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grandmother who had a stern, forbidding look fixed on her daughter.

"Yes!" cried Momma, knew that! But for that codicil I would never have needed the arsenic! But my father let our butler John in on our secret, and he was alive to see that I followed through and kept you upstairs until each one of you was dead! And if he didn't, then my mother was to see he didn't inherit the fifty thousand dollars promised to him. Then there was my mother, who wanted John to inherit everything!"

A terrible silence came while I tried to digest this. The grandfather knew all the time and had wanted to keep us prisoners for life? And as if that weren't enough punishment, he then tried to force her to kill us? Oh, he must have been even more evil than I thought! Not human at all! Then, as I watched her and took note of her anxiously waiting blue eyes, her hands busily trying to twist an invisible rope of pearls, I knew she was lying. I glanced at the grandmother and saw her frown as she tried to speak. Fierce indignation was in her eyes, as if she would deny all my mother had said. But she hated Momma. She would want me to believe the worst--oh, God, how was Ito find out the truth?

I glanced at Bart who stood before the fire, his dark eyes gazing at his wife as if he'd never seen her before, and what he was seeing now appalled him.

"Momma," I began in a flat voice, "what did you really do with Cory's body? We have looked in all the cemeteries around here and checked their records, and not one little boy of eight years died in that last week of October, 1960.'

She swallowed first, then wrung her hands, flashing all the diamonds and other jewels. "I didn't know what to do with him," she whispered. "He died before I could reach the hospital. Suddenly he stopped breathing, and when I looked in the back seat I knew he was dead." She sobbed with the memory, "I hated myself then. I knew I could be charged with murder, and I hadn't meant to kill him! Only make him a little sick! So I threw his body in a deep ravine and covered him over with dead leaves, sticks and stones. . . ." Her huge desperate eyes pleaded with me to believe.

I, too, had to swallow, thinking of Cory in a deep dark ravine, left to decay there. "No, Momma, you didn't do that." My soft voice seemed to cut through the frozen atmosphere of the huge library. "I visited the end room of the northern wing before I came down here." I paused for better effect and made my next words more dramatic. "Before I came down the stairs to confront you I first used stairs that lead directly to the attic, then the hidden little stairway in the closet of our prison. Chris and I always suspected there was another way into the attic, and correctly we reasoned there had to be a door hidden behind the giant heavy armoires we couldn't shove out of the way no matter how hard we pushed. Momma . . . I found a small room we'd never

seen before. There was a very peculiar odor in that room, like something dead and rotten."

For a moment she couldn't move. Her expression went totally blank. She stared at me with vacant eyes and then her mouth and her hands began to work, but she couldn't speak. She tried, but she couldn't speak. Bart started to say something, but she put her hands up to her ears to shut out anything anyone would say.

Suddenly the library door opened. I whirled in a fury.

My mother turned as in a nightmare to see why I kept staring. Chris pulled up short and gazed at her. She jumped then, as if terribly startled, then put up both her hands in a gesture that seemed to ward him off.

Was she seeing a ghost of our father? "Chris. . . ?" she asked. "Chris, I didn't mean to do it, really I didn't! Don't look at me like that, Chris! I loved them! I didn't want to give them the arsenic--but my father made me! He told me they should never have been born! He tried to tell me they were so evil they deserved to die, and that was the only way I could make amends for the sin I'd committed when I married you!" Tears streamed her cheeks as she went on, though Chris kept shaking his head. "I loved my children! Our children! But what could I do? I only meant to make them a little sick--just enough to save them, that's all, that's all. . . . Chris, don't look at me like that! You know I wouldn't ever kill our children!"

His eyes turned icy blue as he stared at her. "Then you did deliberately feed us arsenic?" he asked. "I never fully believed it once we were free of this house and had time to think about it. But you did do it!"

She screamed then. In all my life I'd never heard such a scream as that one that rose and fell

hysterically. Screams that sounded like the howls of the insane! On her heel she whirled about, still screaming, as she raced for a door I hadn't even known was there, and through it she ran and disappeared.

"Cathy," said Chris, tearing his eyes from the door and scanning the library to take note of Bart and the grandmother, "I've come to fetch you. I've had bad news. We have to go back to Clairmont immediately!"

Before I could answer Bart spoke up, "Are you Cathy's older brother, Chris?"

"Yes, of course. I came for Cathy. She's needed someplace else." He stretched out his hand as I drifted toward him.

"Wait a minute," said Bart. "I need to ask you a few questions. I've got to know the full truth. Was that woman in the red dress your mother?"

First Chris looked at me. I nodded to tell him Bart knew, and only then did Chris meet Bart's eyes with some hostility. "Yes, she is my mother and Cathy's mother, and once the mother of twins named Cory and Carrie."

"And she kept all four of you locked up in one room for more than three years?" asked Bart, as if he still didn't want to believe.

"Yes, three years and four months and sixteen days. And when she took Cory away one night she came back later and told us he died of pneumonia. And if you want more details, you will have to wait, for there are others we have to think about now. Come, Cathy," he said, reaching for my hand again. "We've got to hurry!" He looked then at the grandmother and gave her a wry smile. "Merry Christmas, Grandmother. I had hoped never to see you again, but now that I have I see time has worked its own revenge." He turned again to me. "Hurry, Cathy, where is your coat? I have Jory and Mrs. Lindstrom out in my car."

"Why?" I asked. Sudden panic filled me. What was the matter?

"No!" objected Bart. "Cathy can't leave! She's expecting my child and I want her here with me!"

Bart came to take me in his arms and tenderly he gazed with love at my face. "You have lifted the blinders from my eyes, Cathy. You were right. Certainly I was meant for better things than this. Perhaps I can still redeem my existence by doing something useful for a change."

I threw the grandmother a look of triumph and avoided looking directly at Chris, and with Bart's arm about my shoulders we left the library and the grandmother and strode through all the other rooms until we reached the grand foyer.

Bedlam had broken loose! Everyone was screaming, running, searching to find a wife or a husband. Smoke! I smelled smoke.

"My God, the house is on fire!" Bart cried. He shoved me toward Chris. 'Fake her outside and keep her safe! I've got to find my wife!" He looked wildly about, calling, "Corrine, Corrine, where are you?"

The milling throng were all headed for the same exit. From the stairs above black smoke billowed down. Women fell and people stepped over them. The merry guests of the party were hell-bent now on getting out, and woe to those who didn't have the strength to fight their way to the door. Frantically I tried to follow Bart with my eyes. I saw him pick up a telephone, no doubt to call the fire department, and then he was racing up the right side of the dual staircase and into the very heart of the fire! "No!"I screamed. "Bart--don't go up there! You'll be killed! Bart--don't! Come back!"

I think he must have heard me, for he hesitated midway up and smiled back at me as I was frantically waving. He mouthed the words I love you--and then pointed toward the east. I didn't understand what he meant. But Chris took it that he was telling us of another way out.


Tags: V.C. Andrews Dollanganger Horror