The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 5

I'm so sorry, Mr. Conway." The sympathetic expression in Beatrice LeBecque's eyes and the genuine sorrow in her voice told Ted what had happened far more clearly than the woman's words. He hadn't been too surprised when Jared came back into the reception area only a few minutes after he'd left with his mother and sister. Nor had his aunt's reaction to his son surprised him; indeed, it was her desire to see Jared at all that had caught him off guard. "Don't take it personally," he'd advised. "It doesn't have anything to do with you. It has to do with the fact that you're a male."

"If she's got a problem with men, how come she married your uncle?" Jared asked, relieving his father of Molly, who'd been squirming uncomfortably in Ted's lap.

"You got me on that one. Who knows? Maybe it was Uncle George killing himself that soured her in the first place. Anyway, she sure never got over it."

They'd fallen silent then, Ted leafing through a magazine as the last vestiges of his hangover finally lifted, while Jared played a game with Molly, the rules of which seemed far clearer to the toddler than to her big brother. When the phone on Bea LeBecque's desk rang, both of them looked up, sharply. Now even Molly was silent, sitting quietly on her brother's lap.

So, the old lady was finally gone. Ted tried to analyze what he felt:

Grief? How could you feel grief for someone you'd barely known, and from whom you'd never heard a friendly word, let alone a kind one?

Loss? Of what? Certainly not family, since he had no memory of ever having seen his aunt anywhere but here. The only family he knew-had ever known, really-was Janet. Janet, and their children.

Sympathy? A little. At least Cora Conway was finally released from whatever had tortured her for so long. And he felt relief. Relief that the ordeal was finally over. A twinge of guilt stabbed at him as he realized that most of the relief he felt was for himself rather than for his aunt. He tried to tell himself that he had no reason to feel guilty, that if she'd tried to be even halfway decent to him, he'd have come to see her more often, tried to do more to make her life a little easier. Except that now, with his hangover finally gone, he knew the truth: he could have ignored her treatment of him, could have risen above the invective she had poured over him. She'd been old, and ill in her mind as well as her body.

He'd ignored her very existence.

And now she was dead.

No loss, no sorrow, no sense that something valuable was gone out of his life.

Just guilt.

Well, at least I can take care of her now, he told himself. With his head finally clear-at least of alcohol-Ted's talent for organization, which had made him so good at his job before he'd started drinking, came to the fore, and he began making a mental checklist of things that would need to be dealt with.

As it turned out, though, all the arrangements had been made long ago. "She had some very good days, you know," Bea LeBecque explained as she gave him the letter in which all of his aunt's plans were laid out, and to which she'd attached the receipts indicating that Cora had paid her own funeral expenses in advance. "Really, all you need to do is contact Bruce Wilcox." The name meant nothing to Ted. "Your aunt's attorney," the receptionist explained. She picked up the phone on her desk and dialed the lawyer's number from memory, then handed the receiver to Ted.

Ten minutes later, with Janet and Kim back in the reception area, Ted repeated what the lawyer had told him.

"There's some kind of trust," he explained. "I'm not sure I understand it, but this guy Wilcox says Aunt Cora ' tried to break it a long time ago, and couldn't."

Janet's eyes clouded. "Why did she want to break it?"

"Wilcox said she wanted to get rid of the house. But apparently that was the whole point of the trust-to keep the house in the family."

"So we've inherited a house?" Janet asked.

Ted shook his head. "What we've got, the way Wilcox explained it, is the right to live in a house."

They gazed at it in silence. Their eyes moved over the massive structure that stood amidst an acre of land so overgrown with weeds that it was hard to tell where-or indeed if-gardens might ever have existed.

Besides the enormous gabled building that was the house, there was also a large carriage house-big enough for half a dozen cars, apparently with some kind of apartment above it.

Though most of the windows of both buildings were intact, the paint had peeled away from the clapboard siding, and the smashed roofing slates that lay around the perimeter of the house testified to the water damage they might expect inside.

Vines, unchecked by any hand, had threaded their way through the great willows, oaks, and magnolias that dotted the property and were banked against the house itself. Tendrils were creeping toward the eaves, and had established a hold on one of the half-dozen gables that pierced the steeply pitched Victorian roof three stories above them.

But more than the broken windows, the fallen slates, the peeling paint, and the kudzu, there was an atmosphere hanging over the house-a dark melancholy-that all of them felt.

It was Molly who finally spoke. "Wanna go home," she said plaintively, her tiny hand clutching her mother's.

Janet lifted her youngest child into her arms. "In a little while," she promised. "We just need to look around first. All right?"

Molly said nothing, but stuck a reassuring thumb into her mouth and began sucking. For once, Janet made no effort to stop her.

"I wonder what the inside looks like," Ted mused, starting to pick his way through the tangle of weeds toward the broad front porch. The broken remnants of the ornate gingerbread trim that had once graced the eaves and posts of the porch now looked like the jagged remains of broken teeth surrounding the gaping maw of some dying beast.

"Is it even safe to go up there?" Janet fretted, tentatively following him. "What if the porch collapses?"

"It's not going to," Ted assured her. "They built these old places to last. The frame's probably oak." He stopped and considered the looming mass of the house, a few yards away now. "When you think about it, it's not in such bad shape, considering it's a hundred and twenty-five years old and no one's lived in it for the last forty years."

"It doesn't look like anyone's even been inside it," Janet replied.

Ted winked at Jared. "What do you think?" he asked his son. "You game?"

Jared's reply was to start ripping his way through the tangle, tearing vines from the railing and steps before gingerly testing the strength of the old wood. "Dad's right," he called back to his mother and sisters. "It's fine!"

Ted tried the keys Bruce Wilcox had given him, and found a fit on the third one. The lock stuck, and he had to jiggle the key several times, until he felt it twist and the bolt slide back. Then the latch clicked, and the door itself-a huge slab of ornately paneled and molded oak hung from four tarnished brass hinges-swung slowly open.

Inside the front door was a large entry hall, with arched double doors leading into two enormous rooms-one of which had apparently been the living room. The other looked to Ted as if it must have been a reception room for the Porte cochere that lay on the side of the house closest to the garage. At the far end of the entry hall was a graceful staircase that swept up to a small landing. The stairs split at the landing, leading in opposite directions to the symmetrical wings of a mahogany-railed mezzanine that provided access to the rooms on the second floor, as well as a clear view of the broad entry hall below. Suspended from the vaulted roof of the entry hall was an ornate chandelier, the sparkle of its crystal pendants dimmed by a thick layer of grime. Flanking the base of the staircase were two more corridors, leading to more doors.

From the front of the house there was no way even to guess what might be at the back.

For the next half hour they picked their way through the house, moving from one room to another. On the first floor, in addition to the living room and reception room, they found a dining room-easily large enough for a table to seat twenty-four-a library, a kitchen and pantry with a large service porch behind, and several smaller chambers that had apparently served as rooms for cards, music, sewing, and a variety of other activities. A conservatory constructed of three glass walls surmounted by an enormous glass dome extended out from the northern side of the house. Except for three cracked panes, the skylight was miraculously unbroken.

It was on the second floor, while her parents were exploring a large suite of rooms that lay above the library, that Kim felt it.

Suddenly her skin was crawling, as if a large insect were creeping across her neck. She jumped, reflexively brushing at the unseen creature, and the sensation vanished.

Steadying herself against the mahogany railing while her racing heart calmed, she glanced around for Jared, who had been with her only a moment before.

He seemed to have disappeared.

Then, a few paces away, she saw a door standing slightly ajar, and knew her brother must have gone into the room beyond it.

She started toward the door.

And felt it again.

This time it was an icy cold chill that fell over her, momentarily stopping her breath. She tried to call out to Jared, but the same paralysis that had fallen over her lungs had taken her voice as well. A terrible panic rose in her as the cold tightened its grip.

With no warning, the house itself had taken on a menacing quality, and she had a terrible feeling that she was about to die, that somehow this cavernous, decaying place was going to swallow her whole, and she would vanish, just as Jared seemed to have done a moment before.

"Kim? Hey, Kim! What's wrong?" The words startled her. She spun around to find Jared gazing worriedly at her. "What's wrong? How come you called me?"

For a split second Kim didn't trust herself even to speak, but then, as quickly as it had come over her, the strange sensations-the crawling skin, the icy chill, the strange paralysis-were gone.

Gone so completely that even her memory was fading with the rapidity of a dream vanishing in morning light, vivid one second, utterly gone only a moment later.

"I-I didn't call you," she stammered. Or had she? In the back of her mind she thought she felt a vague memory of wanting to call out to her brother. "D-Did I?" she asked.

Jared's concern congealed into fear. A second ago, in the bedroom a few feet away, he'd been positive he heard Kim's voice. And not just calling him, either.

She had been screaming-screaming in terror.

He had heard it!

Yet what could have caused her to scream? He glanced around, not knowing what he might be looking for. Could it have been a mouse, or even a rat? But Kim wasn't a sissy; some scurrying creature would only have provoked a surprised yelp.

What he'd heard-at least what he thought he heard-was the anguished cry of someone in fear for her life.

Now, though, she was staring at him, her head cocked, her eyes wide, her expression puzzled.

He remembered, then, something that had happened a few years ago, when they were eleven. Their mother had taken them for a picnic by a lake, and they'd gone swimming. He had hauled himself out onto a large wooden float, and was sprawled on his back, gazing up at the clouds floating overhead, when he'd heard exactly the same kind of scream from Kim as the one of a few moments earlier. He'd scrambled to his feet and scanned the water, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Then he'd looked down.

Kim, her eyes open and staring up at him, was lying on the bottom of the lake, under ten feet of crystal clear water.

She wasn't moving.

Without thinking, he'd dived for her, dragging her to the surface and wrestling her onto the float.

He'd started screaming himself then, calling frantically for help while trying to force the water from Kim's lungs. Others-grown-ups-arrived and took over, and after what seemed an eternity, but which he'd later been told was no more than a minute or two, Kim started breathing on her own again.

Afterward, when they asked him how he'd known his sister was drowning, it turned out that only he had heard her scream.

No one else heard anything.

Thinking about it, replaying those panicked moments in his mind, he knew his sister couldn't have screamed; even if she had, there was no way the sound would have carried out of the water.

It was, he'd finally decided, the Twin Thing, that strange, almost mystical connection he and his sister had always felt.

Today, though, he saw nothing that could have terrified Kim to the point of a scream. Not like that.

As if she'd read his mind-the Twin Thing again-Kim's eyes fixed on him. "Jared, what's going on? I swear, I didn't call you!" She paused, then spoke again, and he knew she truly had read his mind. "And I didn't even call you in my mind, like I did at the lake that day."

Jared hesitated, then shrugged. "Hey, if you don't remember, why should I?" he finally said. "And maybe it wasn't you at all-maybe it was a ghost!" He scanned the hallway, gave an exaggerated shudder, then fixed his sister with the most mysterious gaze he could muster. "Want to see if we can find one? If ghosts are real, this sure is where they'd be."

A moment later, the strange sensation she'd experienced all but forgotten, Kim set out with Jared to explore the second floor. Half a dozen bedrooms opened off the mezzanine-two of which had small parlors attached to them-along with three bathrooms. There were a few more rooms that were locked, but none of the keys their father had seemed to fit.

On the third floor, tucked beneath the huge oaken rafters that supported the slate roof, were half a dozen more rooms, each with a dormer window, those on the west side looking out over the town, the others over the wilderness to the east.

Finally, after they'd seen as much of the house as they could gain access to, the family gathered on the front porch.

"Well, what do you think?" Ted asked as they made their way back to the car. There was an excitement in his voice that immediately put Janet on her guard. A thought had come to her fifteen minutes ago-a thought she had instantly rejected. The electric note in his question told her the same thought had also occurred to Ted. Before he even spoke, she knew what he was going to say. "It would make a great little hotel, wouldn't it?"

At least a dozen answers to Ted's question popped into Janet's mind, every one of them negative. Instead of voicing even one of them, she slowly turned around and looked back at the immense derelict of a house that had sat abandoned for the last forty years.

She thought about Ted, and what his future in Shreveport might be. Though neither of them had talked about it yet, she knew there would be no job offer, not for a very long time.

Which meant there was nothing to hold them in Shreveport; she had no family there, and neither did he.

In the last few years most of their friends had drifted away, unwilling to deal with Ted's drinking.

Even the kids' friends didn't come over anymore.

Though she had never been a particularly religious person, it occurred to Janet to wonder if it was truly a coincidence that Cora Conway had died and left them this house at the very moment when their own lives had come to a crossroads.

"I hate to say it," she finally replied as she got into the car, "but you might just be right."

From the backseat Kim, too, peered out at the house.

Once again her skin began to crawl, and she felt a terrible chill.

And a single thought came into her mind: No! Please, God, no! Don't make us live here!

Two pairs of eyes-each of them unseen by the other-watched as the dented and dust-covered Toyota disappeared down the road. When it was finally gone, and even the dust it kicked up had settled, both sets of eyes shifted back to the great hulking shape of the house that had stood empty for the last four decades.

Now, both of the watchers were certain, it was about to be occupied again.

Still unseen by one another, their gazes shifted once more, and fixed upon the huge magnolia tree. From its lowest branch George Conway had hanged himself.

One of the watchers began silently to pray.

The other-equally silent-began to curse.