The Unloved (40 page)

Then he heard the scream—muffled almost to the point of inaudibility—and took an instinctive step forward.

Instantly, the knife Marguerite held concealed in the folds of her skirt came up. Kerry recognized it too late.

He froze in mid-step, his eyes wide as he watched the knife arc down toward his chest. Each instant seemed to hang before him like an eternity, and his mind churned with confusion.

What was happening? Was she trying to kill him? But she couldn’t be—she
wouldn’t
be! Why? What had he done to her?

Even as the knife descended upon him, he realized the truth. It wasn’t Marguerite at all who was killing him. It was someone else, someone she’d dredged up out of the depths of her mind, and it was that person who was killing him.

She was not Marguerite, and he was not Kerry. Instead he had got caught up in a mad fantasy, and none of it was real.

Except the knife.

The knife was real, and Kerry felt himself in suspended animation as it sank into his chest. He felt the cold metal slip between his ribs, felt his lungs tear as the blade ripped through them.

He felt the knife being torn out of him, and he staggered, his legs betraying him as shock began to move out from the wound, paralyzing his limbs, sapping the strength from his body.

Then the knife struck again, and this time he felt it enter his heart.

He pitched forward, his vision going black as he died. The last thing he saw was the scarlet gash of Marguerite’s mouth, twisted into a vicious parody of a victorious smile.

Marguerite’s heart pounded with wild elation as she watched the life drain out of the face in front of her. The eyes were opened wide, and she’d seen every one of the fleeting emotions
that had passed through them. First the fear, the shock as he’d recognized who she really was. He’d almost gotten away from her then, almost turned to flee out into the night, where she knew she’d never be able to follow him—not with the strange burning in her hip that kept her from walking properly. But then she’d heard her daughter screaming from upstairs, and seen the boy turn back.

His eyes were puzzled then, as if he didn’t know what he’d done, why she had to punish him—punish him and her daughter too. But then the puzzlement had vanished as she’d raised the knife, and he’d stared at it in fascination as she plunged it into his chest then jerked it out only to strike once more.

Then, finally, the light in his eyes had gone out, and she’d known he was dead, known it even before his body pitched forward and she stepped aside to let it fall to the floor at her feet.

She smiled once again as the force of his fall drove the knife even deeper and its point, covered with his blood, emerged out of his back.

Her fingers, twitching with pleasure, went to her bodice, and she felt the warm stickiness of his blood on the lace of her blouse. But that was all right. She could change her clothes if she wanted to—upstairs, hanging in her closets, were racks and racks of them. And it had been so long since she’d worn them, so many years since there had been a ball upstairs.

She stepped over the body at her feet and pushed the door closed against the storm. She could still hear her daughter screaming and pounding her fists against the door upstairs.

As well she might, considering what she’d done. She would have to be locked up again, just as she’d been locked up before, in the little room down in the cellar.

But there was so much to be done first. So very, very much …

Humming softly to herself, Marguerite bent down and grasped Kerry Sanders’s arms, then began dragging him across the floor of the entry hall toward the bottom of the stairs.

Blood, still oozing slightly from his wounds, smeared across
the floor, but Marguerite didn’t notice it at all. Finally reaching the foot of the staircase, she paused for a moment to catch her breath. Then she threw the switch to activate the chair lift.

Nothing happened.

She frowned uncertainly, then remembered. Of course it didn’t work—the electricity was off. She chuckled hollowly then, remembering that they’d thought of this years ago, her daughter and herself, when she’d been confined to the second floor. It was Marguerite who had come up with the idea.

“We’ll put in a generator,” she’d said. “Just a little one in the closet under the stairs. Just in case.”

And tonight, finally, the case had come.

She picked up the hurricane lamp that stood on the newel post and went to the door beneath the stairs. Inside, tucked away in a corner, was the generator. She stared at it for a moment.

Would it even work? If it had been left to that worthless Ruby to look after, it probably wouldn’t.

She studied the directions printed on the orange metal of the machine’s gas tank, then fumbled for a moment as she searched for the choke. Finally, bracing herself uncomfortably, she pulled on the rope that emerged from the side.

On the third pull the little motor caught, coughed, then fell into an uneven idle that smoothed out when she adjusted the choke.

She turned one more switch and the machinery of the chair lift hummed into life.

She left the closet and returned to the foot of the stairs. She pressed the button, there was a familiar clanking sound, and the chair began descending toward her from its place at the second-floor landing.

Julie and Jeff, their throats sore and their voices hoarse, finally stopped screaming. The nursery was cold now, and the wind was whipping the curtains beside the broken window,
but they were oblivious to it all, their ears pressed to the door as they strained to hear what was happening downstairs.

The wind slackened for a moment, and suddenly in the empty silence that replaced the howling of the storm, they heard the sound of machinery.

“Wh-What’s she doing?” Jeff whispered, fearfully clutching Julie’s hand.

“I don’t know. It sounds like the chair lift. But it can’t be—there isn’t any electricity.”

Then Jeff remembered the generator his father had shown him in the closet under the stairs.

“But why?” Julie asked after he had told her about it. “What does she need the lift for? She never uses it—she hates it.”

“How should I know?” Jeff complained. “And where’s Kerry?”

But Julie made no answer to Jeff’s question, and he didn’t ask it again, for both of them were already certain that Kerry was dead.

They didn’t know how, and they didn’t know why, but they were both absolutely positive that it had happened.

Their Aunt Marguerite had killed him.

The chair lift rattled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, and Marguerite leaned down, sliding her hands under Kerry Sanders’s arms. Her right leg sprawled awkwardly across the floor, she rested her weight on her left leg, crouching low to keep her balance. Finally, straining with the effort, she pushed herself upward, lifting Kerry’s limp body into the chair. She held it in place for a moment, catching her breath, then let go.

The body swayed, nearly falling off the chair. She caught it at the last moment, then paused, uncertain what to do.

And then she knew.

Grasping the handle of the knife that still protruded from Kerry’s chest, she pressed her weight against it, driving its sharp end into the banister at Kerry’s back. Then, leaving the
body pinned to the stair rail like an insect on a board, she gathered her skirts around her and hurried down the stairs to the cellar, carrying the hurricane lamp with her.

In a few moments she was back, a long length of clothesline clutched in her free hand. Setting the lamp back on the newel post, she began wrapping the rope around Kerry’s body, tying it tightly against the back of the chair. When she was finally satisfied, she jerked the knife free of the banister and Kerry’s body settled slightly, his shoulders drooping, his right arm falling from his lap so that his fingers almost brushed the bottom stair.

Once again Marguerite pressed the button, and the chair began moving slowly upward, its gears grinding loudly as it bore its grisly cargo aloft.

Marguerite, one hand clutching Kerry’s shoulder for support, mounted the stairs next to the lift, keeping the sedate pace of the chair, oblivious to the small rivulet of crimson blood that ran down Kerry’s arm and dribbled in large droplets onto the carpet that covered the stairs.

They came to the second-floor landing, but instead of stopping the chair there, Marguerite let it continue, jerking around the corner to the second flight, then grinding in protest as it hit the rust that had gathered on the upper set of rails during the years of disuse.

A high, keening wail accompanied the chair on its final ascent, and then it clanked loudly as it came to a stop once more.

Marguerite struggled with the rope, her fingers slipping off the blood-covered knots. But slowly she began working them loose, and at last the rope came free and Kerry’s body tumbled to the floor. Grasping his hands in her own, she began dragging his corpse into the ballroom.

Julie and Jeff stared at each other in horror. They’d listened in silence as the chair lift had ground upward, then felt a moment of relief as it had clanged to a stop. But a few minutes later they’d heard a soft thump above them, as if
something had fallen. Their eyes met, and though neither of them said a word, they both knew what had happened. It was Jeff who finally dared to speak, as the wind outside began to scream once more through the pines and a renewed torrent of rain battered at the house.

“She killed him,” he whispered, his voice choking with terrified sobs. “She killed him, and she took him upstairs, and she’s going to kill us too.”

Julie was unable to make any reply at all, for she knew that what her brother had said was true.

And then, after what seemed like an eternity of silence from beyond the nursery door, the machinery suddenly came back to life and they heard the chair lift begin its slow descent once again.

The storm seemed to find new strength, and once more the night was shattered by jagged daggers of lightning and the house shuddered under the force of the thunder that followed each flash. A tall pine only ten yards from the house shrieked in protest as a bolt of lightning struck its top, splitting its trunk to the root. Julie screamed out loud as the thunderclap crashed in her ears, then shrank back, clutching the small coverlet from the broken crib tight around her.

“We’ve got to get away from here!” Jeff shouted over the roar of the storm.

“How?” Julie sobbed. “There isn’t any way out.”

But Jeff was already at the smashed window, squinting into the darkness as he tried to find a means of escape. As another bolt of lightning slashed through the storm, he saw a way. Eight feet away, toward the corner of the house, a thick mass of wisteria climbed the wall. Here on the second floor there was a narrow ledge, no more than six inches wide, which ran the full length of the house. If he could get onto the ledge and cling to the house itself as he inched his way to the vines—

“I can do it!” he yelled. “I know I can!”

His shout of bravado roused Julie. Still clutching the quilt around her shoulders, she moved toward the window.

“Look!” Jeff whispered, his voice quivering with excitement now instead of fear. “There’s some vines there. All I have to do is go along the ledge.”

“But you can’t,” Julie protested. “There’s nothing to hang onto.”

“Yes, I can,” Jeff insisted. “There’s all kinds of cracks in
the siding. And if I can get out of the house, maybe I can get across the causeway too.”

The memory of her mother flashed into Julie’s head. “You can’t get across. Not in this—”

“Kerry got across,” Jeff replied, his jaw setting stubbornly. “If he could do it, so can I.”

He climbed up onto the windowsill and swung his legs out, then rolled over so he was on his stomach, his head and shoulders still inside the nursery. He felt with his toes, then found the ledge. A moment later, his weight on the ledge but his balance maintained only by his hands clinging to the sill, he grinned at his sister. “See? It’s easy.”

“Don’t!” Julie wailed. “You’ll fall, Jeff.”

“I won’t either,” Jeff told her. “And even if I do, I bet it won’t hurt me. All it is is mud down there, and I’ve jumped off higher stuff than this.”

He began edging his way toward the vines then, moving his feet slowly and carefully, testing the strength of the ledge with every step before trusting his weight to it. In a few seconds he was away from the window, only his right hand still clinging to its broken frame. He winced as he felt a fragment of glass slash his fingers, but let out no cry. Then, with his left hand, he began groping for a finger hold on the wall itself.

His heart sank for a moment as he felt nothing but the smooth surface of the siding, but then, barely within reach, he found a small crack. His fingertips dug in, and with the wind lashing at him, he took a deep breath, let go of the window frame, and began inching his way once more along the ledge.

He froze as the sky lit up around him, then pressed his body to the wall as a rumble of thunder made the house shake beneath his feet. As the thunder died away, he began creeping once more toward the vines.