The Dark Closet (16 page)

1863

1863

The truth of the matter was that Christopher John Mainwaring IV had not
elected
to save Jake Hawkins. It was, after all, Crossett who had saved him before, and if Crossett wanted to, that was his business. Christopher John’s soft brown gaze followed the broad-shouldered form of his descendant walking down the stairs, wriggling a little as he watched from the sharp edges of his stiff white collar that curved just beneath the corners of his full lower lip and the black cravat that was wrapped like a thick scarf around his neck. He nevertheless maintained his straight-backed dignity on the red velvet settee, his smooth, tapering hands folded serenely upon one another. The slight tilt of his head lent him the whisper of haughtiness the great power that lay beyond had long ago declared intolerable.

The uncertain hand of the ar
tist who had restored Christopher John’s canvas, drooping then with age, was responsible for his wall-eyed stare that pursued the viewer wherever he or she went. It had been a fortuitous mistake, the untrained fleck of the paint brush that even the power from beyond had not taken the time to correct, and it gave Christopher John a distinct advantage in orchestrating his plans. Despite the bedlam in which Crossett had found the portraits that morning and the uncomfortable, undignified nudging of the broom handle to straighten them, Christopher John was especially pleased today. Things had turned out rather well. He had had Lamerie in the end, hadn’t he? After all, his blood ran in Crossett’s veins, his genes directed the color of his eyes, the thickness of his hair (lucky for Christopher John he had died before the Mainwaring baldness had become overly apparent), the degree of his stoop as he aged, the pattern of the wrinkles that marked time on his face, the sound of his voice, the taper of his fingers—well, the list went on and on. By and large, Crossett bore a striking resemblance to him. Was not that proof enough? And even the power from beyond had not objected.

A great
sigh exhaled itself through the dimensionless dimness that lay behind him. The rebuff had lasted a hundred years, long enough for any man to bear and expect final reprieve from. It was just a matter of arranging things so that they might all be in the same place at the same time once again, of luring Shadrack to a vulnerable position, of appearing less offensive to Lamerie, of
fashioning
Crossett to be what would appeal to her. No slaves this time to distract him. That had been unfortunate having had so many women about so easily under his control. Too great a temptation, but he had paid for it in this portrait. A hundred years of watching the others walk about freely, able to
do
. Yes, he sighed again, undoing such transgressions took sometimes centuries of maneuvering, but he had the feeling he could rest for a while now as he watched  his heir slowly descending the stairway where their two planes of existence intersected on the second step. And perhaps it was not so bad in this portrait after all. A kind of bird’s eye view, as it were, of those sent back. He could keep tabs on them just so no one might try to, let us say, embellish the truth when it was time to meet again.

Perhaps there
was
a fairness to it. In the end they had each gotten what they wanted: Lamerie had gotten the Wightefield and he had gotten Lamerie, albeit only for a while. He would perhaps at long last concede that to the awful power that lay beyond and had consigned him to this fate.

1963

1963

Crossett stood before Winterhurst in the packed snow, looking up at its dark, eyeless second-story windows.
It was not just the frozen ghost of the Wighte mansion that had haunted briefly the wooden rooms of Winterhurst. The house had its own contingency of ghosts. Perhaps having lived long, less desperate lives, perhaps not yet ready to demand satisfaction for a human transgression carried like a suitcase beyond the grave. Through time there had been at Winterhurst angry men who cast their lives in iron while they lived, who undoubtedly found the afterlife a far more pliable existence. But were they willing to accept it for what it was and move on, divest themselves of jealousy and rage, disappointment and fear, anguish and loneliness? Crossett doubted it. He knew they continued to insinuate themselves into the daily life of Winterhurst, into his and those of the generation to come. Even now they were priming Braden, Warenne, Sophie, and Maude—most especially Maude—to accept them as permanent lodgers within the great house, to ensure their tenuous tie and therefore continued existence in the physical world, beyond just the fragile memories of their descendants. He knew that, like himself, Maude held a sensitivity to it all, an involuntary receptiveness as if it had been passed from father to child like any other hereditary trait. Had his own father the same link with those who had gone before? Or was his own father now one of those who tenanted still the drafty rooms of Winterhurst?

It had not been hi
s imagination growing up, all the odd little sounds and creaks, the doors closing in rooms below him—and above, where house servants of old used to live in the attic. No one, not even Twynne with his flinty skepticism and casual self-confidence, could tell Crossett that the things he had heard and seen as a child at Winterhurst were spun from the network of nerves that ran beneath his flesh, that their cryptic message to the brain was a simple code for childish fear. Crossett knew that his gilt-framed ancestors still walked the old familiar paths of daily routine through the wooden halls and down the foot-worn staircases of Winterhurst.

He
had seen them in the dark closet.