Chapter 21
21
Coralee’s Letter
My darling Madison,
If you’re reading this, as the old chestnut goes, I’m either dead or incapacitated.
Not that there’s much difference between the two. Given the choice, I’d definitely prefer the dignity of death.
By now, Ezra Clark, or one of his successors, should I outlive him by any length of time, will have filled you in on the details of my will and outlined my personal wishes in regard to my memorial celebration and the various belongings I have earmarked for certain friends and acquaintances.
And, obviously, he will have given you this letter.
My journals tell my story in exhaustive detail, so I will speak here only of the most urgent matters. If for some unfathomable reason you are curious about the way I’ve chosen to live my one precious life, you’ll find everything you could possibly want to know in the diaries I’ve kept, on and off, for most of my life.
Here, I must restrict myself to the unbelievable.
It’s conceivable, I suppose, that an intelligent young woman such as yourself will see that what I’m about to tell you is the truth, but sadly, I’m almost entirely convinced that you won’t.
You’ll think I’m demented. Senile. Or simply a very imaginative storyteller.
Nonetheless, given the fact that I am now dead, or permanently comatose, I must say what has to be said while that is still possible. Believing or not believing is your choice, of course, but I warn you— not believing is dangerous. Possibly deadly.
You do understand, I think, that Bettencourt Hall is no ordinary house. The place has a magic all its own.
The danger lies outside the walls of this grand old place, along twisting paths through the woods, beside the creek and, perhaps most especially, in and around the family cemetery.
There are strange, invisible passageways out there, Madison. They open and close, like shimmering veils of nothing. They appear and disappear—and they can swallow the unwary.
This happened to me a very long time ago, and I have seen evidence of it happening to others. Most likely they will never admit to it, for obvious reasons.
Do you remember your little friend, Bliss? The one who vanished? The one I insisted was imaginary, a product of your lonely childhood?
I cannot forgive myself for not reporting that child’s disappearance, Madison.
You see, I knew she was real.
And I knew exactly what had become of her.
Why didn’t I tell the police? I was a coward, that’s why. I had tried to tell my own story—as a small child, I wandered into another version of Painted Pony Creek, in another time. I returned so stunned and disoriented that I could not speak at all for a while, let alone share what I had experienced with anyone.
When, after many days, I found the courage to tell Papa what had happened, he didn’t believe me. He said I was telling tales in order to garner attention, and that that was a wicked thing to do. I was punished.
I never confided in another adult after that, though I did tell my closest friend, Althea. I told her everything I could remember—the people in strange, old-fashioned clothing, the horses drawing wagons or buggies, the rutted roads, the odd, rustic buildings that shouldn’t have been there, but were.
Alas, Althea didn’t believe me, either. I’m fairly certain that you’ve already guessed that much. I was shattered by that, though I disguised it well, I think. We’ve remained the dearest of friends, Althea and I.
Why, you ask, should I attempt to tell you, especially at this late date?
Because I was fortunate to return from that place, Madison.
It wasn’t some awful black-and-gray version of hell; the trees were green, like the grass, and the sky was blue.
But I didn’t belong there.
And because I had—and have—no understanding of how or why such a thing could happen, I was terrified of stumbling back through some invisible portal, unable to get home again, to Mama and Papa and Bettencourt Hall, as I knew it. I avoided the cemetery, even though I had helped Mama pull weeds and plant flowers there for as long as I could remember.
You see, I was hiding there, behind a tombstone—Althea and I and a half-dozen other children were engaged in a lively game of hide-and-seek, while the grown-ups laughed and chatted and indulged in champagne cocktails—and I was determined not to be found—when suddenly my head began to spin, and then ache, in the most horrendous way. I honestly believed I was dying in those terrible moments.
The headache intensified, and I felt as though I were hurtling through the most complete darkness I could imagine—not a pinprick of light anywhere—and the pain! Oh, Madison, the crushing pain in my head was so terrible, I could not bear it. I lost consciousness, and when I came around again, I wasn’t in the cemetery, but on my feet, and well along the familiar road into town.
Or a version of that road, at any rate; there was no gravel, and it bent in different directions in different places. There were no mailboxes along its sides, and no houses, either.
If I’d had the clarity of mind to make such an observation, I would have thought that, like Dorothy and Toto, I had been swept away to the land of Oz.
Except this wasn’t Oz. It was Painted Pony Creek, Montana.
And it wasn’t.
I believed I was asleep, having a dream.
Maybe I was.
All I can say on that score is, the whole experience seemed thoroughly, irrevocably real.
I got as far as town—it looked like something out of an old Western movie or TV show, Madison—and the people, men, women and children, were dressed accordingly, except that their skirts and trousers and short pants weren’t like costumes. The garments were clean, in most cases, but shabby.
All the men and most of the boys wore hats, and the women and girls were in long skirts and dresses.
There were horses tied to hitching rails along the street.
It must have been Sunday, because most everyone seemed to be headed toward the edge of town, where a white clapboard church stood proudly on a grassy knoll. A bell rang in the belfry.
Being only seven years old, I was overwhelmed.
I had no desire to explore, or to ask questions.
I just wanted to go home.
I remember running back the way I’d come, desperate. Frantic.
At some point, I stumbled and fell, striking my head against the hard-packed dirt along the road.
This time, when I woke up, I was lying alongside the creek, face down in the rocky soil that lined the banks. I remember having another terrible headache, one so intense that I lost the contents of my stomach.
I don’t know how I knew, but I was aware that I was back where I belonged.
The most tremendous joy and gratitude surged through me, in spite of the pain, which was already beginning to subside; I didn’t even fret that Mama would be sorely vexed because my beautiful organza party dress was torn, and further spoiled by mud and dirt. She’d had it made especially for the garden party taking place at Bettencourt Hall, and now I’d ruined it.
I didn’t care one whit.
I knew I was home .
I raced back to the house, where there was much consternation, because I had been missing for several hours, as it turned out.
Mama and Papa were so relieved that they didn’t scold me for vanishing, or for the wholesale destruction of my once lovely party dress. Not then, anyway.
Later, as I’ve said, Papa could not accept my explanation.
Years passed, and when I was all grown up, and not only a mother, but a grandmother , and you told me about your missing friend, I did you the same disservice my father and best friend had done me.
I couldn’t admit that I believed you, and I am sorry.
I wanted to tell you a hundred times that I suspect other Bettencourts may have had a similar experience to mine, and chosen not to tell, for reasons I’ve already stated.
Papa, for instance, grew up in Bettencourt Hall, and he never mentioned his childhood. It was as though he’d never had one, he was so reticent.
I have no way of knowing, though I can’t help suspecting.
Much later, before I was married to your grandfather—as you know, the Bettencourt women never change their names when they take a husband—I was dressed up for a party, waiting for my date to arrive.
Mama and Papa were away at the time.
Anyway, I thought I glimpsed a little girl in the kitchen at Bettencourt Hall, not a ghost or a hallucination, but a genuine, flesh and blood child , and she frightened me so badly that I dropped one of Mama’s best glasses, let it crash to the floor and shatter at my feet. I didn’t recognize her, and of course it didn’t occur to me until years later that she might have been your lost friend.
I had not been able to convince myself that she was simply a child who’d sneaked into the house without my knowing. She had been wearing a calico dress and high-button shoes, for one thing, and for another, Bettencourt Hall was four miles from town, and thus quite isolated.
Back then, we didn’t have any close neighbors, and strange children did not barge into other people’s homes, at least not in my—at the time—limited experience.
She did not belong there, as surely as I had not belonged in that earlier incarnation of Painted Pony Creek.
Who can comprehend the tricks of time, or of illusion?
Certainly not I. To this day, I remain mystified.
It’s possible, I suppose, that I did indeed imagine my experience, and the presence of that little girl in the kitchen, too. Still, the image of her is vivid in my mind all these years later, as I compose this letter.
I can’t quite accept the fantasy theory, sensible as it sounds, because what mere dream has the power to weave itself into a person’s life to such an extent that it becomes a lasting part of them, as surely as arms and legs, or the color of one’s hair and eyes?
Thus, Madison dear, I am bound by my love for you, and the dictates of my own conscience, to warn you. You will surely have children one day, and I know they will spend time at Bettencourt Hall, even if you wind up living somewhere else.
I ask you, with all the fierce sincerity of a grandmother who cherishes you, to be careful. I remain convinced that the house itself is a safe haven, truly benign, though strange things have happened there from the very beginning.
I pray you will believe me, not for my sake, but for your own.
If you don’t, however, you don’t.
You can decide this letter is nothing more than the ravings of an old woman whose mind is gradually fading away into confusion.
But please know, my dearest, that while I have not been the most demonstrative of grandmothers, I have loved you with my whole heart, from the day you were born.
Perhaps you wonder, then, why I sent you away to boarding school when you were so young, and you’d lost both your parents, and wanted so very much to stay here at Bettencourt Hall.
I did it to protect you, Madison, for no other reason than because I loved you too much to lose you. I had already lost too much.
Still, it broke my heart—the heart I was forced to harden.
Maybe I was wrong, and should have begged your forgiveness.
I don’t know.
Of one thing, I am certain. I am...
Truly yours,
Coralee