Under the Skin (39 page)
Authors: Vicki Lane
He giggled. Stepping carefully around Nigel’s body, Joss studied his face and hair in the wall mirror once more. “Such a waste—he was a genius colorist, don’t you agree, my little mother? Look at those highlights—exactly like yours.”
Gloria gulped. “Yes, they’re beautiful. But, Jo— I mean, Dana, hadn’t we better leave right away? There’s just a chance you and I could get out of here and to an airport. And then we could go anywhere you like—South America … or Thailand or … anywhere. But we need to go
now
. Don’t you hear the sirens?”
Joss lifted his head, his dark eyes glittering with manic excitement. Mixed in with the carnival sounds there were, indeed, sirens. But whether they were wailing for us, I couldn’t say.
I knew what my sister was doing: She hoped to get Joss out the door and away from me. Little Glory, whom I’d always dismissed as the most frivolous of lightweights, was showing unimaginable courage. In spite of that, I couldn’t let her slip out into those crowds with this delusional bastard who’d already killed once.
“No, Glory.” I tightened my grip around her shoulders. “No way. You can’t walk out of here with him. You see what he’s capable of. He’s insane and god knows what he might do—”
The ludicrously tall imitation of my petite sister snarled at me, the perfectly made-up face contorting
into a hideous caricature. “You can shut your mouth, Aunt E. You’ve been against me from the beginning, haven’t you? We both know that.”
With appalling clarity, I saw the revolver rise till I was looking down the black hole of the barrel. From a long way off I heard Joss say, “You’re another I need to be rid of.”
There was a shriek. “Not my sister!” Gloria cried and I felt a jolt as she twisted free and pushed me to the side. At the same time, another shot rang out and I saw her collapse on the floor in front of me. Outside, the sirens were screaming and an amplified voice was shouting for Joss to put down his weapon and come to the door with his hands up.
Glory lay on the floor at my feet, blood pumping from the great wound … so much blood … soaking her blouse and spreading … my sister’s blood …
I snatched the pink cape from Nigel’s body, then fell to my knees and tried to stanch the hopeless wound … to stop the seemingly unstoppable tide … so much blood.
Outside, the shouting intensified and the continuing sound of the festival music played a strange counterpoint to the voice on the bullhorn.
Slowly Joss knelt beside Gloria, his rage spent, his painted face a cartoon mask of anguish. “Oh, my little mother. Why? Why did you jump in front of her? I didn’t want to hurt you. It was Elizabeth who should have died …”
He leaned over her, keening as he stroked her head, oblivious to the blood that was everywhere. My eyes were full of tears as I too leaned close, desperately pressing the darkening fabric to the horrible wound.
The voice on the bullhorn was calling my name now, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was trapped in this bubble of time at the side of the sister I’d just discovered—only,
it seemed, to lose her. Joss also seemed oblivious to the clamor outside. It was just the two of us, caught in the terrible moment at the side of the woman we had both loved.
“I won’t let you win, Aunt Elizabeth. I won’t let you keep me from my little mother. It was you and your family who separated us—but now we’ll be together for eternity.”
As he spoke the words, once more I saw him bring the revolver up. Once more I stared into the black O of the barrel, helpless to act.
And the barrel continued to rise. Joss’s red lips closed around it in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace.
Once again, a deafening roar filled the little salon. Then Joss fell across Gloria’s limp body, his shattered head beside hers.
My ears were still ringing when the door burst open and uniformed men swarmed into the room. And Phillip came to me and held me as the EMTs carried Gloria away.
My sister. My hero.
Amarantha
Sunday, May 29, 1887
Amarantha sat on her porch, the letter and newspaper in her lap, her lips moving as she read the letter yet again. A smile spread itself across her usually severe countenance
.
My dearest Amarantha,
Here is the piece I wrote and, as you wished, I did not mention your name nor reveal all of your part in our glorious exploit. My lips are sealed forever. But, oh my, you were wonderful and I only wish I could have the benefit of your Sight to guide me in the future months and years! Ah, well, I understand your objections. But should you ever “take a notion” to travel, the offer remains open.
Your own,
Nellie Bly
Laying the letter aside, the mountain woman took up the newspaper and looked once more at the drawing of her young friend—the dark eyes and hair, the straight back, the waving hand
.
Was it hello or good-bye?
Hard to say—and in her experience Amarantha had found them to be much the same
.
She began to read the newspaper, sounding out the unfamiliar words
.
SENSATION AT SPA!!!
By Nellie Bly
On Friday night last, the packed audience at a lecture on Spiritualism was witness to the unmasking of a trio of heartless rogues, the callous exploiters of many a mother’s grief and many a bereaved spouse’s sorrow.
The pair of mediums known as the DeVine sisters and the man (alleged to be their brother) who acted as their manager had been resident at The Mountain Park Hotel for some weeks, “resting,” it was said, after a triumphant tour of the Eastern seaboard. (See related story, special from
The Charleston Courier
, on page 2.)
Your reporter, having been moved by the plight of a mourning young mother, driven to self-destruction by the ruses of these cold-blooded frauds, came to the Mountain Park under her own name and took care that none should suspect her true purpose nor connect her with the exploits (see related story “Nellie Bly in Mexico” on page 2) that so recently stirred the imagination of the reading public.
Putting her very life at risk, your reporter was on the brink of collecting the needed evidence—the very apparatus used to produce the supposed wraiths of the departed—when she was overcome by the man known as Lorenzo DeVine, stuffed into a steam cabinet, and left to perish. (Note: this reporter in no way wishes to imply that The Mountain Park Hotel bears any responsibility for the actions of the “DeVines.” On the contrary, one of the hotel employees was instrumental in saving this reporter’s life as well as in the public exposure of the charlatans. See paid notice at the bottom of the page.)
All three were on stage before an audience of almost three
hundred. Mr. DeVine had spoken briefly on the principles of Spiritualism and one of his sisters was demonstrating the trance state by relaying messages from the departed spirit of a Cherokee maiden who had drowned in the previous century, it is said, not a quarter of a mile from the hotel itself.
When the gas lights flickered and dimmed to a Stygian gloom, doubtless many in the audience assumed it to be a part of the demonstration. And when a ghostly form in trailing white, with streaming tresses, appeared at the back of the hall, gliding silently toward the speaker’s dais, surely there were those who believed themselves to be viewing the veritable manifestation of the sad Cherokee princess. (Continued on page 2.)
Amarantha laid aside the newspaper and closed her eyes. For a little somebody, that Miss Cochrane—or Nellie Bly, to give her the name she’d chosen—could surely use some big words
.
But, oh, how fine it had been to see that Lorenzo jump at the sight of the woman he’d thought dead and out of the sight of prying eyes till the following Monday. He must have thought that he and his sisters would be well away by then. How he’d grabbed for his throat as Nellie Bly, white with talc from head to toe, came toward him
.
“Murderer!” she had called out in a trembly voice loud enough to wake the dead
. “Murderer!”
Amarantha felt the hair rise on her arms as she remembered the sound. She would never forget the fuss that followed—Lorenzo’s crazy talk, the sister in green swooning, the manager and several of the younger and stronger waiters hurrying to the scene
.
And then Nellie Bly, taking the stage while she, Amarantha turned the lights back up. Nelly had stood there before that crowd, bold as a preacher, and told just what these scoundrels had been up to and by the time she was
done, had the sheriff and his men not have arrived, it would have gone hard for Lorenzo
.
Lorenzo was still in the jail and happy to be there with all the talk there was in town of tar and feathers or worse. The green sister, Little Dorry, as all the ladies had taken to calling her, had cried for mercy. She swore the other two had put her up to the tricks and had made her go on, even when she had begged them to stop
.
Little Dorry had become a great pet with the church ladies and had even stood up several times in meeting to beg forgiveness and to witness. There was talk that one of the guests at the hotel was courting her right heavy but others said that Dorry had been called to do the Lord’s work and would soon be traveling to all the big camp meetings and revivals, as soon as she got done grieving for her sister
.
It must have been just before the manager had brought his black fellows in to quiet things down that the purple sister had slipped away. Folks figured that she’d planned to follow the tracks to the next railroad stop and board there. It was said she’d made off with a fine diamond jewel bracelet but likely that was at the bottom of the French Broad now. An evil woman and a fool to think she could cross the trestle bridge in the dark
.
People mostly gets what they deserves, mused Amarantha
.
Summer Solstice
Thursday, June 21
Y
es, we did consider postponing the wedding because of Gloria. It just didn’t seem right … but Janie and Seth and Caitlin already had their tickets and Rosemary had taken time off … Who knows when we could have gotten all of them here at the same time again … Well, after a lot of thought and discussion, it made sense to go ahead as scheduled.”
I had repeated this little speech till it was beginning to sound like a recording. The very next day after the nightmare events in Asheville, friends had begun calling or emailing. It hadn’t taken long for the news about Gloria to get around. My little community of friends had all responded as I’d known they would, offering assistance and comfort in every form.
It had been a rocky, emotional time but we’d come through it. I’d even been in contact with Joss’s adoptive parents, who seemed to feel the need to apologize for their dead son’s actions. Poor people—he had been their only child. Coming to terms with his loss, as well as the delusion-fueled destruction he had wrought, had been heartbreaking for them. The presumption that this delusion and subsequent psychotic behavior had been caused by the head injury, rather than something in his
upbringing, was the sole crumb of consolation they had to comfort them.
And somehow, in the busyness of preparation for the ceremony, I had found myself feeling closer to Gloria than ever. I saw all the lovely little refinements of food and decoration that had been her ideas and felt the bitterness of her absence. Gloria. How she would have enjoyed making sure that Laurel put the flowers
here
rather than
there
, and what wonders she would have worked supervising the arrangement of beautiful foods on the buffet tables.
Ah, well, I told myself, life goes on. And we were moving minute by minute toward the ceremony in which Phillip and I would publically affirm the union, the partnership of heart, mind, and body that already existed between us.
Had
existed, for some years now …
“Miz Goodweather—time you were getting changed.” Phillip pointed to the clock on the kitchen wall. “Though if you want to stick with the casual look, the T-shirt and jeans look fine to me …”
I finished filling the big coffee urn with water and gave a last look around. The house was awash with hydrangeas in every shade of blue and lavender, as well as creamy greenish-white. There was champagne on ice out back; the dining table was set, buffet-style, with Gramma’s silver and linen, awaiting the trays of food safely stowed in the refrigerator and in the array of coolers in the basement. Little sandwiches—chicken salad, cream cheese and nuts, asparagus—lovingly made by Rosemary and Amanda; an array of beautiful salads, courtesy of Laurel; a baked ham with little biscuits— “Honey, you can’t do a wedding lunch without one of these,” Sallie Kate had insisted; little lemon tarts, and a stack cake Miss Birdie had sent over by Calven …
“Let me just check the dessert table—I’m not sure there’re enough forks.” I headed for the table in the living room, where a three-tiered, white-frosted carrot cake was the centerpiece. It had been a gift from Phillip’s children and Janie had spent the morning pressing fresh-picked wild violets one by one into its thick-swirled cream cheese icing.
“Come on, woman; we don’t want to be late for our wedding.” Phillip caught my hand and pulled me to him for a quick kiss, then propelled me toward the bedroom. “Go! Five minutes!”
The dress—the one Glory had insisted on buying for me on that last day—was exactly what I might have dreamed of. Almost a period piece: Somewhere between a Jane Austen heroine’s Empire-waisted frock and the romantic flowing robe of a Pre-Raphaelite heroine, it still managed to look appropriate for a fifty-something bride at a small outdoor wedding on a farm.
I surveyed myself in the big mirror over the dresser. The periwinkle blue of the simple square-necked linen bodice brought out the blue of my eyes, just as Gloria had insisted it would. And the ground-sweeping skirt of Liberty cotton—a riot of tiny fruits and trees and fantastic birds in deep blues and purples—was a celebration unto itself.