Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold (43 page)

When he tried to get up, his muscles kinked in agony around his hands. He attempted to wrench them apart and winced at the pain. A smooth, thin plastic cord was bound tightly around his wrists and pulled into his skin. Turning his head, he saw the bun feet and dusty belly of the settee. His ankles were tied together and bound to one of its legs, which were wrapped with lamp cord. He saw that a small table lamp lay a few feet away on the carpet, its cord sliced off, and two small decorative speakers from the computer lay skewed beyond them, also cordless. He jerked his wrists apart again, trying to slip the knot, and realized he was only cutting himself. The slender cord had no give, and the knots were rock hard.

Foreboding swept over him. He twisted his head up and looked at the computer. The monitor flickered, as before, on the scene of his father and Blanche, though now without sound.

Slowly he looked over his shoulder. Above him, seated on the curved back of the settee, feet planted on the seat cushions, was a figure in a battered black trench coat with a witch’s face.

Withered cheeks were covered by a green eyeshade, and a wig of stringy black and silver served for hair. Perched upon the back of the couch as though seated on an exotic throne, its pose was so still, so bizarre that for a few seconds he thought it was a dummy someone had propped there. The eyes were glassy and empty, the limbs motionless.

He fought to master himself in this swelling horror and forced himself to fix his eyes on the dead eyes of the mannequin.

“Elaine,” he said, and compelled himself to end the word with certainty.

There was a dead silence, filled by the whirring of the computer. He felt suffocated, suspended between reality and some dreadful insanity, but made himself wait, his cut wrists throbbing.

At last there was a faint rustle, and the figure on the back of the couch stiffly raised an arm, and removed its eyeshade. Then it touched its neck, lifted a corner of the mask, and pulled it away, taking off the wig with it. Rumpled golden hair cascaded out around a smooth ivory face with unusually bright blue eyes.

And the voice, very rich and full, spoke.

“Arthur,” it said, and the word was savored.

She was as beautiful as she had ever been, but he could tell she was older. Her looks were growing tired, sharper with age. Now she crossed her legs, and he could see that beneath the trench coat, she was wearing a black tank top and tight black pants. She tossed the clipped plug of the electric cord down at his chest, and despite himself, he flinched.

“So, Arthur, I wasn’t expecting to find you sneaking around my home office at this time of night, but as you can see, I was prepared to deal with you. Lucky for me I even had chloroform handy. Are you going to tell me why you’re here, or should I just call the police?”

“I came to see my father,” Bear shifted to ease the pinch against his wrists.

“Oh, really? This late at night? And after not contacting him for—let’s see—eighteen months? And instead of going to his bedroom, you wind up in my office. Hmm. Ulterior motives, anyone?”

She looked down at him spitefully. He tried to keep eye contact with her, but it was difficult, particularly as she wasn’t looking at his face. Feeling his vulnerability acutely, he managed to work himself up onto his elbows and inch further away from her.

“You’ve grown up, Arthur. You know, I always thought you had quite a bit of potential. Despite the fact that you were such a prig when we last met.”

“What do you want with me?” he demanded, his face reddening.

She chuckled. “Since you’re in my house, I should ask you questions, shouldn’t I? You and your girlfriend.” She said the last word with undisguised disdain. “If that’s what she really is, and not just some pawn in your master plan.”

The submerged fear, the same fear that had first appeared in the church of the martyred virgin, crashed over him now like a tide. “What do you have against Blanche?”

Now Elaine laughed softly as she stepped over him with a kick and crossed to a bar in the corner of the office. She poured herself a glass of soda, put something in her mouth, and swallowed it with the cola. “Oh, come on, Arthur. Can you really think I’m such a fool?” She squatted next to him on the floor, toying with her glass. “Let’s not play with each other this way. You lie. I’ll lie. Let’s be frank with one another.”

He didn’t like her being this close, and shrank back against the sofa. There was something about her—there had always been something about her—that made his hair stand on end.

“We know what this is really about, don’t we?” she lowered her chin and looked him in the eyes. “It’s a chess game. And you know what the goal of a chess game is, don’t you?”

He forced himself to talk, to keep the intellectual give and take going. “To take the king.”

“Right.” She kept looking at him steadily, a smile playing on her face. “That’s what this has always been about. From day one. But in all your calculations, you’ve forgotten the most powerful piece on the board.”

“The queen.”

“That’s right,” her voice dropped to a whisper. Now her chin hung swaying over his face.

“Elaine, get away from me.”

Her lips smiled, but she didn’t withdraw. “So the young upstart king went away and found himself another queen.”

“Another queen?”

“To replace your mother. And I’m sure you planned it that way. Why else would your father form such a quick, strong attachment to a girl he didn’t know anything about?”

Her red lips were still smiling, but the blue eyes were hard. “I underestimated you, long ago, Art. You’re just as calculating as I am. I knocked your mother out of the contest once, and cancer took her out of the match completely. Things looked set for an easy win. But now, late in my game, you send in another queen. You picked a pawn, put a crown on her head, and then you sent her in because
she looks just like your mother
.”

The coincidence was striking. He couldn’t deny that he had been raised by a beautiful, quiet woman with dark hair and fair skin, and now he was dating a girl with the same features and a similar personality. Some men tended to marry women who resembled their mothers, didn’t they? How could he argue that it wasn’t by design—at least not by his design—that Blanche had found herself in the midst of this deadly family battle? He had tried to shield her from it completely, but through some crazy chance the man she had befriended was his own father.

The blue eyes were sparking with anger now. “So you see, Arthur, I know what you’ve been up to. But these sorts of games—‘who is the fairest in the land’ games don’t always end up so nicely.”

“And you really think I
planned
it all?” Bear returned in disbelief.

She sat back on her heels and drained her glass. “You knew I owned the Mirror Corporation. After all, I started it back when you were still living with us. Your father was vice-president. And you must have known that we always used Reflections for our functions. It must have been too convenient to have your princess connive her way into a job and meet your father. I admit I was taken in, especially since she always used a cute nickname to refer to you. Until I saw the letter in her purse addressed to you, I had no idea who she really was. But I’m pretty quick on the uptake.”

So Elaine planted the drugs in my apartment to get rid of me, and Fish, and Blanche.
He suddenly remembered Mr. Russell’s words that Dad “…would cut off all monetary help or any posthumous share of his assets to you if there were a second drug charge.”

“Elaine,” he said quietly. “When did you plant the Ecstasy pills in our apartment? Before Blanche started visiting Dad, or afterwards?”

“Ecstasy? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she said airily, tossing her golden hair. “I haven’t been in that apartment in years. Though of course I used to go over all the time when your father still owned it.”

And of course she would have passed beneath Ahmed’s radar because of that. She had used pills from the same cache she was concealing here—but of course, it would be difficult for him to prove that now, and she knew it.

She leaned her elbows on his chest as she watched him, apparently amused at finding out how little he had known. “Do you expect me to believe that you’re just the clueless victim of circumstances? Poor Arthur. And I have you just where I want you, and there’s no way out. But you know I’ve always had a soft spot for you. We could replay that scene from four years ago, if you want.”

Four years ago, she had refused to leave his room, and had whispered an offer, “
Kiss me, and I’ll make your dad give you your money back…”

“No,” he said evenly, and tried again to push himself out of her reach. But he couldn’t move any further from her and they both knew it.

“But this time you can’t run away from me, can you, young king?” she whispered, leaning closer. Her breath was stale, and terrifying.

He somehow managed to press himself further back without moving down, but he couldn’t go very far. The cord was biting into his wrists with a vengeance.

“Elaine, cut it out. Leave me alone!” he jerked away unsuccessfully as she took his face in her hands.

She laughed and stroked his cheek with her fingers. “Why are you so nervous? Can’t we be friends? This is a perfect opportunity to get reacquainted while we wait for Blanche to finish in there.” Her eyes flickering to the screen, he saw the jealousy burning there. “This queen of yours is a piece of work.” Now her face dropped closer once again. “Do you really love her, or is it just an act?”

He ducked his head sharply and hit her chin so that her teeth clacked together. She swore, and slapped him across the face.

“Don’t fool with me, Arthur. I don’t have the patience I once had,” she warned. “You’re still my delinquent stepson, just a few steps away from the police and a five-year prison sentence. If you can use her to play chess games with your dad, you can certainly play chess games with me.”

“It’s not a game,” he whispered, his face stinging. “It never was.”

Her eyes sparked. “Then how about I go and get Blanche and have her join us?”

No.
He tried to keep his face blank, but she had already caught sight of his expression.

She grinned. “Sounds like a plan. I wonder what she’d think to see her prince now? And I’m dying to see how she behaves once she’s in your position.” Elaine got to her feet, pulled out a pair of scissors from her pocket, and traced the silver blades with her fingers, an odd smile on her face. “I believe this could be fun. And informative. I might not have to call the police after all.”

Setting the scissors down, Elaine pulled a dark handkerchief and a baggie out of her pocket and a perfume bottle. Pulling out the stopper, she doused the cloth with liquid, folded it, and stuffed the wad into the baggie and back into her pocket. Then she picked up another lamp, unplugged it, and sliced off its cord. All this time her jaw was working itself back and forth, and he realized she was grinding her teeth. He knew what it was. Ecstasy.

At last she thrust the scissors back in her pocket and leaned over him. “Too bad you couldn’t learn to play the game better, young king,” she said with a strange smile, rumpling his hair. “It’s time to take out your queen. Be back soon.”

The door closed behind her quick footsteps. Bear tried again to jerk his hands free of the wires, and looked helplessly at the computer screen. He prayed that Blanche would sense evil coming, and escape again.
Even if I can’t.

IV

The girl blinked. The walls felt as though they were closing in on her. A throbbing began in her head. An echo of footsteps.

I felt a funeral in my brain…

“Blanche, are you sure you’re all right?” Mr. Fairston asked.

She got up, and grabbed the back of the chair to steady herself. “Yes,” she assured him. “But I think I should go now.” She licked her lips, her throat swelling in fear.
It was coming. Closer.

The door opened, and the wife stood there.

“Well, hello. This is certainly a late night visit, isn’t it?” Her voice was chilly. She had an electrical cord bunched up in her hand, and the girl wondered why. But she felt as though it almost didn’t matter to her.
The footsteps were coming
…

And then Sense broke through. She went down, and, like Alice, fell a long way into the dark, absurdly, disjointedly. She felt herself sinking, and yet the floor never rose up to meet her. She just fell, through oceans and past planets, spinning head over heels, slowly, ominously.

There was a terrified rattle of voices above her, and she still knew what they were saying. The wife’s voice came shrilly, “Are you all right? What’s wrong?” And Mr. Fairston saying, “Oh God! Oh God!” as though he really were speaking to God for once.

And she finished knowing, then—

V

Bear, his throat dry, fixed his eyes on the monitor. Blanche was slumped over the chair—barely conscious. Had something happened to her because of her heart condition...?

But no, it was something worse than that. Far worse. He had seen it.

He saw Elaine shaking her shoulders, slapping her face, a look of panic crawling over her features. There was no response. Blanche’s head lolled to the side, her black hair falling sideways over her face.