The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror (30 page)

“Our Miss Lockhart, as usual, gets straight to the point. I will attend to it straight away. Meanwhile, may I suggest we do not insult our host by ignoring all this fine food and drink? You may stay as long as you like, and of course the house is open for your inspection and delight. And please,” he added, a palm raised in caution as the gathering began to fray at the edges, “do please be careful once you are inside. I must ask that you neither bring cigarettes in nor light a match once through the door. Winterrest is expressly preserved as it was in the beginning; we certainly don’t want it to think we are clumsy bulls in a china shop.”

There was laughter and applause, and Doug stood with Liz as the others milled around them, averting their faces now, not bothering to stop to either decry or declare. He had expected one or the other and was braced for it; he was not prepared to feel the complete absence of caring. It was as if they had been told there was rain in the forecast—any fool can see that, all he had to do was look up.

Within moments they were alone. The buffet was deserted except for a few stragglers, the rest heading for the tables and chairs, to watch the renewed ball game, or to the queue up at the doorway for their Parrish-guided tour.

“Son of a bitch,” he said helplessly. “Can you beat that?”

“Doug,” said Liz, “have you seen Ollie?”

5:30

It’s marvelous, Ollie thought in headspinning delirium, her cheeks aching pleasantly as if they were about to split open; it’s absolutely and totally fabulous! I’m making a fool of myself.

But she didn’t stop grinning, didn’t stop giggling, couldn’t get over the way the men rushed to fetch her food, rushed to fetch her drinks, ate her up and drank her down with their eyes while she stood there in the middle of it all and could feel them, just feel them straining and panting against their little-town morals. Any of them, would have gladly emptied his wallet just to get her alone in the house; any of them would have cut off his right arm just to be able to touch the swell of her breasts.

Oh god, it was beautiful!

And that damned sonofabitch ought to be here now, ought to be taking notes on the way his imaginary rivals suddenly weren’t very imaginary anymore. He ought to
be
here, damnit, to see the way they treated her, to see the way she played peekaboo with her hair, squared her shoulders to position her breasts, stretched the thin muslin over them so they could see, if they looked closely, the lace roses on her bra and the dark shadows of her nipples.

Oh Christ, the bastard ought to be here!

If he needed a father for the kid so damned badly, he could take his pick of half the town.

She drank, then, and ate, and let her constantly changing escorts do most of the talking; she felt her cheeks flush, her neck grow warm, and decided as Parrish came out of the house that she really should go stand with Doug and Liz in case they thought she was pissed at them, too. They had tried their best to make things easier for her, tried to show her how wrong she was to get so hysterical over . . . well, maybe not exactly nothing, but not the end of the world, either.

It definitely wasn’t the end of the world.

God, it had taken her hours last night to find the right screws for her head, the right way to reset it so she was thinking straight for a change and not having bastard Bud do it all for her. Hours and hours, and now, though she wasn’t drunk, she was feeling no pain and feeling the best she had since . . . since God only knew when.

She covered her mouth with a palm to stifle a guilty laugh. If Bud had thought the goods were tainted before—him and his damned paranoia flushing it down the damned toilet—he should see the colors her secret stash was giving her now: all those greens sometimes so bright they made her eyes water, all those golds shimmering and swimming on the circus tent, all those incredible blacks up there in the sky, like holes opening onto the soul of the universe, showing how it really was and whispering to her that she knew more than she thought.

All the colors, all the sounds, and the beautiful feeling that her stomach had grown, that she was much like a woman only days from her term.

For a moment, when Doug first interrupted Parrish’s speech, she felt a twinge in her abdomen and shook it off as too much rum and set her glass down—it was too soon for the kid to do anything but swim around in there and have himself a good time before the world crashed into sight.

By the time the speech was over (it was too bad she hadn’t heard any of it), there was this nice man who looked a lot like Judy’s bartender in the godawfulest pink shirt and silly white pants who seemed determined to hand-measure the circumference of her waist and the diameters of her breasts; he breathed something she couldn’t understand into her ear that made her lungs fill with fire, made her head giddy, and she was about to turn around and introduce herself when the twinge came again.

She winced, swallowed a moan, and ran a soothing hand over the swelling.

It was bigger. God, it
was
bigger.

The twinge became a streak of pain across her gut.

She gasped and grabbed hastily for the edge of the nearest table, shaking her head when Gil Clay asked if she needed any help. It would be all right; all she had to do was find a chair and stop her damned drinking. Christ, she’d have to remember she had a kid to watch out for now, and all this slurping the sauce wasn’t going to do her a bit of good.

There wasn’t a chair nearby, and the pain arrowed up her spine and into her brain. She whimpered, and whispered Bud’s name, looked around to find Doug, to find Liz, and found herself staring into Eban Parrish’s eyes.

“My dear Miss West, aren’t you feeling well?”

Her brave smile was replaced by a squeak of pain. She shook her head.

“Oh my poor dear,” he said solicitously, his eyes abruptly filled with concern. “Well, we certainly can’t have you giving birth right here in the middle of the party, can we? Good heavens, I shouldn’t think so. It’s much too soon, am I correct?”

“Yes,” she said, and almost added “mummy,’ but he was being so kind she swallowed the word instead.

“As I thought,” he said, and put an arm around her waist (funny how strong these little guys can be) and took hold of one hand (funny how cold those fingers can be). Smiling, and murmuring unintelligible words of comfort, he guided her across the lawn and into the house.

The central hallway ran the width of the mansion, and before she could protest, he had brought her closer to the front, the wall on the right plastered and divided with thin pale beams above black walnut wainscoting, the wall on the left painted white and faintly marked with fingerstreaks of dust. The light was dim but not uncomfortably so, glowing from glass-globed gaslamps now harboring light bulbs in the shape of quivering candle flames.

“Mr. Parrish,” she managed at last, “I’m all right now, really.”

He shook his head at her display of courage. “You young women these days certainly do have your stamina. But,” he continued with a raised finger, “may I be presumptuous enough to suggest a short rest before you attempt the walk home? After all, you must think for two now, isn’t that correct?”

“Well . . .” She supposed he was right, after all. A little too much attention, perhaps too much of that punch. She guessed it wouldn’t do any harm at all to lie down for a while. A nap. Until the dizziness went away and she could stand alone again.

“Fine, that’s fine.” His voice was eager, two hands scrubbing each other.

They climbed the narrow staircase to a landing which branched left and right to a hallway above. The stairwell was encircled by a low oaken balustrade, and she leaned on it at his direction while they made their way to the front corridor and turned right, where he opened the front door.

“Oh . . . my,” she said, blinking away the light from the single high window. “This is . . . weird.”

The room was small, its ceiling low, the bed Parrish indicated stretching out from the lefthand wall barely her size. A wood canopy extended over the frame, a red and black quilt covered a thick mattress. A mahogany wardrobe took up most of the space beside the door, a straight-backed chair next to the window the only other piece of furniture in the room.

There were no pictures on the walls, but cracks in the plaster formed faces and creatures and rivers of shadow.

“They were, as you can see, much smaller in those days than we are now,” he explained as he assisted her onto the bed, fluffed the pillows and waited until she lay prone. Her ankles rested just on the footboard. “Even I, who am certainly not very tall by today’s standards, feel obliged to duck each time I enter one of these little rooms.”

She looked to the window—the sill-length white curtains had been tied back, and she could see the wall, the highway, and the trees on the other side. The sky was considerably darker, gloom spilling through the panes until Parrish turned on the light switch. It wasn’t much better, there was only one wall lamp beside the door, but it helped. She smiled her thanks.

“I shall leave the door open for you, of course,” he said solemnly. “And I will have Mrs. Cleary—I think you know Nell, don’t you?—look in on you in half an hour. I would hope that by that time you will be feeling much better.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, thanks.”

Her eyelids felt uncommonly weighted, sand scraped at the corners, and she astonished herself by yawning the moment the old man left her.

“Too much,” she said quietly. “This is really too much.”

She yawned a second time, and tears filled her eyes.

Damn you, Bud, she thought, punching the top pillow with her fist; damn you, you should be here taking care of me instead of that funny little man. Damn you, Charles, you bastard. Jesus, Bud. Jesus.

She was almost asleep when she heard the walls groan.

5:30

“Cluck,” said Ian Backster delightedly. “Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.”

“Shut up, creep,” Keith grumbled. “Shut your face before I smash your glasses.”

“Keith!” Heather scolded.

He shrugged; he didn’t care. They were all being stupid, and it was all Archie’s fault. The football game had just broken up, and they were sitting in a tight circle on the lawn, plucking at the grass and muttering dark oaths at the other kids who had been called away by their parents—either to go home, or to take the stupid tour through the stupid house. There didn’t seem much point in playing anymore with just the four of them—Heather really didn’t count because all she wanted to do was be the referee so she could stand on the sidelines and look for Archie’s big brother, Barry—so they had dropped where they stood, listening to the wind gathering itself for a big blow off the hill behind them. Then Archie had decided it was time they took a tour of their own. They could go in the front way, he said as he scrambled to his fat knees, his stomach almost lying on his fat thighs. Everybody else was hanging around the back and who would notice, right? It was a big place, right? They could hide in closets and stuff and scare the shit out of the old folks.

Dirk was eager, as was Ian, who couldn’t stop bouncing. Heather kept looking over her shoulder for Barry, so it was up to Keith to talk them out of it.

“Cluckie, cluckie,” Archie sneered.

Ian giggled.

“Hey,’ Keith said, “who’s the chief around here anyway, huh? Who’s the—”

“Oh, dry up,” Dirk said in disgust. “Boy, as soon as someone else comes up with the neat idea, all you can do is play the big man, like you know everything that’s going on. Well, I think it’s neat, and I think we oughta do it.”

“Yeah,” Ian said, eyes wide behind his glasses. “We could moan and groan and do all kinds of things like that.”

“In broad daylight?” Keith said. “Are you kiddin? They’re gonna know it’s us. It ain’t gonna work.”

Archie puffed his cheeks, shook his head, and shrugged at the others. “He’s a chicken, what can I say?”

“I am not a chicken,” Keith said, keeping his voice low. “But if we get caught in there by Parrish the creep, he gonna ream our asses good.”

“Keith!” Heather snapped. “Watch your mouth.”

“Oh pardon me,” said Archie, eyes wide and rolling. “We gotta lady present, Keith. We gotta watch our terrible language.”

“You kids make me sick,” she said, pushing herself up and brushing off her jeans. “I’m going back.” She took a step away, and looked back. “Maybe Maggie is hungry. Maybe I’ll just go over and feed her.”

That was for Keith, who thought of the buckskin and nearly changed his mind to join his sister. But he hesitated too long, and Heather tossed her head and walked on.

“Be sure to say hello to Barry honey,” Dirk sang, one hand on his hip. “Give him a big one for Archie.”

She paused only long enough to brandish a fist at them before stalking over the lawn toward the house. It was enough, however, to drop the Gang into hysterical laughter. They rolled, they kicked at the air, they called Heather’s name and asked her what she and Barry did when they were out in the field after dark and thought no one knew they were being watched. She ignored them. Eventually they quieted. The sound of starting engines drifted toward them from the front yard.

“Shit, man, everybody’s leavin,” Archie complained, sitting back on his heels. “A bummer, y’know?”

“Don’t matter,” Dirk said, pulling at the grass. “The food stunk.”

“Gee, I kinda liked it,” Ian said. Dirk scowled at him and he sighed. “Well, I guess it wasn’t all that great,” the boy admitted quickly. “I mean, it wasn’t all that great, right?”

They sprawled. They stared at each other. They
i
rose as one and looked around listlessly.

The sky darkened, clouds lowered, and Keith noticed the field of stars trapped around the tent, noticed as well that every light in Winterrest had been turned on. Most of the adults were gone from the lawn.

whispering

a darksoft voice, whispering

“Got an idea,” he said, keeping his voice calm.

“Great,” Archie said grumpily. “What do you want to do, go wash old man Parrish’s car or something? I still wanna go in the house and scare some old farts.”