I thought for a moment he would laugh, but instead he focused on something behind me. Clutching his arm in apprehension, I turned.
My mother appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her hand trembling on the newel post. “Rebecca’s in danger. We need to find her—quickly.” A streak of lightning illuminated the graying sky outside, shooting white light across her face, making her seem transparent.
“How do you know?” I asked, but I could see the journal tucked under her arm, and I knew.
“Meredith,” she whispered as her knees gave way and she ended up sitting on the bottom step.
I moved to sit next to her, and put my arm around her narrow shoulders. “You’re not going anywhere, Mother. You don’t look well.”
Despite her diminished appearance she trembled with anger as she faced me. “Don’t tell me what to do. You need to listen to me, and do what I say. And we must find Rebecca. Rose is with her, and Rebecca doesn’t know how to fight back.”
I wanted to argue with her until I realized that her fury was directed against someone or something that meant me harm, too. Relenting, I asked, “Where is she?”
My mother’s eyes were blank and we both turned to Jack.
“She left shortly after Melanie did, and I haven’t heard from her since. I’ve called her cell phone a couple of times, but it keeps switching to voice mail.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed before raising it to his ear. He waited for a long minute before snapping it shut. “Still no answer.”
“Where would she have gone?” I asked out loud as my eyes settled on the journal still tucked under my mother’s arm. “Can I see it?”
My mother relinquished it with what seemed like relief. I opened it to the back cover that showed the illustration of the angel head. “Maybe this might tell us.”
Jack approached as I opened my cell phone to the picture of the stained-glass window that illuminated the hidden picture. I pointed to the angel. “This was the other thing I came over to show you today. It’s a picture of the figurehead from the
Ida Belle
, the ship carrying Nora and her parents from Connecticut to Charleston. The figurehead was the only part of the ship that was ever recovered—and they found it on Edisto Island.”
Jack’s gaze met mine. “Which is very close to Johns Island.”
I nodded. “I think that the way the figurehead is situated in the picture, with it half turned, could mean that it’s pointing to something. See?”
With my fingernail, I indicated the bottom of the triangle made by the angel’s hair and wings. “The tip is missing, as if it’s buried under sand, which I think indicates land. My father told me that he saw Rebecca taking pictures of the window, as if she might have figured this out, too. The picture of the figurehead from the boat is on the Internet, so it’s more than possible that she discovered it. And what it might mean.”
Jack pointed at the depiction of the house in the picture. “Do you know the location of the old Prioleau plantation on Johns Island?”
I frowned, thinking. As a Realtor, I’d sold a lot of houses on the island, and I was familiar with all the golf communities and the names of the neighborhoods named after the former plantations upon which they were built.
“Belle Meade,” I said. “It’s a golf club community now. I know where it is, but I haven’t been to the house since I was a little girl. My grandmother Sarah took me.”
My mother’s voice was strained. “I can find it. If you can get me into the neighborhood, I’ll know where to go.”
The house shook as a large roll of thunder launched itself at the earth, making me shudder. Heading out to an old ruin in a thunderstorm on pure speculation didn’t sound like a good idea. “It’s practically gone. Hurricane Hugo took off the roof and toppled chimneys, but local preservationists wouldn’t let them bulldoze the rest. It’s taped off to prevent trespassers because it’s not safe.”
“Chimneys?” Jack asked, and I jerked my head toward him.
I nodded. “There were at least three fireplaces that I can remember. But the largest was in the main room of the house, what used to be part of the original farmhouse.”
“She could have figured out what we have, and decided to search for whatever is hidden in the fireplace,” Jack said.
My eyes widened. “Like Rose’s locket.”
Rain pelted the house as bright forks of lightning illuminated the gray world outside the windows. I wanted to suggest that Rebecca and Rose might be evenly matched, but from looking at my mother’s drawn face I realized that the situation was much more serious than I wanted to think.
“We need to go. Now.” We both faced my mother, who was gripping the newel post and trying to stand. I wanted to tell her that she obviously wasn’t well, but her obstinacy and determination reminded me too much of myself.
I walked toward my mother and helped her up. “Let’s go, then. But I’m driving. Jack’s car is too small, and you can barely stand.” I grabbed my purse from the hall table and carefully led her outside while Jack closed the door firmly behind us just as another flash of lightning illuminated the sky like an omen.
We headed toward US Highway Seventeen South and the Ashley River Bridge to the road that would lead us onto the island. Bohicket Road was a narrow two-way thoroughfare canopied by old oaks and sweeping Spanish moss. It was ethereal and magical in the sunlight, but in the height of a thunderstorm it brought to mind the presence of things that went bump in the night.
Against my better judgment, I let Jack drive my car so I could sit in the backseat with my mother, who appeared too weak to sit up on her own. She rested her head on my shoulder, and I recognized the scent of her shampoo as the one I used. I remembered recognizing the same scent on Rebecca. I recalled, too, Rebecca’s ability to see things in dreams, and the way her hands had seemed so familiar to me, and I shook my head, castigating myself for being so oblivious. But as I sat in the back of the speeding car, listening to the storm whipping at the windows and feeling the weight of my mother’s head on my shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world, I realized that being oblivious was sometimes just another form of denial.
I navigated from the backseat, directing Jack to turn onto an unmarked road. The community was so exclusive that the residents believed that if you didn’t know it was there, you had no business being there. When we reached the security gate, I showed my Realtor credentials to the guard and with a few odd glances at my mother and me in the backseat, he opened the gate and we drove through.
The asphalt drive was still dry, the storm behind us but approaching quickly. Ginnette lifted her head, sensing the change in direction and pointed to an unpaved road that led to the right off of the main road. “That way. Follow it through the woods until you reach a fork in the road, and go right. If you go left, you’ll end up in the old family cemetery.”
Her voice held a note of panic in it and I glanced at her, only to find her looking past my shoulder, into the darkening woods. I followed her gaze, seeing the fading NO TRESPASSING signs and broken, rusted chains that had once blocked access to the road. “She’s there,” she said quietly.
“Rebecca?”
“Both of them.” Raising her voice, she turned toward the front seat. “Hurry, Jack. You must hurry.”
I listened as the bottom of my car scraped rocks and tree roots, trying not to imagine the repair bills. Within ten minutes of entering the front gates, we emerged into a clearing, the darkness of the woods behind us and the roofless ruins of an old plantation house looming in front of us against the darkening sky. And there, parked under the shelter of a towering oak with a heavy shawl of Spanish moss, was Rebecca’s red Audi convertible.
The distant rumble of thunder reminded us that we needed to hurry. Jack exited the car, then opened the back door. Our eyes met above my mother’s head, and his worried expression mirrored my own thoughts. Gently, he helped her out and as I followed, I sniffed the air.
“Do you smell that?”
Jack and Ginnette turned to me, matching looks of alarm in their eyes.
“It’s smoke. Wood smoke, not burning leaves,” I said.
The three of us turned toward the house. Jack was the first to spring into action. Addressing me and my mother, he said, “Stay here in the car. If I’m not out in ten minutes, use your cell and call 911.”
I wanted to argue with him, and insist that I go in, too, but I was reluctant to leave my mother by herself, knowing that in an emergency she wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough to get out of harm’s way. I nodded my assent, and watched as he jumped over rotting steps to the front porch, then through the gaping hole where a front door had once guarded the entrance. I looked down at my watch, and began to time him.
We resettled ourselves into the backseat of the car, still smelling smoke but not yet seeing any signs of fire. Swallowing heavily, I turned to my mother. “Rose can’t actually hurt anyone, right? I mean, she gave us bruises, but that’s all. Right?”
My mother took my hand and I noticed that she’d removed her gloves. “I need to tell you something, Mellie. Something I probably should have told you long ago.”
I glanced down at my watch.
Two minutes.
“About why I left.”
Slowly, I turned my attention to her. I’d waited years for this moment, years of uncertainty, and questions, and hope, and grief, yet now that it was here, I could only feel panic. I’d based my entire life on certain assumptions, and if I suddenly learned that they weren’t true, then where would that leave me?
I couldn’t meet her eyes and instead focused on the trees behind her, and the way the wind tortured the leaves into pulling away from their stems and into the gathering maelstrom.
“Your grandmother, as she lay dying . . .” Her voice broke and she took a moment before continuing. “I was there. She told me . . .”
“That we aren’t as we seem,” I interjected, wanting to interrupt her so she couldn’t tell me what I was afraid she would.
“Yes. But that’s not all.” Gently, she placed her fingertips on my jaw. “Look at me, Mellie, and listen carefully. Your grandmother didn’t trip. She was pushed. By the same spirit that haunts the back stairs today. The spirit that was made stronger when they pulled her remains from the sailboat.”
“Rose,” I whispered.
“Yes.” Her voice was so soft that I had to lean down to hear her over the rising wind. “I was pregnant . . .”
“I don’t want to hear this,” I said, wanting to push her away, to leave the car.
“I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you before. But you need to hear it now. Your fear gets in the way of your strength, Mellie. You need to be strong. We need your strength.”
I closed my eyes, trying the deep calming breaths Sophie had been trying to teach me for years. Then I opened them again, and glanced at my watch.
Five minutes
.
“Listen to me, Mellie. I had a miscarriage. A baby boy. The trauma of seeing my mother die like that, and Rose’s taunting voice. I—I lost the baby because of her.” She squeezed my hands and made me look at her again. “I didn’t want to lose you, too.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t look away. “But you did. You left.”
“I had to. Don’t you see? You were too young to fight her. She knew that as you grew, you would get stronger. And that if we worked together, we could defeat her. Send her away forever. But she wanted to make us pay for what Meredith did to her, although I didn’t understand her reasons at the time.”
“You could have told me then. I would have understood.” Tears fell on our clasped hands, and I was surprised to see that they were mine.
“You were seven years old, Mellie. You couldn’t have understood. And it would have been cruel for me to make you. We were a beacon for her, the two of us together. Being with you was dangerous—for both of us. But you were more vulnerable.”
“I wasn’t going to stay young forever. I grew up. I grew stronger. You could have come back and we could have fought her together.”
“No.You needed to overcome your fear. We were like a bonfire in the darkness for all spirits. Good and bad. You had your imaginary friends, remember? But there were other spirits in the house you avoided, who made you crawl into bed with me or your grandmother each night. You didn’t recognize that being able to see them and communicate with them gave you power over them. So they took advantage of you, fed on your fear. I couldn’t let that happen with Rose. She killed your grandmother, and my baby. I had to dilute our brightness, until you understood your strength. And I wasn’t going to let her hurt you, no matter how much it hurt me to lose you.” Using her thumbs, she wiped the tears from my cheeks. “I told you that before. Do you remember? That sometimes we have to do the right thing even if it means letting go of the one thing we love most in the world. I wanted you to remember that. Did you?”
I did remember; I remembered lying in my darkened bedroom with my eyes half closed in sleep while she said those words to me. I might even have listened better if I’d known that I wouldn’t see her again for more than three decades. But I closed my eyes and shook my head in denial, trying to cling to everything I’d once known as truth, regardless of how wrong, and stubborn, and irrational I was being. This was the woman I’d taught myself to hate, to forget, to pretend had never been in my life. I’d learned to resist everything I’d ever inherited from her. But she’d just told me that she’d let me go to save my life, and I’d spent that same life hating her, and wanting to be as far away from her as a person could go. Shame settled on me like a bird; I could still function, but every time I’d turn my head I’d see it.
Pulling away, I fumbled for the door latch on the other side of the car and threw myself out onto the gravel and dead leaves. I had to hold on to the door to keep the wind from slamming it shut.The smell of smoke was stronger now, and I could see wisps of smoke coming from the back side of the house. I looked down at my watch one more time.
Ten minutes.
I tossed my cell phone onto the backseat, ignoring her look of anguish. “Call 911,” I shouted over the roar of the wind, my words splattering against the car like raindrops. “I’m going in to see if Jack needs me.”
She leaned toward me and I had to struggle to hear her over the din of the approaching storm. “It was your fear when you were a little girl that threatened to be your undoing. You can’t afford that now, do you understand? Don’t listen to her voice, and keep telling yourself that you’re stronger than she is. The second you begin doubting yourself, you let her in.”
I stared at her, wanting to ask her the question teasing my lips, but I stood paralyzed, not yet ready to relinquish the hold I had on the person I thought I was.
“Yes, Mellie. You can do it. But run. Run fast. She’s near.”
Our gazes held for a brief moment before I turned and headed toward the house, jumping over the rotting steps as I’d seen Jack do just as a large roll of thunder shook the ground.
I stepped through the doorway, finding it hard to distinguish the inside from the outside in the roofless foyer. Green vines crept up what remained of the old plaster and rotting wood. Wide-planked oak floors, with termite holes and missing joists, created a sort of minefield to cross to get to the back of the house. I looked down through a hole to the brick pilings of the foundation, seeing if Jack might have missed his footing. A once-majestic staircase rose to emptiness in front of me, the banister and newel posts long since lost to Mother Nature or vandalism. Ragged fabric hung at the open windows where not even a shard of glass interrupted the complete desolation of the house’s facade.
“Jack!” I called, then coughed as I sucked in a lungful of smoke-filled air, wondering if I was imagining the unmistakable sound of crackling fire.
“Mellie, back here. Be careful where you step—but hurry.”
Moving quickly but carefully, I made my way through the front of the house toward the back, calling to Jack twice to reorient myself. The lightning was quickly answered by thunder, a celestial duet announcing the storm’s approach. In the dim light, I stepped through a beamed opening onto a brick floor, and apparently into an older part of the house. Most of this roof was still intact, partly I assumed because it was lower and thus spared the strong hurricane winds that had destroyed most of the house.
I squinted into the darkening light, seeing the huge fireplace I remembered at one end of the room, with two figures huddled on the ground in front of it. “Jack,” I said, stepping forward.
“Be careful. There’re loose bricks everywhere.”
I moved closer, studying the fireplace that had once dominated an entire side of the old farmhouse kitchen. But where the chimney should have disappeared through the roof, the roof was gone, and the fireplace itself disintegrated in a pile on the floor that Jack was leaning over.
“What is it?” I asked, moving closer still until I caught a movement from beneath the rubble. “Oh, my God,” I said, kneeling by Rebecca’s head, the blond hair now matted with blood. Her body from the waist down was covered with a large slate slab, and Jack appeared to be holding it off of her body.
“What happened?”
Rebecca groaned, her face a white mask of pain.
Jack answered, “She said that the mantelpiece just suddenly dislodged itself, slipping from the wall and falling on her along with a lot of the fireplace bricks. I think her leg might be broken.”
Rebecca screamed and I thought at first that something else had begun to fall. We both followed her gaze to see the other half of the room, mostly rotted wood timbers, explode into flame as a flash of heat and light washed over us.
I looked to Jack, knowing he had the training to figure out our next move.
“We’ve got to move fast; the wind’s feeding the fire and we don’t have time to wait for the rain.” He coughed, the smoke thick and heavy. “Rebecca, I’m sorry, sweetie, but this is going to hurt. Hopefully, you’ll faint so you won’t feel anything.”
I didn’t have the heart to look at Rebecca’s face to see how she took the news. I was too busy watching the wall of flame consume the walls.
Jack continued. “On the count of three, I’m going to lift this slab as much as I can so you can slide Rebecca out from under it. Can you lift her?”
I nodded, my eyes tearing from the smoke, then moved my arms under her shoulders. She didn’t say anything and I wondered if she’d already fainted.
With his eyes on me, he counted, “One, two, three!”
Grunting, he managed to lift the slab enough for me to slide Rebecca out until she cleared it, then Jack let the slate crash back to the brick floor. Rebecca screamed, and the sound was nearly buried by another clap of thunder.
The flames licked closer to us and had almost reached the threshold of the hallway from where we’d come—our only exit from the room.
“Hurry,” I yelled at Jack, who was kneeling next to Rebecca and gently lifting her in his arms. Her jeans were bloody but she was still conscious, biting her lip to keep from screaming, and I felt a grudging admiration for her. The backs of my hands stung and when I glanced down at them, I saw them crisscrossed with bloody scratches that I didn’t remember getting.