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A small sound from the edge of the woods made me suspect that at last Sylvia was going to play a hide-and-seek game, something I’d been trying to teach her to do for months. “Okay, Sylvia,” I called. “Ready or not … here I come.”
Nothing but silence in the woods. I stood there looking around. Sylvia was nowhere in sight. I began to run. The paths here were faint and randomly made. Unfamiliar paths that soon had me befuddled and very anxious. Suddenly a golden raintree loomed just ahead of me, and beneath it was a low, grassy mound. I froze and just stared. They’d found the First and Best Audrina lying dead on the mound under a golden raintree, killed by those terrible boys. I began to back off. The woods were usually alive with the sounds of birds claiming their territory, with insects making perpetual hums and buzzes. Why was it so quiet? Deadly quiet. Even the leaves on the trees didn’t move. An unearthly stillness visited as my eyes stayed glued to that mound that had to be the one.
A drum began to pound behind my ears.
Death.
I could smell death. Whirling around, I screamed Sylvia’s name again. “Where are you? Don’t hide now, Sylvia… do you hear me? I can’t find you. I’m going back to the house, Sylvia. See if you can catch me!”
Near the house I found a stem of pink sweetheart roses that had fallen to the ground. They gave me a hint. There was only one place where they grew—near the cottage where Arden and Billie used to live. Had she made it there and back in such a short time? It had been Sylvia’s habit, since the first day she came, to always pull the prettiest flowers and sniff them. Again I looked around, wondering what to do next. The rose I now had in my hand was warm, the tiny blossoms crushed, as if held too tightly in a small hand. I stared up at the sky. It was cloudy and looked like rain. I could see Whitefern, though it was a good distance away … but where the devil was Sylvia? Home, of course. That had to be the answer. All the time I’d skipped along the trail to the river, thinking Sylvia was directly behind me, she must have headed for the cottage, thinking that was our destination. She’d pulled the roses, changed her mind and headed home. She did have an animal’s instinct about storms.
Yet I didn’t want to leave her if she was still in the woods. All these years I’d waited for Sylvia to do something independent of me except steal Billie’s red cart … and she had to choose this day to wander off alone. Maybe Sylvia had even gone down to the river to find me, and when she reached there, I’d been in the woods staring at that raintree.
A chill wind whipped up to beat the branches of the trees so that they fanned and struck at my face. The sun became a sly fugitive, racing to escape the wind, ducking behind the dark clouds that came rushing over the tree-tops like black pirate ships. I looked for Vera on the lawn, hoping she could tell me if she’d seen Sylvia. Vera wasn’t there. I again raced for home. Sylvia had to be there.
Inside the door in the nick of time,
I heard the first terrible clap of thunder sound directly overhead. Lightning sizzled and struck something down by the river. The rain beating at the windows seemed likely to break them. It was always dim in our house but for the brief moments when the sun could shine through the stained-glass windows. Without the sun it was almost dark. I thought about finding matches, lighting a kerosene lamp. Then I heard a cry. Shrill! Loud! Terrifying!
Something clattered down the stairs. I cried out and ran forward to catch whatever it was. I collided with a chair that was out of place—and both Billie and I were always careful to put every chair in the same dents it made in the soft rugs.
“Sylvia … is that you?” I called in distress. “Have you fallen?” Or had Vera done it again, and we’d have to wait for another bone to heal before she left?
Near the newel post I stumbled over something soft. I fell to my knees and began to crawl around in the dark, feeling with my hands for whatever had made me fall. My right hand slid on something wet, warm and sticky. At first I thought it was water from one of the fern pots, but the odor … the thickness of it … blood. It had to be blood. More gingerly I reached with my left hand. Hair. Long, thick, curling hair. Strong hair that I knew from the feel was dark blue-black.
“Billie … oh, Billie. Please, Billie …”
Far away in the high cupola the wind chimes tinkled. Pure crystalline notes that shivered down my spine.
Gathering Billie’s shortened body in my arms, I cried and rocked back and forth, comforting her as I would Sylvia. Even as I did, silly thoughts flitted in and out of my brain. How did the wind get in the house? Who had opened one of the high windows in the cupola that nobody but me ever visited?
Over and over again, the same ringing notes. Easing Billie’s dead weight to the floor, I crawled to where an oil lamp should have been and felt in a table drawer for matches. Soon the beaded shade allowed a soft mellow glow to brighten our foyer.
I didn’t want to turn and see her lying dead. I should call a doctor, an ambulance, do something just in case she was still alive. I shouldn’t believe she was already dead.
Aunt Ellsbeth, Billie, Aunt Ellsbeth, Billie… confused, time repeating itself …
With great difficulty, I managed to stand. Leadenly I approached the still figure of Billie on the floor, her eyes staring up at the embellished ceiling, just as my aunt’s eyes had stared.
I hovered above Billie. Too late for a doctor to save her, her glazed eyes told me that. I panicked then, felt weak and faint, though I wanted to scream. On and on in the flickering, struggling gaslight I stared down at the beautiful doll without legs, lying at the bottom of the stairs. Six feet away was the little red cart she must have been riding before she misjudged her positioning, or maybe she’d been coming down the steps with the cart in tow … to turn on the lamps?
Time was trapping me in déjà vu … Aunt Ellsbeth … Billie, over and over again the two women changed places. My hands rose to feel my face, which felt numb. Tears slipped between my fingers. That was no princess doll on the floor, wearing bright blue with no legs, no feet and no shoes. This was a human being with black mascara smearing her cheeks with tears only recently shed. Who had made Billie cry when Papa was gone? What had smeared Billie’s scarlet lipstick when Papa was gone?
Frozen in shock, I was brought back to myself by a familiar sound, the metal roll of small ball-bearing wheels on the hard marble floor. Ready to scream, I spun around to see Sylvia shoveling along on Billie’s cart, which had splintered but was still usable. “Sylvia … what did you do? Did you push Billie down the stairs? Did you have to have that cart so much you would hurt Billie? Sylvia, what have you done?”
In the same old way, as if I hadn’t spent a good portion of my life trying to teach her how to hold her head high, Sylvia’s head lolled on a rubbery neck, rolled from side to side as her eyes went unfocused and her lips gaped. She grunted, quivered, tried to speak, but in the end nothing came out that could be understood. She seemed just as stupid as when she’d come home for the first time.
Immediately guilty and feeling ashamed, I hurried to take her into my arms. She shrank away. Her vacant eyes appeared huge in her pale and frightened face.
“Sylvia, forgive me, I’m sorry, sorry … even if you didn’t like Billie, you wouldn’t hurt her, would you? You didn’t push her down the stairs … I know you wouldn’t do that.”
“What’s going on here?” Vera called from the top of the stairs. A lilac towel was wrapped about her naked body, another swathed about her wet hair. She held her hands away from her as if she’d just finished a manicure and didn’t want to smear the wet polish. “I thought I heard someone scream. Who screamed?”
With teary eyes I stared up at her and then pointed down at the floor. “Billie fell,” I said weakly.
“Fell…?” said Vera, coming slowly down the stairs, holding onto the bannister. Reaching the bottom step, she leaned to peer into Billie’s face. I wanted to shield Billie from that kind of cruel curiosity. “Oh …” sighed Vera. “She’s dead. I know the look, seen it a hundred times. First time I saw it, I could have screamed myself. Now sometimes I think some are better off dead. When I was in the tub, I could swear I heard Sylvia screaming, too.”
My breath caught. I looked at Sylvia, who was again riding on Billie’s little red cart. With a rapt look of intense enjoyment, as if knowing that the cart was hers forever now, she rolled happily along, softly singing the playroom song to herself. I felt almost sick. “What else did you hear, Vera?”
