The House on Black Lake (14 page)

“Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up, will you. I can’t tell you what’s wrong, because you wouldn’t understand what the hell I’m talking about.” Her tone is vicious and interspersed with gasping sobs.

“Try me. What is so difficult to understand?”

“I have never seen you cry as long as I’ve known you. Never. Matt left you and you didn’t shed a tear,” she seethes.

“Matt didn’t leave me.”

“He moved into a hotel, didn’t he? He never came back. And now he’s married to another woman.”

“You weren’t there... so how do you know that?”

“Someone informed me who was there when it happened.”

“I haven’t spoken to Chantal in years.”

“It wasn’t her.”

I turn away from her and gaze into the split bark. “They all talk, you know.”

“Gossip is not truth. No one knows what lies inside the heart of another human being.” The end of my sentence is drowned out by the sound of a large branch falling off the tree onto the hood of the car and the ping of apples dropping and rolling to the ground.

Through my open window, I hear the rustle of footsteps on dry grass.

“Ruth, darling, it’s not like you to make company with cow pies.” A man with a broad tanned face, spiky bleached hair, and sparkling green eyes peering out from skinny black frames, approaches from behind the car and looks in my window. “Everyone okay?” he asks in a voice coated in a creamy dark vibration.

Ruth’s head pops up from the steering wheel. “Georgie, what are you doing here?” she asks with a wide smile that reveals the bright pink gums above her front teeth.

“I’m on my way back from the meeting at Roger’s house. I’ve got my concert tonight on Mont Tremblant.”

He opens my door and lends an arm to help me out, and I see he wears neon green pants and his white cotton shirt smells like it has been dried on the line. Once he has helped me from the car, he walks around the tree and assists Ruth onto the grass.

“How did you end up out in this cow pasture, for God’s sake?”

“It’s fuzzy. I’m not sure what happened. I was daydreaming and found myself going off the road.” She reaches out a hand to stabilize herself with his thick forearm, then introduces us and tells me he is Ramey’s cousin.

“Georgie is a famous singer. He changed his name from George Sandeley to Georgie La Pointe because he sings with a French group,” she says and wipes mascara from under her eyes.

“You’ve got Ramey’s smile,” I say, looking up into his ruggedly handsome face.

“Should I say thanks?” he replies with a note of sarcasm. “He told me you were visiting. You’re more beautiful than he described, typical of the asshole. He tries to keep me out of his territory.”

He wraps one arm around Ruth’s waist and the other around my shoulder. “Let’s walk up the hill a bit. I want to make sure you gals are okay before you get the car back on the road.”

“We’re already late for the dinner at Roger’s.”

“How are you, honey, any aches or pains?”

He leans down, and the frames of his glasses touch my eyelashes as he looks deep inside my eyes. “It doesn’t look like your pupils are dilated.”

The difference in our height puts my eye level at the hollow of his neck, where many necklaces are intertwined and hang down onto his hairless chest. A large medallion swings from a piece of leather that is inscribed with the same triple circle with an arrow as the latch on the door to Ramey’s room.

“Walk back up the hill and I’ll get the car up to you,” he says. We follow behind, kicking aside rotting fruit, moving through the heavy sweet smell, batting away the wasps feeding on bruised apple skin, while trying to stay clear of the dirt and rocks the tires spit out as the vehicle climbs up to the roadside.

“I’ll call Ruth about setting up a night for you to come to my show,” he says as he steps out of the vehicle.

“We’ll talk soon,” Ruth says.

He shines us a charming grin, then strides down the road toward a cherry-red sports car.

“George is a raving narcissist. I don’t think I have seen him with the same woman more than once,” she says as we head back to Black Lake.

“He is very charismatic.”

“I’ve been tempted more than once, especially after one of his concerts. But my husband would kill me if he found out I cheated with his archrival.”

She takes a gold bullet lipstick from her make-up pouch and applies a burgundy stain.

“Ramey and Georgie are like dangerously competitive brothers. They’re only children born days apart in the same hospital, and Scorpios, for God’s sake. They went to the same schools and spent summers together on the lake. Both lost their mothers at an early age. Georgie’s mom ran off with the stained glass craftsman hired to inlay the Sandeley family crest above the front door. His dad used a shotgun to shatter the masterpiece after he read the note she left on her pillow.”

She retrieves the sunglass case from the glovebox and removes a pair of large oval glasses.

“It’s the witching hour,” I say, and raise my hand to cover the blinding rays of the falling sun that shine through the branches of the trees outlining the road.

Ruth lets out a snort. “Yep. It’s cocktail hour.”

“D
OUGGIE
R
AYE IS A MYSTIC.”
R
UTH TURNS ONTO A PRIVATE ROAD
lined with narrow trees stationed evenly apart, like stealthy sentinels. “Don’t be alarmed when you see him, because the man is pretty scary looking. He’s blind, but he can see people’s auras. Ramey’s dad met him when he was living in the Amazon jungle. His family is loaded, but he chucked it all to live with the Shaman of the Andes. I’d guess all the peyote and mushrooms he ingested scrambled his brain for good.”

We pass enormous sculptures of winged knights on horseback flanking an ivy-covered brick bastion and enter the grounds of the estate. “Roger is Ramey’s dad’s brother. He’s obsessive too, but in a different way–he has a fixation with medieval history. He studied all the great castles of Europe before he had his built.” A Tudor mansion, with six turrets and a lowered footbridge spanning a narrow moat, looms ahead.

“Uncle Roger has collected replicas of some of the most gruesome torture devices in his dungeon. The iron maiden chills my bones. We can take a tour if you like; there’s an awesome wine cellar next door,” she says and parks the car along the border of the circular entrance.

“Maybe another time.”

“Careful.” Ruth says. “It’s slippery on the stones, and the bridge has gaps between the planks; you may want to take off your heels. I usually carry mine to the door.

“Don’t let Seth, the butler, freak you out. He’s a hoot, but strange. He grew up in some hellhole orphanage and has never been touched or kissed. The water in the moat is really low this time of year. At Christmastime you can hear it rushing below,” Ruth tells me, and peeks over the railing of the drawbridge. “For a prank, when they were schoolboys, Ramey and Georgie hired their favorite hooker to give Seth his first lay. The poor guy broke down and confessed he had never felt a woman’s touch.”

We slip back into our shoes at the castle’s steel-girded front doors, and Ruth turns a silver latch set into the stone wall.

“You look beautiful, Alexandra. The black velvet suit with the white ruffled blouse is one of Mimi’s signature looks. It’s a classic, and the ruby choker is a stunning accent. Was it purchased at Mimi’s, as well?”

“I found it in my shopping bag, wrapped with the suit.”

The heavy doors slowly open and a man nearly seven feet tall appears in front of us. He is impeccably dressed in a dark gray tuxedo with tails, a crisp shirt with gold studs, cufflinks, and white gloves. He holds his spine in perfect alignment, with shoulders back and head held high. His lush silver hair is combed in smooth waves away from a broad expressionless face, highlighted by midnight-blue eyes that possess the innocence of a child.

“Good evening, Madame. Your husband is in the dining room.” Seth speaks deliberately in a deep, resonate tone.

He turns and we follow him into a massive entry hall. The room’s slate flooring is broken in the center with a circle of tourmaline marble, where a gilded chest rests on a leather stand. Medieval suits of armor line the length of the vestibule complete with authentic looking swords, lances, and steel balls. Carved wood caskets along the walls hold ancient looking artifacts.

Moving to the center of the foyer, I peek inside the gilded coffer. Inside, lies a solitary iron spear, black with age, resting on a faded red velvet dais within an open leather case. Its long tapered point is supported by a wide base with metal flanges depicting the wings of a dove. A nail head of the blade secures it to the shaft with gold, silver, and copper wire. On the side of the lowest portion of the base, a series of T’s are embossed.

“What do the letters mean?”

“All I know is what I heard Roger tell the children. It’s supposed to be the Spear of Destiny,” Ruth says, as she moves next to me and peers inside. “He claims this is the original, and the one locked up in a famous European museum is a fake. Supposedly the world’s greatest rulers have used it to defeat their enemies. I’m sure it’s a load of crap, but the kids loved the story.”

“I would be frightened to sleep here at night.”

“The children believe the knights come to life and wander through the house. Ramey and Georgie once dressed in the armor and waited for Roger. When he came home, they followed him down the hallway with their lances at his back. It scared the hell out of their uncle. They had to take him to the hospital for observation afterwards.”

“The gentlemen are waiting,” Seth proclaims. He stands next to a set of partly ajar doors at the end of a long corridor.

As we approach, I hear a man’s voice grandly emoting from inside. “My granddaddy used to tell me you can change without growing, but you can’t grow without changing. That’s what he said, and that is what I believe.”

“It’s Roger,” Ruth whispers.

Seth opens the vaulted doors, and Roger’s voice booms out with the fervor and practiced tonal mannerisms of a minister speaking to his congregation. “The point is, if something is based on a lie, you can never make it right or true; the same goes for the opposite. If the primitives had true knowledge, then it can never be completely vanquished, and that is the problem. Isolation and consumerism are powerful solutions, but we need to keep a thumb on the renegades.”

“Well said, I concur,” a man’s voice chimes in, followed by Seth clearing his throat.

“It is not like you to be this late, Ruth, dear,” Roger’s voice bellows from across the room.

“We were having such a wonderful day in Montreal, time got away from us,” Ruth says, as we enter a grand dining hall adorned with faded watercolor frescos of jousting knights, lit by flaming torches. A king-sized wood table bisects the room.

The scene at the table resembles the depiction of Christ’s last supper, except the figure of Christ is a drooling old mystic in a wheelchair and the disciples, middle-aged businessmen in navy blue jackets. A roasted pig lies displayed on a silver platter in the center, with a fat cumquat stuffed in its mouth and eyes artfully stitched closed with black thread. Copper decanters, hefty wine goblets, and half-eaten loaves of bread litter the table, and dripping candles set in triple-tiered candelabrums throw wildly flickering shadows up the walls.