The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (21 page)

Omicron?”

“A good deal happier, I expect,” Posey said. “I owe you nothing.”

“You owe me your shares,” my husband said in a voice that

brought chills even to me, a room, a world away. I expect had it

been the Gun Room instead of the Billiard Room, one or both

would have laid dead on the ?oor.

“And you shall have them,” Douglas Posey said.

With haste, Sukeena and I made it into the Central Hall East

in advance of my husband and his partner leaving the Billiard

Room, the click of the door opening behind us. We hurried the

length of that splendid corridor and ducked into the Grand

Ballroom instead of allowing ourselves to be spotted loitering at

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the base of the Grand Stair. John would not take kindly to even

the possibility of eavesdropping—he guarded his business dealings

in the cloak of extreme secrecy and attributed his success in part

to this.

Winded, and out of breath, Sukeena and I pressed our backs

alongside the great oil paintings that dominate the Grand

Ballroom. We could reach the Entry Hall to our right, and the

Parlor just beyond, where my guests were waiting the commencement

of our séance.

I have sneaked up just now “to powder my nose” to make note

of this encounter in your pages. I shall now return to the Ladies

Library to meet our guests and our guest of honor.

I know not what lies in store, but it has been an eventful

evening already—and it hasn’t of?cially started!

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5 september 1914—rose red

I could not wait until the light of morning to put to pen the

events of this evening! I shudder with fear and delight at what I

have just experienced and shall endeavor to put it down here just

as it happened, from start to ?nish.

Madame Stravinski is seated when my guests and I are summoned

to the Ladies Library. A little giddy, perhaps apprehensive, as it

were, we were directed into our seats by the wizened woman and

told to remain silent. Only Sukeena stays standing in de?ance of

the instructions (directly behind our guest of honor). The two

exchange furtive glances, Sukeena winning the day, and Madame

Stravinski makes no more of it. At this point, not to be outdone,

my husband stands from his chair and starts an energetic pacing

that continues from this point forward. Madame Stravinski,

understanding from whose pocket her hefty fee was to come,

proves in no mood to challenge John, and a good thing too,

given his obvious agitation and disapproving nature. This leaves

Douglas Posey the only man at the table. I sit facing her, at the

opposing head of the table. Between us, in the center of the great

oval table, rests her crystal sphere, a glass object the size of a

human head, which sits upon a jeweled base of gold, or similar

metal, and proves to be within the extended reach of the

medium.

She calls for the lighting of candles and the extinguishing of

all electric lights in the grand house. Thankfully, she made these

instructions earlier, upon her arrival, for it required three of our

four staff on hand and nearly forty minutes to render the house

in darkness. Alas, it is but a minute or two to secure the various

rooms of the ground ?oor and for our staff to return to light the

candles and dim this room’s electric lamp for good. At that time,

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our medium calls for total silence. Only our breathing and

John’s impatient footfalls disturb this peaceful blanket.

Next, Madame Stravinski calls upon us all to connect by hand.

Only Sukeena refuses this instruction. Even John joins in the

fun, moving his chair between me and Tina, taking my hand, but

interlacing his ?ngers in hers. (This was my ?rst experience with

jealousy where Tina is concerned. What was it I sensed between

my husband and my best friend? Dare I think such a thought?

Are such suspicions founded, or do I see deceit and deception

around every corner now?)

With all of us holding hands, and only the dim ?icker of candlelight

shifting shadows on the walls of books, Madame

Stravinski closes her eyes, asks us to bow our heads and speaks in a

chilling, unvarying tone. “Great house that does surround us,

open your doors to a visitor who has come to greet you.” She

speaks in Russian or German next, perhaps repeating herself, I

cannot be sure. My husband speaks a little of both, perhaps he

understood her mumblings.

I must admit to a certain degree of awe. Whether it was just my

own body or an effect divined by Madame Stravinski, I swear to

your pages that the temperature of the room did drop substantially.

I also swear that the ?ickering ?ames of those candles did

dance from the wicks as if a door had been thrown quickly open

and a gust of wind had entered the room.

Madame Stravinski is, by now, locked in something of a

trance, her head bowed slightly, her eyes closed. I see across the

table to my guests, my friends, and observe their astonishment—

for clearly they expected a hoax, not the events we have just witnessed.

The medium’s mutterings gain volume and clarity as she

speaks to no one, her words gaining speed to where they pour

from her mouth in a waterfall of syllables and half-formed sen-

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tences. She is calling upon the house, the “grand house,” and

requesting she be allowed through its doors, through its walls. In

the midst of this chanting, she opens her eyes at half-mast and

reaches out for the glass orb before her on the table. She looks

different, not at all herself, younger perhaps, yet frozen in time.

Again a great gust of cold ?lls the room and runs up my legs.

That glass orb begins to glow—I swear it!—and tendrils of light, like

a goo, climb up out of it and stretch for the ceiling. At once, the

candles are extinguished by this wind, the only light from the

swirling blue and green tendrils overhead and that glowing specimen

of glass held between her withered hands. I think of my

daughter, April, and her poor withered right arm, I think back to

my prayers so many years ago as I was forming the children’s hospital

that I would never know what to do if one of my own children

was born deformed. Did I bring this upon April? Or did

my husband, by passing me the African curse? Can I save my

children? Mustn’t my husband pay for his sins? Question after

question is running through my head, as I sit perfectly still while

confronted with the agitations of my guests. Only Madame

Stravinski, Sukeena and I remain unmoving and un?inching.

Even John is visibly upset as he breaks his handhold with me and

jumps to his feet.

As he does, there is great chaos in the room. The shelves rattle

and books start slipping to the ?oor. Only one or two at ?rst,

then a score or more. The next score of books take ?ight, sailing

across the room, aiming themselves at John and careening into

the opposing wall of letters.

“Sit down, please.” It is from my throat that my husband

receives his instructions, and yet it is not of me. This voice, dark

and clouded, jumps from me to Madame Stravinski, and then

back to me again. “Sin is where it starts, sin is where it stops.

Build me to the heavens, or the next man drops.” First from my

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mouth, then Madame Stravinski’s. A moment later, everyone at

the table is chanting in unison, and my husband shakes in his

chair, to which he has returned. Douglas Posey stands to leave the

room, and a volley of ?ying books strike the door and push it

shut before he can escape. I tell you, Dear Diary: all that I write is

true, as far as it is from any experience on my part.

The room’s twin electric lamps begin to swing. Slowly at ?rst.

Then huge sweeping arcs, back and forth, back and forth. And

there’s that wind again.

“Build me to the heavens or the next man drops.” We are

shouting now, loudly, all of us. Even John, whose jaw appears to

move independently of him, to move in spite of him.

Without warning, Madame Stravinski seems to shed a skin of

dark shadow, like a snake in season. This darkness rises out of

her, and over her, part ghost (like that I saw in the barn, only

black not white), part alive. It looms over the table, and we all

stop chanting at once, for it seems about to do something, to

attempt something, and it’s quite clear that whatever it intends

involves those of us surrounding the table. “Come to me . . . ,”

says that darkness in a dry, deep voice that raises my hackles.

Sukeena steps forward and grabs Madame Stravinski’s glass

globe, attempting to wrench it from the table. She is consumed in

a sudden burst of light, she appears to be nothing but a vague

shadow as she strains to remove it.

In an instant, Sukeena is thrown back off her feet, sailing

through the air like the books only moments earlier. Crashing

into the closed door, she sinks to the ?oor, out of breath and

dazed. I leap from my chair—ducking from the books I expect to

attack me, and am surprised when none ?ies.

If this wasn’t enough, it is only as I break from the séance to

rescue my dear friend that the wind and the sound of it stops—

stops as if a window were shut—and, here’s the impossible part to

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believe, the candles reignite themselves. Silence settles over us all.

That dark shadow that loomed above our medium is gone.

Madame Stravinski is awake. Eyes wide open, she stares directly at

John Rimbauer.

“What?” my husband calls out, dangerously loud, for his ears

have not yet lost the singing of that cold wind.

The medium merely stares at him.

“What?”

She does not answer.

John storms from the room, Douglas Posey immediately on

his heels. “Rubbish,” Posey says, though not terribly convincingly.

He’s as wide-eyed as the rest of us.

“My God!” I exclaim, feeling the knot on Sukeena’s skull.

“What have you done to her?”

“Everyone out!” Madame Stravinski declared. “You two stay,”

she added, indicating Sukeena and me. “The door,” she said, once

the room was cleared (the guests were only too happy to oblige).

“You’ve hurt her!” I complained.

“She interfered,” Madame Stravinski explained without

remorse. “But I heard the message just the same.”

“What message?”

“The message for you, child. The message from Rose Red.”

I glanced around the room at the devastation. A full half of

the books were now on the ?oor—the wind had driven droplets of

wax from the candles, spilled them onto the bookshelves. I shuddered.

That spilled wax made the wind very real to me.

“What message?” I asked, though more weakly this time.

“It has promised you life. Life forever. Life without fear of

death. Life without fear of illness. Your fevers will never return.

As long as you keep building, so you shall live. This, I believe,

answers a prayer once made by you. Your prayers are answered

now. Life without death. Life . . . without . . . fear.”

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The medium collapsed in her chair, sagged across an arm, half

on the table, half on the chair. She appeared unconscious.

“No listen, Miss Ellen.” Sukeena muttered her ?rst words.

“No listen to this evil.”

“Life without fear,” I whispered. “Life without death.” I

looked around the tossed room again, held my friend tightly in

my arms and squeezed. “Rose Red has answered my prayers!”

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10 october 1914—rose red

To-day, as Lyman C. Smith, of Smith-Corona typewriter fame,

dedicated the tallest of?ce building in all of Seattle, the Smith

Tower, construction on the newest wing of the largest private

home began. (I often think Lyman and others are jealous or

envious of John and challenge him with these engineering

accomplishments!) Here at the house, horse-drawn teams

dragged plows and broke the earth while hordes of Chinamen

shoveled furiously, ?lling wagons by the score. It is as if my former

fevers—I have not taken ill since the séance—have spread to

the project itself. I have hardly slept in the last month, working

tirelessly around the clock on the plans and the arrangements to

continue the construction of Rose Red. I fear I am leaving the

children a bit too much to the governesses—I am told that April

will sit for hours sometimes in front of the great working model

of Rose Red and talk to the house in words that no one but she

understands. They have called this state a trance, though I am

loath to accept that. All children spend time in their makebelieve

worlds, April just a bit more than most. She’s an unusual

girl. Nothing wrong with that. More important now is that I live

on for my children, that I live to help them through this life, and

Rose Red has made her promise, and I am not inclined to dismiss

it as lightly as my dear Sukeena. (She remains infuriated with my

acceptance of the séance and Madame Stravinski’s “performance”

as she refers to that captivating evening. We were the talk of the

town for weeks!)

Hour after hour the workers outside the window toil. The new