Chapter 3 The Devil’s Offering #2
The whimper is so soft at first, I scarcely hear it.
The far-off cry of a baby in need of swaddling or a cat caterwauling in the rain.
But it grows louder as I approach the mantel, and I know it is the same cry I heard early one morning after coming here.
I remember throwing the covers back and climbing out of bed, following the sound down the hall and the stairs, worried it was my mother.
It led me all the way to this room, but the door was locked.
My mother wasn’t there, or Nina, or anyone else.
The crying, I soon realized, was coming from inside the empty room.
I backed away on uncertain feet; but in the days after, I often heard the crying, softly echoing down the halls, beckoning me closer.
As I kneel at the hearth, it becomes the clear and agonized weeping of a woman.
But as I press into my knuckles and lean into the firebox, glancing up the flue for answers, it echoes around me, seeping from the bricks themselves, a wail trapped in the clay and marble ringing across time, echoing into silence.
I rush to pull away, but my fingers catch something papery soft at the back, blackened and wadded together.
I pull it out and return to the vanity stool, brushing off the soot.
It’s a bouquet of sorts, dried out and browning where it isn’t charred, stems curling against each other, frozen in time.
After a second, I realize it’s goldenrod, the flowers that bloom before the house.
But they’re tangled through with hair, a net of golden strands like the one on the pin.
And something is buried within them, hard and misshapen.
To get to it, I must unwind the red ribbon tying it all together.
I go slowly to avoid scattering the floor with old blossoms, but eventually I pull the weeds away and expose a half-melted candle, white and smooth, except where something has been scratched into the wax, the remnants of a word.
Holding it up, I can just make out the letters i-n-d, a deep, earthy red substance smeared and dried across them, filling in the grooves.
Blood, I hear the voice whisper. The shriveled husk of a small grass snake drops from the bundle onto the vanity top.
And then a ripple in the drapes catches my eye in the mirror’s reflection, and a sudden thud from the bathroom causes me to spring from the stool.
It’s the sound of something falling, hitting the travertine tub.
I don’t wait to see what fell or who made the fabric dance.
I wrap the flowers loosely around the candle and toss everything into the open vanity drawer, including the dead snake, ducking briskly out of the room and locking its door behind me.
It’s a long walk back to my room, my hands and legs trembling from what I found.
I sleep clear on the other side of the house on a higher story, as far from my grandfather and my mother as possible.
In our walk-up in San Francisco, we were close as cats, my mother, father, and I.
But here, she put me away like a doll she tired of playing with.
My heart aches for the comfort of our old life, shabby but connected.
It’s an even longer wait for the party to begin.
I zip up an ivory lace dress over my ribs and tie the black velvet sash at my waist. The dress is a little tight, but it’s the only nice one I own.
Next, I slide on my patent leather flats and go to the small mirror hanging on my wall.
I pull out the lipstick I stole from my grandmother’s room and slide it over the fullness of my lips, waiting in the cane-back chair by the door, trying to unravel the mystery like I did the bundle—the flowers, the hair, the letters i-n-d.
When my mother finally comes to get me, to bring me downstairs like an exotic pet they trot out for the entertainment of guests, she takes one look at me and her face twists into a knot of pain and then fire.
Before I can comprehend what’s happening she is backing me against the bed where she smears a hot, angry palm across my mouth, wiping with such force I think she must be taking skin off with the makeup.
“Where did you get it?” she screams when she’s at last satisfied that it’s gone.
I can feel my face flame, heat filling me up like blood.
Ravaged, I scramble away from her, but there’s nowhere I can go.
I’ve watched my mother sour like rotting fruit toward me over our years here.
I’ve taken her bitter words and suffered her cruelty when she chose to lock me in my room or keep me tucked out of sight.
I’ve accepted the days and weeks alone, the withdrawing of affection, and even the turning away of her eyes.
But I have never felt her touch me in anger, until now.
When I don’t respond, she tears through my room, pulling out drawers and dumping their contents on the floor, turning out pockets, ransacking my meager allotment of things like a criminal investigation.
Plunder spills across the floor like milk, all my secret finds laid bare.
But she ignores it all, even the pearl earring.
Until she finds the key and the lipstick, one which I stashed in the pocket of my robe, hoping to return it in the night, and the other which I thought I’d hid well in a pair of wool socks.
Her hand trembles as it clutches the evidence of my disobedience. “What have I told you?” she grates between her teeth.
“Never to go in that room or walk on the cliffs beyond it,” I whisper, terrified.
“Never,” she says, seething. “Never!” She backs away from me like I’m a stain.
“Wait!” I call out as I realize what’s happening. She’s leaving. Without me. “What about the party?”
“There will be no more parties,” she says, her tone brittle and full of hate. “Not for you. Not tonight. Not ever.”
It is a promise she keeps to the bitter end, and the last time I would know her touch before the night the fires claimed her.
I DROP THE lipstick I’m holding into the sink and run my trembling hands under the cold water.
Where did that come from? I haven’t thought of that day in years.
I walk out of the bathroom and sit on the edge of my bed, trying to regulate my heart rate.
Since losing the baby, these flashbacks have haunted me.
These old, buried memories rising from their graves like zombies, ready to devour me.
But this one, I’m certain, has a very different trigger.
I stare down the black envelope propped up on the dresser across from me. I’d been too scared to open it in the park last night, feeling too vulnerable out in the open. Instead, I ran all the way back to my car, not daring to open it until I was safely inside with the doors locked.
As before, this one simply has my name on the outside.
But unlike the last, which was clearly an invitation, this one contains some kind of riddle.
The words troubled me the whole way home and late into the night.
I’m so exhausted, it’s no wonder I can’t even manage getting dressed for work this morning.
I probably only secured a few hours’ sleep at most.
Knowing I’m already late, I text an excuse to my work about a power outage, telling them I’m on my way. Then, I drop my phone onto the bed and lift the envelope from the dresser, sliding the card out to read it one more time.
When dusk is high
and sun is low,
the icon shines,
and stakes will grow.
You’ve just one chance
to shadows bend,
and show us darkness
is your friend.
You have until sunset on the third day.
Don’t be late.
The same scrolling flourish is drawn at the bottom.
The verse sends an involuntary shiver of revulsion down my back.
There was a story Dara once told me, a rhyme the kids at her school used to chant about my grandmother.
Goldenrod grows beneath the sun, but locked up it comes undone.
When its glory ceases to be, toss the petals into the sea.
I asked her what it meant, but she only shrugged.
When I was five, shortly after we arrived at the estate, I wandered into the dining room while my grandfather was having breakfast. A look of disgust curled his lip. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”
I was too scared to respond.
“Nina!” he called as if I were a spider he’d spotted on the carpet. “Niiina! Confound that woman…” He glared at me. “I suppose you want something from me.”
I briskly shook my head.
His eyes narrowed. “They all want something from me. Why should you be any different?” When I didn’t speak, he went on. “Tell you what. There’s an old garden shed at the back of the property. You can make it a playhouse if you like.”
The sudden shift in his mood confused me, but I couldn’t resist such a delight.
I didn’t have Dara’s company then, or anyone else’s.
My father had passed only months before, and my mother was suddenly and strikingly less available to me than she’d ever been.
In our life in San Francisco, I could never have imagined something as grand as my own playhouse.
And the old man’s brazen smile fed my curiosity.
“It’s just out that door,” he said, pointing to one of the French doors that stood open to let the fresh air in. “Straight back all the way. You’ll see a narrow trail through the trees—follow it.”
Grinning, I bolted from the room and followed his direction to the decrepit building which, when I got close, had several broken windows and was buzzing with a strange noise I’d never heard before.
I remember looking back with uncertainty, the gabled roof no longer visible behind a wall of spruce.
A concerned voice sounded in my head like a chime— No.
But the eager smile I remembered on my grandfather’s face convinced me to ignore it. Surely this gesture was a gift.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, I found the shed empty of anything but an enormous hive of bees which had taken over the back right corner.
Their drone drowned out the voice. It drowned out all thought as they grew to a frenzy, streaking in my direction.
I ran, tearing through the trees and brush until I stumbled into the clearing near the house, stung more than fifteen times in my flight.
I was lucky I wasn’t allergic. By the time I made it inside, my face was swollen and streaked with angry, humiliated tears.
Nina pressed tobacco and oil into my skin for days to draw out the burn.
I never confessed who told me about the shed.
I struggled to believe he’d done it on purpose.
At that time, I still didn’t understand the hell my mother had brought me to. I still didn’t understand who we were.
I began hearing the voice all the time after that. And the next time, I listened.
I’m no different now than I was that day when I was five years old, only I don’t have the voice to guide me.
I can hear the humming, feel the stirring of something with power beneath my feet.
I know that whatever lies behind this door won’t be what I expect.
That it may very well harm me in the end.
I know the beguiling face smiling at me and beckoning me forward can’t be trusted.
But what waits in the darkness is calling, and I’ve never been able to resist the devil’s offering.
I feel the envelope buzz as I slide the note card back inside. This can only lead to trouble, I tell myself. But I’m a Cole woman through and through. Trouble is our birthright.
I could just ignore the note. Pretend the whole sordid mess didn’t happen, that last night’s run-in with Bettie Mage and her minions was nothing more than a bad dream. But like last night, I know I’ll go. I’ll try to shadows bend, though I’ve no idea where or how.
Maybe then they’ll deem me worthy.
I haven’t been able to stop seeing the woman from the park since I left, the waves of her dark hair shining in the moonlight, the dangerous curl of her smile.
More than that, I haven’t been able to forget the things she said— And I know about Solidago.
Does she mean the night I fled? Or everything that came before?
Solidago was a house built on secrets—how many has she learned?
More importantly, where did she hear them?
I google sunset times for Seattle. Three days from now it falls at 7:33 P.M. I have until then to figure this out.
I glance to the side and spy The Bell Jar lying on my nightstand. I know exactly where to begin.