The Unloved (39 page)

He fought the car, spinning the wheels back and forth, and the tires found a grip on a patch of gravel. The car moved forward a few yards, but Kerry slammed on the brakes.

Just ahead of him a huge pine branch, its layer of moss stripped away, lay across the road, blocking his way. Cursing
out loud, he set the brake and got out of the car, stumbling through the rain and mud. He glared angrily at the branch for a moment, kicking out at it with a shoe that was heavy with mud. Then, regaining control over himself, he bent down and grasped the branch with both hands. Straining, he tried to lift it free from the sucking mud, but it wouldn’t budge. “Shit!” he exploded once again. Sighing heavily, he found the end of the branch where it had torn loose from the tree and began dragging it to the side of the road. For a moment he thought this, too, was going to be futile, but then the branch gave slightly, there was a strange sucking noise, and it pulled free. He dragged it off the road into the brush. His hands sticky with fresh sap now, and his clothes covered with mud, he returned to his car.

Slowly and carefully he began making his way along the road once again, the car slipping from side to side, threatening to lose the road entirely on every curve. At last he came to the driveway of Sea Oaks and started up the gentle rise toward the mansion itself.

He could see it now, looming against the sky. Here and there, glimmering through some of the windows, he thought he could make out the flickering light of candles.

Perhaps, after all, everything was going to be all right.

Fifty yards from the house he came to the tree that had fallen across the driveway. Abandoning the car, he began walking the last few yards.

Marguerite saw the bright flickering of lights playing across the ceiling of the ballroom and abruptly stopped playing. Julie, caught in midstep by the sudden silence, faltered, then caught herself just before she would have collapsed to the floor. She turned to look at Marguerite, and for the first time saw the glow of lights streaming up through the French doors that opened onto the balcony above the veranda. “Wh-What is it?” she asked. Her heart was pounding again, but this time with excitement.

Someone had come—someone had come to help her! She
ran to the window, pressing her face to the glass as she tried to peer out into the storm.

The twin headlights nearly blinded her, but she didn’t care. Someone was here, and she was going to be all right!

She felt Marguerite’s hand close on her shoulder, and a split second later felt herself being spun around. There was a sharp crack as Marguerite’s right hand slashed across her face, and Julie’s eyes stung with sudden tears.

“How dare you?” Marguerite hissed. “How dare you invite a beau out here at this hour? What will people say?”

Her fingers closing around Julie’s arm, she started toward the door, dragging Julie after her. Julie tried to struggle, but Marguerite turned, her free hand slashing across Julie’s other cheek. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?” Marguerite raged, her voice shaking with fury. “Do you think I haven’t always known what you were doing with that boy? Filthy, that’s what you are. A filthy, degenerate slut! And after all I’ve done for you!”

“No,” Julie wailed. “I haven’t done anything, Aunt Marguerite.”

“Liar!” Marguerite screeched, slapping Julie yet again. “I’ll teach you to lie to me!” Twisting Julie’s arm up behind her back, Marguerite pushed her toward the stairs, and Julie had to grasp tightly to the banister to keep from falling as she stumbled down to the second floor.

They came at last to the landing, and Marguerite pushed her again, propelling her along the corridor until they were at the nursery. Never releasing her grip on Julie, Marguerite fumbled in her pocket for the key ring, then began trying the keys in the nursery door. At last she found the right one.

Shoving Julie through the door, Marguerite pulled it closed again and locked it once more.

Breathing heavily, but knowing what she must do, Marguerite slowly made her way toward the head of the main staircase.

As soon as he heard the lock click on the nursery door, Jeff ran to his sister, dropping down on the floor next to her. “What happened? What did she do to you?” he whimpered.

“She—She was making me dance,” Julie told him. “She kept talking about a recital tomorrow.” She sat up, rubbing gingerly at her left knee, the skin of which had scraped away when she hit the floor. She winced at the stinging in the raw flesh, then got to her feet and rushed to the window. “There’s a car outside,” she told Jeff. “Someone’s come to help us!” She pressed her face to the glass, but the headlights were gone and the sky outside was once more pitch black. “Where is it?” she pleaded. “Didn’t you see it, Jeff?”

Jeff shook his head. “I didn’t see anything.”

“But it was there!” Julie insisted. “It was coming up the hill, and you could see the headlights on the ceiling.” A flash of lightning suddenly shot across the sky, and Julie saw what she was looking for. In the driveway, just beyond the fallen tree and only partly visible around the corner of the house, was a car.

Kerry Sanders’s car.

She gasped, instinctively clutching Jeff’s hand as thunder rolled over the house. “It’s Kerry! He’s here, Jeff. We’re going to be all right!” As the thunder died away, there was another flash of lightning, and she could see Kerry himself. His shoulders were hunched against the storm, his head low as he fought his way uphill, his feet slipping on the slick drive, his clothes drenched and smeared with mud. A wave of relief flooded over Julie, replaced a split second later by renewed panic.

“We’ve got to warn him!” she cried. She began struggling with the window, trying to lift it.

“The lock!” Jeff screamed. “You have to open the lock!”

Julie stared dumbly at her brother, then understood what he was talking about. With fumbling fingers she groped at the latch between the two halves of the casement, whimpering with frustration when it refused to turn.

“The other way!” Jeff yelled. “You’re turning it the wrong way!”

Shoving his sister aside, he reached up and hooked his thumb around the tab on the latch, then pulled to his right. Instantly the latch came free, and he tried to raise the window. “Help me!” he shouted when the wooden frame held fast. But even with Julie’s help, it did no good. The wood of the window frame, soaked with rain, had swollen into a tight seal, jammed tight within its casement.

“What are we going to do?” Julie moaned. A sheet of lightning briefly illuminated the night, and she realized she had only a few seconds left. Kerry was almost to the corner of the house now, and in another moment would start toward the front door.

“Bust it!” Jeff exclaimed. He ran to the small rocking chair and began dragging it. “Help me!”

Julie stared dumbly at her brother for a moment, then understood. Grabbing the rocking chair, she pulled it next to the window, lifted it by the arms, took a deep breath, and smashed its runners into the casement. There was a crash as the old wood exploded outward and shards of glass dropped to the floor. A few long pieces, tapering to evil points, still remained, and Julie battered at them with the chair until they were gone. Then, ignoring the wind and rain lashing through the gaping hole where the window had been, she leaned out, raising her voice to scream into the wind.

“Kerry! Kerry, wait!”

But even as she shouted, she knew it was useless. Her words seemed to evaporate into the chaos of the storm, sounding muffled even to herself. And when the next flash of lightning came, and she could no longer see Kerry Sanders, she knew she had failed. Sobbing with fear and frustration,
she turned away from the window. “What are we going to do?” she gasped, her voice choking. “She’s crazy, Jeff. And she’s going to kill Kerry! I know she is!”

Jeff, his eyes desolate, could only gaze mutely back at his sister.

Kerry darted up the steps, then paused on the veranda. Water poured off him, and he shivered as the wind whipped around him. Through the windows in the front of the house, he could see a few candles flickering brightly. And yet there was no other movement inside the house.

But they must have seen his headlights coming up the road. Why wasn’t Julie already at the front door, waiting for him?

He’d been right—something
was
wrong.

He tried to swallow the fear rising like bile in the back of his throat. What should he do?

Part of him wanted to turn away, to go back to his car and start back to the mainland. But it was too late for that—the wind was coming steadily out of the south again, and waves, piled high by the force of the gale, would be breaking over the road, making it impassable.

Besides, even if he could get back to the mainland, by the time he found help and returned to the island, whatever was happening inside the house would already be over and done with. Screwing up his courage, he crossed the veranda and pounded on the front door.

Marguerite stood uncertainly at the foot of the stairs. The hollow pounding on the front door seemed to batter at her, and she whimpered softly to herself.

He shouldn’t have come—he knew he was supposed to stay away. Hadn’t she warned him what would happen if he kept coming out here, sniffing around her daughter like a rutting dog? And he was nobody—nothing but a sharecropper’s son whose father had worked for her husband. How
dare he think she would ever allow him to marry her daughter? As if she would ever allow Marguerite to marry anyone!

The pounding continued, and she could hear him shouting now, calling out, pleading to be let in.

Slowly a smile came to her lips.

She would let him in, all right, But it would be the last time.

Turning away from the stairs, she began hobbling slowly toward the kitchen.

Kerry’s fists were beginning to hurt from pounding on the door. What was happening? Why wasn’t someone answering? Couldn’t they hear him? He shouted Julie’s name, but the wind seized his words, scattering them into the trees. He moved down the veranda and peered in the living room windows.

The room, barely illuminated by five candles on the large coffee table in front of the fireplace, seemed empty. But just as he was about to turn away and go around to the back of the house, he saw movement in the dining room. A second later he recognized Marguerite’s uneven gait as she stepped through the large double doors that separated the living room from the dining room. He rapped on the glass and shouted once more. He saw Marguerite pause and look uncertainly around. He rapped harder, and then, suddenly, she saw him. For a moment her expression froze, but then she nodded to him and a half smile curled around her lips.

She pointed to the front door.

The tension drained out of Kerry’s body as he hurried back to the door. He’d been wrong! He’d been wrong about all of it. They were in the kitchen, that was all. And Julie was fine.

He waited impatiently, shivering in the wind, and at last heard the rattle of the lock as Marguerite opened it. Then the door itself opened and Marguerite stood framed by the oversize doorway, her face lost in the shadows.

“So you’ve come,” Kerry heard her say.

“I was worried—” Kerry began, and abruptly fell silent.
There was something strange about Marguerite’s voice. There was a hardness to it he’d never heard before. Indeed, she hadn’t really sounded like Marguerite at all. For some reason it reminded him of old Helena Devereaux’s harsh, demanding voice. “M-Miss Marguerite?” Kerry stammered uncertainly. “Are you all right?”

A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky then, and in the brilliant glare of its light, Kerry saw Marguerite’s face clearly.

It was a grotesque mask of makeup, smeared and blotched, made even more hideous by the black lace of her bodice. In the white glare of the lightning she seemed a hideous creature out of a nightmare, and suddenly Kerry’s fear flooded back in an icy chill.

She was staring at him now, her eyes glittering insanely. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?” she demanded.

Kerry shrank back. Something
was
wrong—something was far more wrong than he had even imagined. This wasn’t the Marguerite Devereaux he had known all his life, not even the Marguerite who had seemed to turn against him in the last two weeks. This was someone else, someone he didn’t know at all.

“Scream,” Jeff told his sister. “If you scream loud enough, he’ll be able to hear you when she opens the door.”

Julie stared numbly at her brother. If Kerry couldn’t hear her from outside, through a broken window, how would he ever hear her through the thick door of the nursery, and all the way downstairs?

But she had to try—she had to do something. If she didn’t—

A vision of her aunt’s face flashed into her mind, the twisted mask of fury that had distorted Marguerite’s features even beyond the strange makeup that had ruined her beauty.

Hurling herself toward the door, she began pounding on it, and both she and Jeff raised their voices to the loudest scream they could muster.

*      *      *

The roll of thunder following the bolt of lightning faded away, and Kerry was about to run from the veranda.