Dollenganger 03 If There Be a Thorns (31 page)

Just as Dad and I had planned, early the next morning Dad drove me off toward school, then he let me out on the road that led to our house. "Now take it easy, Jory. Don't do anything that will endanger your life, and don't let Bart or that butler know what you're up to--they could be dangerous, remember that." He hugged me close, as if afraid I might be foolhardy. "Listen carefully to me now. I'm going to see Bart's psychiatrist this morning so I can tell him what has happened. Then I'm checking the airports to see if my mother has flown anywhere, though God knows that's not likely. But for both women to disappear in the same day is just too much of a coincidence."

I had to say it. As much as I dreaded hearing the words come from my own lips, I had to speak. "Dad, have you considered that Bart might have . . . well, you know. Clover was strangled with wire. Apple was starved and then stabbed with a pitchfork. Who knows what he might do next?"

He patted my shoulder. "Yes, of course I've thought of that. But I can't picture Bart overcoming your mother. She's very strong even if she does have a cold. That's what worries me most, Jory. She had a temperature of one hundred, and fevers do make a person weaker. I should have stayed home to take care of her. A woman is a fool to marry a doctor," he concluded bitterly, as if he'd forgotten I was there. And all the while his motor was purring softly. He bowed his head down on his hands that held the steering wheel.

"Dad . . . you go on and do what you can to check the airlines. I'll handle everything here." And I added with a big burst of overconfidence, "And remember-- Madame M. is here. And you know how she is. Bart won't pull anything with her around."

Smiling, as if I'd given him the assurance he needed, he waved goodbye, and drove off, leaving me standing there and wondering just what to do. The fierce rain of yesterday had dwindled to a slow drizzle that was miserable and cold, but not wild.

Home again, and I was hiding behind the shrubbery all wet and dripping, as Bart sat in the kitchen and refused to eat his breakfast. "Hate everything you cook," he said sullenly. It was surprising to hear his voice coming to me so clearly. Then I smiled, not feeling spooked as I had before. It was the intercom system, left on. Often delivery men came to our back door rather than use the special drive that circled the front. Our breakfast nook wasn't too far from the panel on the wall with dozens of buttons. I remembered when our house was being constructed how Mom had wanted "music in every room--so housework won't seem such a bore." Then came Madame's strident voice. "Bart, what's wrong with your cereal?"

"Don't like cereal with raisins."
"Then don't eat the raisins."
"They get in the way."
"Nonsense. If you don't eat breakfast, then you

won't eat lunch either. And if you don't eat lunch, there will be no dinner--and one ten-year-old boy is going to bed very hungry!"

"You can't starve me to death!" Bart shrieked. "This is my house! You don't belong here! You get out!"

"I will NOT get out. I am staying until your mother returns safely. And don't you dare raise your voice to me again or I might turn you over my knee and paddle your behind until you scream for mercy!"

"It won't hurt," he jeered --and it wouldn't. Spankings never bothered Bart who had skin with no surface nerve endings.

"Thank you for telling me," said Madame with great aplomb. "I will then think of a better punishment -- such as keeping you indoors, locked in your room."

By this time I was peering in a window. There sat Bart with a secret smile on his face.
"Emma," ordered Madame, "take Bart's plate away, take his bowl, his orange juice too. Bart--go straight to your room and don't let me hear another word out of you until you can come to this table and eat your meals without complaints."
"Witch, old black witch come to live in our house," Bart chanted as he ambled away. But he didn't go to his room. He bolted out of the garage door when Madame wasn't looking, and from there he headed toward the garden wall, and the old oak tree he could climb to take him over the wall.
I ran as fast as I could, following him. But once I was inside the mansion I lost sight of him. Where had Bart gone? I stared right and left, looked behind me, turned around slowly. Had he disappeared up the stairs or down into the cellar? I hated this house with its maze of long corridors, with so many niches between the walls where Mom could be hidden. Usually a builder used the leftover spaces to make closets or put in shelves. But this one, I knew for a fact, had secret doors, only I'd already searched all the secret rooms. Useless to look in them again.
Suddenly I heard a footfall. Bart was right behind me. He looked right through me, his eyes glazed as he stared bleakly at nothing. I couldn't believe he didn't see me.
I followed silently, believing he'd take me to where Mom and her mother were hidden.
Unfortunately, he headed for home. Sickened, dishearted, I trailed along behind, feeling I'd betrayed my father and failed him.
Lunchtime and Dad came home tired and distressed looking. "Any luck, Jory?"
"No. How about you?"
"None. My mother did not fly to Hawaii. I checked with all the airlines. Jory, both Cathy and my mother must be inside that house next door."
I had an idea. "Dad, why don't you have a long talk with Bart? Don't jump on him, or condemn him, just say nice things. Praise him for being nice to Cindy, tell him how much you care about him. I know he's behind this for he keeps mumbling about the Lord and being His dark angel of revenge."
Dad couldn't find any words to say as he digested my information. Then silently, he set off to find Bart and do what he could to make an unwanted little boy feel needed--if it wasn't already too late.

Later I went down to the cellar again with John Amos. "Corrine," John Amos called softly as he bent over stiffly. Clumsy like me, he got down on his knees and peered through the small kitty door he opened. "I want you and your daughter to know this is your last meal, so I made it a good one." He lifted the lid of the silver teapot and spat inside, then poured the steaming hot liquid into fine china cups. "One for you, one for your daughter," he said. He shoved one cup and saucer inside the kitty door, then the other set. Next he picked up a plate of sandwiches which looked stale and kinda dirty, then managed to drop the plate on the filthy cellar floor.

He picked up the little triangles and wiped them off against his trouser leg, shoved the meat that had fallen out back in, then put the plate of coal-dusted food in through the kitty door. "Here you are, Corrine Fox- worth," snarled John Amos in his hissy voice. "I hope you find these dainty sandwiches to your liking, you bitch! I took your word when you married me, truly believing you'd be my wife--and though you have never been my wife in the way I'd hoped, still I will inherit what is rightfully mine. Finally I have managed to destroy you and yours--just as Malcolm wanted to kill all your Devil's issue."

Did he have to hate my granny so much? Maybe she wasn't to blame, like me who sometimes did bad things and couldn't help it. Why was everybody doing bad things to everybody else and calling the excuse "inheritance"?

"You flaunted your beauty before me!" screamed out an enraged old man, "tormenting me when you were a child--teasing me when you were an adolescent, thinking you could have your fun and I could never harm you. Then when you married your half uncle and came back to disinherit me, you treated me like I wasn't even there--just another piece of furniture to ignore. Well, are you arrogant now, Corrine Foxworth? Do you feel haughty sitting in your own filth, holding your dying daughter's head on your filthy lap? I have made you crawl at last, haven't I? I have beaten you at your own game, stolen Bart's affection from you, made him mistrust you and trust me. You can't use your charm and feminine wiles now. It's too late. I hate you now, Corrine Foxworth. For every woman I have fantasized was you, I have paid, but no longer. I have won, and though I am seventy-three now, I will live on at least another five or six years in luxury enough to make up for all the years I've suffered at your hands."

My grandmother was sobbing quietly. I was crying too, wondering again who was right, him or her?

John Amos was saying terrible things. Nasty evil bad words that little boys wrote on bathroom walls. Grown-up old men shouldn't talk like that, and in front of my grandmother and my momma.

"John!" yelled Grandmother, "haven't you done enough? Let us out, and I'll be your wife in the way you want, but please do not punish my daughter more. She's very sick. She needs to be in a hospital. The police will call this murder if you let her die and me too."

John Amos just laughed and walked heavily back up the stairs.
I couldn't move. I was frozen, so confused I didn't know who was good and who was bad.
"Bart!" screamed my grandmother. "Run fast to your father and tell him where we are!
Run, run!"
Bleary-eyed, I just stood there. Didn't know what to do. "Please, Bart," she begged. "Go tell your father where we are."
Malcolm--was that him over in the corner, his ghost face frowning at me? Passed my smutty hand over my blurry eyes. Dark, so dark. I pretended to leave, but I snuck back. I wanted to hear more of the truth.
Out of the darkness came my mother's thin voice screaming at that old woman who was her mother, my grandmother.
"Oh, yes, Mother. I understood everything you said. We didn't stand a chance no matter who died and who didn't die when you took us into Foxworth Hall and locked us away. Now, years later, we will die just because that crazy old butler didn't inherit the money he expected, promised to him years ago by a dead man--and if you believe any of that--you are just as crazy as he is."
"Cathy. Don't deny the truth because you hate me so much. I'm telling you the truth. Can't you see how John has used your son, the son of my Bart. Don't you see how perfect his revenge is?--to use the son of the man he hated, the man he felt took his place, when it could have been him who married me if my father could have forced me to do it. Oh, you don't know how Father tried to tell me I owed it to John to marry him, and allow him to have half of his fortune--he didn't guess, or maybe he did, that John wanted it all. And when you and I die, it won't be John who is found guilty--it will be Bart. It's John who killed Clover, then Apple. It's John who dreams of having Malcolm's power, Malcolm's wealth. It's not my imagination when I hear him mumbling to himself incessantly."
"Like Bart," mumbled Momma, so funny sounding. "Bart's always pretending he's old and feeble, but powerful and rich. Poor Bart. What about Jory--has he got Jory? Where is Jory?"
Why did she pity me and not Jory? Got up and left.
Was I crazy too--like him? Was I a killer at heart-- like him? Didn't know nothing about myself. Was foggy-minded, hazy seeing, but I did manage to move my heavy legs and somehow I climbed up all those old stairs.

He was the only father I could remember well, and I loved him even more in that relationship. He held out his hand and told me what we had to do, and I followed, as I would have followed blindly anywhere he led. For out of every terrible situation something good had to come, and I knew now how much he meant to me.

With Dad leading the way, we went once more to the house next door. We hadn't seen Bart all afternoon. How stupid of me to let him outsmart me, and sneak away when I had my head turned, watching some cute thing Cindy did as she tried to dance like me.

Mom had been missing a full twenty-four hours.
That old butler let us in, standing back to scowl at us. "My mother has not flown to Hawaii," stated Dad, his blue eyes hard and cold.
"So? She is not an organized woman. She may have gone on to visit friends for the holidays. She has no friends here."
"You smoke expensive cigarettes," said my father dryly. "I remember that night when I was seventeen lying behind the sofa while you and Livvy the maid were there . . . and you smoked the same cigarettes--.- French?"
"Right," said John Amos Jackson with a sneering grin. "Old Malcolm Neal Foxworth's tastes gave me the habit . . ."
"You pattern yourself after my grandfather, don't you?"
"Do I?"
"Yes, I believe you do. When I checked this house the last time, I opened a closet full of expensive men's clothes--yours?"
"I am married to Corrine Foxworth. She is my wife."
"How did you blackmail her to marry you?"
Again the old man smiled. "Some women have to have a man in the house or they don't feel safe. She married me for a companion. As you can see, she treats me like a servant still."
"I think not," said my father with his narrowed eyes sweeping over the butler who was wearing a new suit. "I think you were thinking of your future when, or if, my mother should die."
"How interesting," replied John Amos Jackson, grinding out his stub of quickly smoked cigarette. "I've made my departure plans. I'm flying back to Virginia where I expect my wife will join me when she becomes tiresome to her hosts. Her daughter ruined her socially in Virginia years ago, which you must know, but still she will go there."
"Why?"
John Amos Jackson grinned widely. "She is having Foxworth Hall reconstructed, Dr. Sheffield. From out of the ashes, Foxworth Hall shall rise again--like the fabled Phoenix!"
Dad faltered, still staring at the cigarette. "Foxworth Hall," he said in a haunted voice, "how far along is it?"
"Almost finished," answered John Amos Jackson smugly. "Soon I shall reign as king where Malcolm ruled, and his arrogant beautiful daughter will reign at my side." He laughed crazily, seeming to enjoy my father's discomfort. "She'll have her facial scars reconstructed, her face lifted again. She'll color her hair and make it blonde again, and she'll sit at the foot of my dining table. Behind me will stand one of my own cousins, where I used to stand. It will all be as it was before, except this time I shall be the lord and master."
Wheels were churning in Dad's head. "You will never rule anywhere but in prison," he said before he turned and left.
"Dad," I said when we were home, "did you believe what that butler told us?"
"I don't know yet. I do know he's more clever than I thought. When I was a boy in Foxworth Hall looking down on his bald head, I never suspected he had any power. He seemed just another servant. However, I can see now he laid his plan a long time ago and is now fulfilling his schedule for revenge."
"For revenge?"
"Jory, can't you see that man is insane? You have told me that Bart imitates a man he calls Malcolm who has been dead for years. But the man Bart is really imitating is John Amos Jackson, who is himself imitating my grandfather. Malcolm Foxworth, dead and gone, but still influencing our lives."
"How do you know? Did you ever see your grandfather?"
"I saw him one time only, Jory," he said in a sad reflective way. "I was fourteen, your age. Your mother and I hid in a huge chest on the second floor and looked down in the ballroom, and Malcolm Foxworth was in a wheelchair. He was a far distance away, and I never heard his voice. But our mother used to come to us with descriptions of how he talked about sin and hell, quoting from the Bible, talking about Hell and Judgment Day."
Night came. We turned on all the lights hoping that would light Mom home and Bart too. Emma and Madame put Cindy to bed early. Emma went from Cindy's room back into the kitchen, but Madame came into the family room and slouched in a chair across from Dad. Just about that time Bart came in the door and crouched down in a corner. "Where have you been so long?" asked Dad, sitting up straighter and fixing Bart with a strange long look. Madame M. riveted her dark ebony eyes on Bart too. Bart ignored them, and continued to make shadow pictures on the wall by holding his hands in contorted positions.
The TV set behind me was turned on though no one was watching. A choir of boys were singing Christmas carols. I felt exhausted from trying to follow Bart around all day. Exhausted more from worrying about Mom, to say nothing about what would happen to all of us . . .
I decided I had to escape by going to bed, and rose to say good night, but Madame put her finger before her lips and gestured to Dad so he too would pay attention to what Bart was muttering to himself as he made the eerie picture of an old man talking to a child.
"Bad things happen to those who defy the laws of God," he crooned in a hypnotizing way. "Bad people who don't go to church on Sundays, who don't take their children, who commit incestuous acts, will all go to hell and burn over the everlasting fires as demons torment their eternal souls. Bad people can be redeemed only by fire, saved from hell and the Devil and his pitchfork only by fire, fire."
Weird, really weird.
Dad could control his impatience and rage no longer. "Bart! Who told you all that hocus-pocus?"
My brother jerked upright, his dark brown eyes went blank. "Speak when spoken to, said the wise man to the innocent child. The child says in return, unholy people who commit sins will come to a fiery end."
"Who told you that?"
"Old man from his grave. Old man likes me better than Jory, who does sinful dancing. Old man hates dancers. Old man says only I am fit to rule in his place."
Dad was listening intently. I was remembering what Bart's shrink had advised. "Play along with the boy; pretend to believe everything he says, no matter how ridiculous. Remember he's only ten and at that age a child can believe in almost anything, so let him express himself in the only safe way he's found so far. When the 'old man' speaks, you are hearing your son speaking of what bothers him most."
"Bart," said Dad, "listen to me carefully. If your mother didn't know how to swim, and she was drowning, and I was there but looking the other way-- would you tell me so I could jump in and save her?"
Any son should have said yes immediately, but Bart considered this heavily, frowning, weighing his answer when it should have come spontaneously.
Finally he answered. "You wouldn't have to do anything to save Momma from drowning, Daddy, if Momma was pure and without sin. God would save her."