold air from the window was blowing over her,
chilling her although she still wore her suit. She sat up, intending to close the window. She paused, listening; shook her head and listened again. No, it wasn't just the wind, and she hadn't dreamed it. Someone had called her name.

“Who's there?” she called into the darkness. Why hadn't she remembered to turn on the light before she fell asleep? My God, she thought, I didn't even lock the door.

As if in answer to her thoughts, someone tapped at the door, a steady, monotonous tapping sound that grew steadily in volume.

“Who is it?” she asked, frightened now. The door was unlocked. If whoever was there tried the door, he would find it open. The tapping continued, growing to a loud knocking that rattled the mirror over the dresser.

“Go away,” Jennifer called aloud. Still the knocking continued, louder and louder until the whole room reverberated with it.

“I'm dreaming this,” she told herself, clenching her hands into tight fists, and biting into her lip. She felt as if she wanted to scream, to run—only there was no place to run.

“Please, go away,” she shouted, her voice almost lost in the din of the pounding.

Suddenly the knocking stopped, and the room was silent again.

After a long time, during which no sound disturbed the silence, Jennifer rose from her bed and crossed the room slowly, expecting the door to spring open at any minute. But it remained closed, and at last she had reached it and turned the key, locking it. She hadn't the nerve to open it and see who or what might be outside. She did not care, if only they did not try to come in.

She turned the light on and went back to bed, but she was too frightened to sleep. She sat at the head of the bed, huddled into a little ball, and waited for something more to happen.

Nothing did happen, though, and finally it was morning. She had sat up most of the night, and now the window grew light with the coming of dawn, and in the distance she could make out the gray green of the trees in the woods. The night was ended.

“I can't go on like this,” she told herself. Her head was throbbing. She had had no food and little sleep. She was no longer certain how much of this was actually happening to her and how much she had simply imagined; or had she simply imagined it all? Perhaps after all she would awaken soon to find herself safely at home, in her own little bed, in her nightgown, suffering from some thoughtless bedtime snack.

No, the morning was real, and this dismal room with the dirty furniture and the faded wallpaper was real. She was at Kelsey House, and she was afraid; afraid of things that she could not understand, things that she seemed helpless to do anything about.

“But I will do something about them,” she said firmly, getting up from the bed. “I am leaving here today, this morning.”

CHAPTER NINE

This time she d
id not even bother with the silly charade of breakfast. She did not know what it all meant, but she was certain that they had no intention of feeding her at these “meals.”

When Aunt Christine came to tap on her door and tell her breakfast was ready, Jennifer called brightly, “I'll be right down.”

She waited until she was sure her aunt had gone. Then she let herself out of her room, and took the stairs down to the first floor. In a moment she was outside, on the front porch of Kelsey House.

If the floor plan of Kelsey House was a puzzlement, however, the grounds were no less peculiar. From the diminutive porch one could look out over the sweeping lawn that Jennifer had already seen. Beyond the lawn she could see the woods thick and ominous even from this distance; they formed a solid wall, without a break in them.

And that, she told herself, was peculiar. Never mind the little path that man had led her along, hardly a path even. That, she assumed, had been some shortcut of his own.

But there would have to be a driveway, or at the very least, some sort of walkway, that led to the road. Even if the people here seldom left the house, there was the question of supplies. Notwithstanding the silly business of serving her empty dishes, they themselves had to eat some time or another. Even if they grew their own food on the grounds somewhere—and that was a possibility she might want to explore—there must certainly be other things that they would have to bring from town.

Upon reflection though she could not think of a single thing, try though she might. Nothing in the house was new. Aside from food, what exactly would they need from the outside? Clothes? That was not likely. The simple robes they wore could have been made from anything, curtains even, or fabric purchased in quantity years before. Obviously they did not use cleaning supplies, judging from the condition of the house. What else was there? Perhaps on thinking about it, the occupants of Kelsey House did not really need to make use of the nearby town. It was not a very encouraging conclusion, from her point of view.

At least, however, there was a path; a footpath, to be specific, and although it did not appear to offer any immediate means of reaching the road that lay somewhere beyond the woods, it did lead from the stairs of the porch along the width of the house, disappearing around a corner. Presumably it had to go somewhere; most paths did. On the other hand, Jennifer reminded herself, Kelsey was not like most places she had known.

She decided she would try following the path. It might very well lead her to a garden where the family grew their food; if they did not bring it in, they must raise it here themselves.

She went along the front of the house, the grass beneath her feet still damp with the morning dew. She passed the tower, its base jutting out from the house itself. Glancing upward, she shivered as she saw the dangling remnants of the walkway that encircled the structure, the walk from which she had almost fallen.

She followed the path, rounding the corner of the house, and stopped abruptly. It was like stepping suddenly into the heart of the woods. The rolling lawn, the solid foreboding facade of the house, ended at the corner, to be replaced by straggly bushes, low-hanging trees, weeds, and sagging, unpainted walls. She was reminded, as she stared at the disorder, of pictures she had seen of movie sets, with their glamorous fronts that suggested a wholeness they did not in fact possess. She was behind the set now, and the illusion was lost. But why there should be a movie set here, she had no idea.

She looked around. It had been here, somewhere on this end of the house, where she had looked out of the window when she was lost in the house. She looked about for the tree she had seen, the big one just outside the window, but there were too many of them to be certain that she had found the right one.

The thought of trees brought with it an idea that lighted a faint spark of hope within her. Some of the trees must be fruit trees. It was late in the season, no doubt, but there might be something edible on the ground. She looked about, trying to remember when apples and the like ripened, but she was not very knowledgeable about such matters.

There had been an apple tree at home when she was a girl; not that she had changed homes since then, but the tree had long since gone. It had gone the summer that her mother had discovered that she played in the tree, that the tree had become a secret place for the young Jennifer. For one whole summer Jennifer had hidden in that tree when she wanted to get away from things, to escape into a world of her own. She had climbed the tree, and played in it, and actually grown to love its gnarled, patternless branches.

One day, however, some strange men had arrived in a truck and started cutting and sawing. By the time they left there was nothing remaining of the tree but a wounded and mournful stump.

Strange, she had not thought of that tree for years. She wandered on through the thick growth, wandered because the path she had followed had ended abruptly at the corner of the house. The trees, thick overhead, shielded her from the warm beams of the morning sun, and she was reminded of the coolness of the autumn morning.

She found a tree, an apple tree, and the ground beneath it was littered with old fruit. Most of it, to be sure, was rotted or dried up, but she looked carefully about on the ground, examining each apple she found. Even the best of them was none too good—knobby, wormy looking things that made clear the fact that the tree had gone wild. But she found a handful of fruit that would be, at least in part, edible.

She bit into one of the apples eagerly, savoring the bitter, sour taste of the pulp in her mouth. She greedily devoured the few she had found, gulping down what she could of them. She began to look for more, and when she found another, her impulse was to devour it as well. She checked herself, though. If this was all she found, it might be necessary to ration them. It was impossible to say how long it would take her to find the car, and as hungry as she was now, she would certainly be even hungrier after a few hours of walking.

There was another thought too that influenced her. If there was one tree with fruit about its base, there might be others, perhaps with better offerings.

She collected all of the apples she could find that might be edible, and put them in a neat little pile at the base of the tree. She would look first to see what else she could find in the way of food to carry with her; then she would try to find her way through the woods to her car.

The brush, as she moved away from the house, had grown even thicker, and once or twice she scratched her arms on the undergrowth. Watching the ground as she was, she failed to see a low hanging branch that slapped her smartly across the face. Her hand, when she brought it away from the spot, was stained with fresh blood.

Despite what must have been another half hour of searching, however, she found no more food. Discouraged, she decided instead to take what she had. She was tired, and before she set out she ought to get her sweater. Certainly she would need her purse, because the car keys were in it, and she had not thought to bring it out with her. There was nothing for it but to return to the house; but at least now she would have her little store of apples, so the morning was not completely wasted.

That was when she discovered that the house was no longer in sight. It should have been. She had been walking in a straight line, she thought, and the house should have been directly behind her, but it wasn't. At least, it was not visible through the trees and the brush that surrounded her.

“I am not going to let myself become terrified again,” she insisted. She looked about, but nothing seemed particularly familiar. One tree looked pretty much like another, and she had failed to watch for any landmarks as she walked; her attention had been concentrated on looking for food.

Just to her right was a clump of bushes she had come through, she was certain. She held the branches apart and made her way through the growth, but instead of a small clump it proved to be a fair size patch. She found herself entangled in clinging branches and cutting thorns that added to the scratches on her arms and legs.

She was through it at last, and beyond it was a clearing; not much, but it did look familiar. If she went around that big tree...she did, without achieving anything. Her apple tree, and her little pile of apples, ought to be in sight, right in front of her there, but they were not. In fact, there was a stump there, and she didn't remember any stumps at all. And she was lost again.

She sat down on the stump, dropping her head wearily into her hands. She wanted to cry, or scream, or some such thing. She seemed unable to manage anything. It was as if Kelsey House, and even the grounds around it, deliberately set out to frustrate her efforts to leave, even her efforts to survive. They seemed to have minds of their own, minds that were set against her. Even now, lost in the woods, she did not feel alone, she felt as if she were in the presence of something that watched her and brooded, something that would not let her escape, that never meant for her to leave here.

She held her breath, listening. Was she imagining things again, or was that something moving nearby. No, this time she was definitely not imagining anything. There was somebody close at hand, someone moving about through the dense growth; someone, or something. Twigs snapped, and branches scraped against one another.

It could be someone from the house. By now they might have discovered that she had gone. She had not come down for breakfast, and undoubtedly they would have come to her room to investigate. Finding her gone, they might very well be searching for her now.

In that case, she ought to call out and tell them where she was. It was all well and good to want to be out of Kelsey House, but being lost and alone in the woods was not any better so far as she could see.

But she did not call out just yet. What if it weren't a person at all, she asked herself, listening to the noises coming closer? What kind of animals lived in woods like these? She really did not know, but it was not hard to imagine any number of wild creatures prowling about.

The noises were closer, definitely coming in her direction. Should she run, or maybe try to climb a tree?

In the end, she did nothing but sit in fear and shiver, and watch in the direction of the crashing and crunching that moved steadily closer until the bushes parted and there in front of her was the hired man, the one who had found her on the road the night she had arrived at Kelsey.

He stopped, exactly as he had done that night, and stared at her. Whatever relief she might have felt at seeing a human being instead of some wild animal disappeared almost at once in his cold stare. It was not a pleasant look that he gave her, but one of unspeakable violence and ugliness, a look that combined dark thoughts with a bitter, just-beneath-the-surface laughter. He was amused at finding her here, she thought, amused and for some peculiar reason angry at the same time.

As for herself, Jennifer sat quietly on the stump and returned his stare for as long as she was able, which was not long at all. Her mother had always accused her of being shifty-eyed, which was not far from the truth. She could never look anyone in the eye for long. After a moment or two, she had always done just as she did this time; she dropped her eyes to the ground. Without a word, the man started to go on.

“Wait,” she called after him anxiously. Like it or not he was her only means of finding her way out of this woods. And as much as she disliked Kelsey House, even that seemed preferable to remaining lost where she was. The next noise might be a wild animal after all.

He paused and glanced back over his shoulder at her.

“I'm afraid I've lost my way,” she explained, realizing that she sounded like a helpless child. “Can you lead me to where I left my car?”

He paused for a moment longer, without replying.

“Or back to Kelsey House,” she suggested. She had hoped he might take her to the car, but she supposed he was part of whatever conspiracy they had formed against her. She would take her chances at Kelsey House. From there, she thought she could find the path they had taken that first night

Still without a word, he started off again. She hadn't the vaguest idea where he was leading or, if he was leading her at all. Of all the strange occupants of Kelsey, he was indeed the most flagrantly rude of the lot.

“Well,” she thought, “wherever he is going, it has to be somewhere.” If he was not going back to the house, perhaps after all he would lead her to the road, from which she could find her car. Or better yet, perhaps he was going to a neighboring house, where there might be ordinary people like herself, people who would help her. She jumped up from where she had been sitting and started after him, rushing to keep up with his rapid pace.

Another thought came to her as she hurried in his wake, and she called to him, asking, “Were you able to do anything about my car?” It occurred to her that for all she knew that might have been what he was attending to just now.

If he heard her question, though, he gave no evidence of it, but crashed silently onward, just as he had that other time. She knew better than to try slowing her pace, or begging him to wait. She must keep in sight of him or be lost. In directing her attention so firmly to his back, she failed again to see a low hanging branch that cracked smartly across her forehead. The sting brought tears to her eyes and she almost did come to a stubborn stop. But he was disappearing ahead of her, and she ran on to keep from losing him.