A Twisted Ladder (60 page)

NEW ORLEANS, 2009

M
ADELEINE HOISTED HERSELF UP
from the floor, and Sam did the same. Together they bound Madeleine’s wound as she began to describe the events that led to Severin’s first appearances. She put on some coffee and they sat at the kitchen table. Severin crawled under the table and sat at Madeleine’s feet.

Samantha listened carefully, offering no words of judgment, though Madeleine was certain she was not convinced. Sam gently asked Madeleine what she meant earlier about having exhibited “beginning signs of schizophrenia,” aside from Severin and the visions.

Madeleine told her about the little indications, such as losing the ability to tolerate radio or television, and wandering concentration. She confessed that schizophrenics are prone to grandiose delusions, thinking they have been “specially chosen” by the alien ship or the CIA or whoever was communicating with them. In Madeleine’s case, Severin provided glimpses into the lives of others, or little hints of events that had not quite happened yet, such as the gouge on the cabinet.

“You have to understand,” Madeleine told Sam. “She guided me out of the bayou in the middle of a storm the night I found Anita’s body. And she showed me where Zenon was hiding. How could that be a figment of my imagination?”

Sam’s face held no expression. She was obviously still making up her mind.

“Have you seen a doctor?” she asked quietly.

Madeleine shook her head slowly. “No. And if I do, it won’t be until after the trial. I have to appear clear and in control of my faculties until it’s over.”

“Maddy, I think you should see a doctor. To hell with the trial.”

“No. I can keep a lid on this. The only reason you found out is because you walked in on me when I thought I was alone.”

“The doctor can put you on medication and keep this at bay.”

“I know that better than anybody. And I also know medication won’t keep Severin away. Daddy told me as much before he died. But if they find out, I’ve lost all credibility as a witness. I won’t risk that. And besides, Sam,
she showed me where Zenon was hiding!
There is no way I could have otherwise known that. These aren’t just random hallucinations. Don’t you want to find out what this is about?”

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you. Whatever it is, I just want it to end.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Where is the little girl now?” Sam asked. “Can you see her?”

Madeleine looked down at Severin under the table. “She’s sitting right here at the table with us. Oddly enough, she’s been behaving since we sat down. Probably because we’re talking about her. She likes to be the center of attention.”

Severin’s brow furrowed. Sam followed Madeleine’s gaze to the floor where Severin sat, and then looked back and shivered.

She asked, “What have you told Ethan?”

Madeleine’s mouth went dry. She could only shake her head.

“Nothing?”

Madeleine lifted her shoulders helplessly. “I wanted to. I’m going to. There just hasn’t been the right moment. I was going to maybe tell him tonight. But then Daddy . . .”

Samantha nodded and squeezed her arm. “If you want, Maddy, I can tell him first. I can tell him about this, and about Daddy Blank too. It might make it easier for you to discuss it with him.”

Madeleine looked at her, thinking it over. “Yes, Sam. I’d like that.”

She nodded, tears still flowing freely down her face. “Anything.”

“But I want to tell you,” Madeleine said. “That you’ve been such a good friend to me. I can’t imagine what I would have done if it weren’t for . . .”

Her words caught, and the muscles seized in her face as tears spilled afresh. Sam leaned over and wrapped her arms around her, and together they wept. They clung to one another for a very long time.

MADELEINE SAT ON THE
couch, sipping water and listening to the endless ringing of the telephone. Jasmine slept stretched across her lap. Severin sat on the floor and sang softly. Madeleine rubbed her hand over her raw, wet eyes. Her stomach churned.

“It gets easier, a little some.” The little girl hugged her legs. “People going through. Sometimes it’s fun.”

Madeleine looked at her. “What makes you think I would ever enjoy watching people die?”

Severin shrugged. “That man who sent your father through, you wish on him to die, yes?”

Madeleine stared. “My father died of a drug overdose. He did that to himself.”

Severin pressed her lips together and cast her eyes downward.

“Well . . . some yes, but not very.” She looked up at Madeleine. “You wish to see?”

Madeleine felt a blanket of cold settle over her, emotions turning to crystal. She nodded.

The room transformed into that now-familiar dark, tangled cave and Madeleine recognized a section of the Iberville ghetto. She saw Carlo Jefferson selling his wares. She watched her father emerge from a black car with gold hubcaps, and wondered who might have driven him there. She watched.

She saw.

Rage mounted inside her. While her father lay unconscious in filth, his face streaked with his own vomit, she watched Carlo go through his pockets to see if he had any more cash on him. Apparently he was angry at having lost money on a bad supply of China White.

Madeleine saw Carlo walk away, leaving her father alone in an abandoned building, even as the very life drained from him.

SHE FELT A COLD
anger permeate her blood, spidering through her veins until it crackled in her throat. Of the awful things that had occurred in the past year, here was one event where she could pin blame squarely upon a single person’s shoulders. The sensation grew inside her, an almost delightful hatred that she explored and coddled as if running her tongue over a canker sore inside her mouth. Carlo. He had done more than enable her father’s death; he had made it certain.

Violent fantasies flickered through her mind.

In the kitchen, her cell phone stopped ringing.

“See?” Severin said. “Now you wish on him to die, yes?”

Madeleine looked at the little girl. “Yes, Severin, as a matter of fact I do wish him dead.”

Severin looked satisfied, and she nodded with a smile. “And so you have a chance. To send him through, yes. A good exercise to start.”

But as Severin spoke, she conveyed the full embodiment of her thoughts, not just by means of her jumbled speak. Madeleine saw a crisp image of the shotgun inside her mind. Severin communicated in 360 degrees, and speech and imagery comprised just one segment of that.

Madeleine had to chuckle. So this was it. This was madness. Pure, simple, tongue-wagging insanity. About to become criminal insanity. She had always been on the outside looking in, the lofty daughter or aspiring psychologist, passing judgment. And now it was she who was insane, knocked off her pedestal and into the abyss.

Severin was real; Madeleine believed that. But the devil-child brought with her a miasma that distorted and spun the filters that looked out to the rest of the world. More than ever before, Madeleine understood her father’s clarity beneath the confusion and violence.

But it didn’t matter. Severin was right; it had gotten easier already. Maybe being insane wasn’t so bad. Madeleine felt her conscience turn to granite, and there was freedom in it. She could dance across that shelf of granite and act upon any inclination without moral care.

Severin went back to singing to herself in the corner.

Madeleine’s upset stomach threatened to become a handicap. She went to the bathroom and purged, brushed her teeth, and washed her face. From the cedar chest in the living room, she retrieved the shotgun her brother had used to kill himself.

She walked out the door with the shotgun tucked neatly within the folds of her long coat.

Behind her, Severin whispered in a sickly sweet voice: “I’ll come with you.”

HAHNVILLE, 1927

T
HERE HAD COME A
day when Ulysses began to drift away. Not completely at first; he would linger nearby as Rémi carved dolls from alder wood or tupelo gum, but he’d let him alone. Sure, he’d call over to Rémi from time to time, interjecting an opinion or unsolicited advice, but nothing like his usual taunts. The moment Rémi finished carving one doll, Marie-Rose would beg him to carve another. He could not deny her. And so in one stretch, he’d carved enough dolls for Marie-Rose to match Patrice’s collection.

Gradually, Ulysses’s presence had become sporadic and more distant. Rémi would catch sight of him wandering the avenue of field workers’ cottages, or standing in the shadows outside a bon-fire. Rémi would be working the fields with Francois and the other laborers, and from time to time, he’d catch sight of Ulysses harvesting cane in the distance. Rémi had no idea what caused this freedom.

As Ulysses’s presence faded, so too did the anxiety and confusion that had plagued Rémi for the past several years. He found himself once again able to concentrate on his surroundings, and he even found he could attend to several things at once; he could put on his shoes and talk to Patrice at the same time, even if a radio was playing nearby.