“He feared me! I could see it in his eyes. He hated and feared me, and he persuaded everyone else to, with one exception: Audrey.” I heard the scorn in her voice. “Mick hadn’t a clue how to handle Audrey.”
“But you did,” I replied. “You’re good at manipulating people.”
“Thank you.”
I hadn’t meant it as a compliment. “It’s you, not Aunt Iris, who needs to be committed. You’re crazy.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m certainly not psychic. And you know the choice that we O’Neill women have.”
Psychic or psychotic. Uncle Will had known that too. The child whom he and Aunt Iris had argued about was Marcy, not me. What he feared had come true: Living close to her child had caused Iris great pain.
“When Uncle Will found my mother’s client book, he realized that you had killed Mick. He poached here, and he recognized the images in my mother’s psychic reading.”
“William always hated me. Last month, when he figured it out, he rather stupidly told Mommy Iris, told her what she already knew. It didn’t take much for me to discover why she was suddenly so upset. Have you decided what it is going to be for you?”
I looked at Marcy, puzzled.
“Psychic or psychotic?” she asked, her voice pleasant, as if she were inquiring about a preference for regular or decaf.
Aunt Iris, I said silently, if you can hear me, I need you to distract Marcy. Aloud I said, “I don’t think a person chooses to be either.”
“Perhaps not chooses,” Marcy responded, “but allows it, nurtures it.”
Aunt Iris, please help me. I need a running start.
“Who’s there?” Aunt Iris murmured, turning her head slowly toward the gazebo. Marcy and I followed her gaze. “Is it you, William?” she asked.
It’s me, Anna.
“William,” Aunt Iris murmured.
No. Anna!
“William, let it rest,” she moaned. She moved her head from side to side, grimacing, but kept her eyes fixed on the space above the trapdoor. With the bright moonlight reflecting off the gazebo’s roof, its interior looked dark and murky.
“William,” she groaned.
Her eyes shimmered in the silver light, then began to rise under the wrinkled tent of her eyelids.
“Stop it!” Marcy said.
“William. . William. . William!” Aunt Iris cried, her voice climbing higher each time she spoke. She rocked back and forth.
“William. . William. . William!”
The sockets of her eyes shone white, like those of a marble statue.
“Stop it, Mommy Iris!”
Her mouth twitched, stretched, had a life of its own. Then her eyes rolled forward again, and another face, a stranger’s face, looked out of my aunt’s.
“Stop it now!” Marcy demanded.
Run, Anna.
I blinked. What?
The stranger’s face retracted, grew back into Aunt Iris’s.
Her body shuddered, as if she were going to vomit whatever had possessed her.
Run, Anna.
I stared at her in amazement. This is for me?
Her mouth stretched again. She looked like a snake about to swallow something larger than itself.
Marcy crouched with fear. “Stop it, Mommy! Stop it!”
Run, Anna, run.
I took off.
I RACED TOWARD the house and found the door open. Behind me I heard Iris wailing and Marcy shouting at her. How long could Iris keep Marcy distracted? Long enough for me to get to the front door and up the driveway, that’s what I needed.
The moment I stepped into the dark house, I remembered that my flashlight was under the gazebo. There was no time to wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I plunged ahead. I didn’t know the floor plan, didn’t know even the basic shape of the house, having seen only the section of it that backed up to the walled garden. But big houses often had center halls. If the pond and the children’s garden were centered, it was likely that I had entered the hall that ran straight to the front door.
I ran straight into a wall. For a moment I was stunned, then I felt the surface in front of me — wood — a door. I groped for a handle. When my fingers touched the metal knob, I wanted to yank open the door, but I forced myself to turn the knob slowly, quietly, then I tiptoed through and closed the door again, just as slowly and quietly, not wanting to call attention to myself.
There wasn’t a pencil line of light visible. I moved forward steadily, trying to walk straight, my hands out in front of me. I felt as if I had stumbled into a room the size of a gymnasium.
In a house like this, the rooms could be large, I thought, and so could the halls.
I heard footsteps. Marcy had entered the house. I heard her walking in the room behind the door. I fought the urge to race through the house: I was a mouse in a pitch-black maze being pursued by a cat who knew the maze by heart.
The moment I made a noise, I had better be close to an exit.
I moved steadily forward, listening for Marcy, wondering why she didn’t burst through the door between us.
Because she knew other doors, other ways to get to me, I thought. She wasn’t going to give herself away, not until she had me where she could strike quickly and easily — from behind, her favorite method.
I kept walking. My legs felt strange and rubbery. With each step, my sense of direction became less certain. My hand touched something that felt like wood and was shaped like a thick rod. I felt to the right and left of it — the spindles of a staircase. The banister they supported was wide, like that of the main stairway of a large house. But the stairs weren’t straight ahead. They didn’t point to what I had hoped was the front door, or maybe they did and I had veered off course. I was confused.
Having nothing else to follow, I followed the stairway wall, losing track of the steps as they rose. I came to another wall with a door in it. Finding the knob, I turned it quietly, pushed against the door, and stepped through. I lurched forward, hanging on to the door handle and swinging wildly. Another set of steps. The door had saved me from tumbling headlong down them.
Regaining my balance, I took one step down and groped in vain for a railing. The walls on either side of me were close, like those of a stairway down to a basement, but the air didn’t smell like a cellar’s. I took two more steps, then jammed my foot against a level floor.
I was just four steps down, in a wing of the house, I thought. Wings were often smaller, at least in the historic houses I had seen; I reasoned that it would be easier to find an exit. I’d do it methodically, feeling my way around a room till I found a window. I quietly shut the door to my wing and moved along the hallway.
I felt a door frame and turned right, assuming that I was in the first room of the wing. I kept thinking I’d see a crack of moonlight somewhere, but it was so dark, I couldn’t see the hand in front of my face.
Starting with the wall immediately to my right, I felt a smooth wood surface and a vertical groove, then another smooth surface and another groove: paneling. I worked my way around a chair, then past a corner, continuing till my hand touched a wood ridge. My fingers followed the ridge up to a shelf about chin high and surprisingly long. I tripped on a rough surface: a fireplace. An outside wall! I thought triumphantly, then remembered that some houses had chimneys inside. I bumped into a table placed next to the fireplace and, taking a half step back from it, moved sideways till I reached a second corner in the room.
I turned the corner and prayed for a window. At last my hands grasped loose fabric. I felt behind it, shoving back what seemed like yards of material. The walls of the house were thick, the windowsill deep. My fingers searched for cool panes of glass but touched wood — a set of inside shutters. I felt for the center, tried
