The Women in the Walls Read online

  “Only because you were gone, though,” I answer. “They just didn’t want Dad to have it, but they love you.”

  “Or so they say.” Her eyes narrow in the slightest as her hands start wringing over each other, as if she’s washing them. “But they’ve been after the grounds for years, and ever since Gregory caught me serving the Mother, he’s threatened to expose me, humiliate me into giving up my position—”

  “That’s it?” I ask, throwing my hands in the air. “Those are the circumstances that gave them pull over us? That doesn’t mean anything! They wouldn’t be able to do anything. The law doesn’t care about...”

  I can’t even go on any further, I’m too upset. There is no real threat in that stupid club, no magical danger, nothing but the never-ending scramble for money and prestige. Penelope has been doing all this weird ritualistic stuff on her own.

  “I don’t care about me,” Penelope nearly snarls, as if the answer is obvious. “It’s the Mother that cannot be exposed. She must be protected, as she’s protected me. The best thing for you to do is stay out of the way and let this happen. Tomorrow we’ll show him.”

  Tomorrow is the holiday party. Has this been one big plan from the start?

  “What are you going to do?” I ask. “Penelope...who is the Mother?”

  “Giver of the divine, maker of the great,” my aunt responds, and I feel sick to my stomach to hear her talk like that. How did she hide it so well before everything started to go wrong? Maybe she didn’t. Maybe Margaret was only seeing the obvious, and I was too in denial to realize that Penelope isn’t a perfect, loving parent. I just wanted her to be, needed her to be. She was all I had.

  And look at her now.

  I remember what I found in the library and find the need to ask her about it before Howard gets back; surely by now he has realized my father isn’t coming to meet him. If I mention Margaret again, she might get set off. Even now she looks on the brink of madness, sitting forward in the bed, wringing her hands while her eyes are open wide and her mouth pulled into a tight-lipped grin.

  “If you serve Her, She will take care of you forever,” Penelope continues. “And tomorrow She’ll make sure certain members of the club find it in their best interest to leave us, and the estate, alone.”

  “But I don’t want her to take care of you, if she’s the one causing people to die around here. Walter, and...” I pause before saying Margaret’s name. “I think you know who else.”

  “Sometimes, people get into things that they shouldn’t,” Penelope says simply, although she looks disturbed at her own words. “The knowledge drives them mad. That’s all. That’s why you need to stay away now. You’ve come too close.”

  “But I’ve heard things,” I argue. “There are voices of dead people inside the walls, Penelope, and did you know that this house used to be a home for abandoned youth?”

  My aunt looks right at me then. “Clara’s school,” she nearly whispers. “Yes, I did.”

  “You know who Clara Owens is?”

  “She is the one who first brought the teachings of the Mother,” Penelope says. “She shared what she knew with an ancestor of ours. The knowledge was passed down through the generations, to anyone who wanted to hear it. Your mother sure didn’t.”

  I think of Eva’s voice in the wall with Margaret’s. “Penelope,” I say slowly. “What happens if you make the Mother angry?”

  My aunt nearly shrivels into herself, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them to rock back and forth. “You don’t,” she says. “You can’t.”

  That just about tells me all I need to know. “You’re going to end up getting yourself killed,” I say. “And who knows who else.”

  “No,” she insists. “You just need to trust me, Lucy. How did you come to stop trusting me with such ease?”

  “Because you disappeared and I thought you were dead!” I bellow. “And then I had to watch Margaret’s head explode on a fence after she thought you were talking to her from beyond the grave!”

  She flinches violently at my words, but it’s hard to care anymore. I got my answers, but I don’t like them.

  “Make the Mother release the spirits trapped inside the walls,” I command, and my aunt whimpers. “They shouldn’t have to be trapped in eternal darkness and pain because you’re serving some demon woman in exchange for...whatever it is you’re getting, if anything.”

  “In return, I receive strength,” she says, “and protection, and eternal love.”

  “You couldn’t have just found Jesus, for Christ’s sake?”

  I hear footsteps below me suddenly—Howard returning from downstairs. I have to hurry.

  “Please tell me there’s a way to free them,” I plead. “Tell me that it’s an accident that they’re there, that you didn’t put them there. I know you don’t want to hear it anymore, but Margaret was your daughter, Penelope, and she’s suffering...”

  “We can talk about it after the holiday party,” my aunt promises shrilly, her eyebrows pulling together in frustration. “Just please, trust me enough to wait that long. Promise me you won’t interfere...”

  My dad told me that Penelope wouldn’t be actually attending the party, so what will she be doing instead? What grand gesture or threat can be made if she’s not even there to do it?

  “Funniest thing,” Howard says, his head suddenly appearing through the hole on the floor behind me. “He wasn’t there.”

  “Strange.” My tone is flat. I am still staring at Penelope as he scrambles the rest of the way up the staircase from below. “Do you promise what you said? After the holiday party we can—”

  “Yes, yes,” Penelope interrupts, clearly not wanting to talk about any of this in front of Howard. “Find me when it’s over, and you’ll be glad you did.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I say, turning my back on her and almost walking straight into Howard.

  “Sorry,” I mumble. “My father probably changed his mind.”

  “I’m sure,” Howard says, one eyebrow cocked. He doesn’t look pleased in the slightest, or like he believes me.

  I leave without a goodbye to Howard or my aunt. The sun has gone down by now, and the house is dark except for the light coming from my father’s study on the first floor. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I get off the stairs on the second floor, but instead of going to my own room, I go straight into Margaret’s for the first time since I found the picnic basket in the closet.

  Without hesitation, I tear down all the stuff on her closet shelf, then lift myself back up just long enough to crawl forward in the darkness, my hand outstretched, until I reach the picnic basket. I shove it aside to grab the shining black wallet behind it. There are no whispers coming for me this time, telling me how much it hurts to be dead; maybe the voices know I no longer care if it hurts. It cannot possibly hurt more than this.

  Let’s see if I can get Margaret to come out now, I think, so I can tell her that I’m close, so very close, to finding out how to free her. But when I take the wallet to the bathroom where I last heard the voices and open it up wide, take out the scalpel and lower it over the skin on my leg, nothing happens.

  I make one small cut, just to see. It takes a bit to start bleeding.

  Nothing.

  I make another cut, which bleeds much easier than the first.

  “Margaret,” I say through gritted teeth. “Are you there?”

  Then, after a pregnant pause: “Mom?” The word feels like the most unnatural thing I’ve ever said.

  But there are no voices. For now, I am alone.

  I cry myself to sleep in the tub, my leg still bleeding, my fingers wrapped loosely around the cool metal handle of the scalpel. In my dreams, Margaret’s voice begs me to kill myself, to join her at last, to forget about waiting for the holiday party just
to fulfill some empty promise to a crazy woman.

  Join me, I can hear her saying, over and over and over again. You know you want to.

  WHEN I WAKE UP, the scalpel and the wallet are gone.

  No matter who it is that came and found me in here, it means I’m ruined. Somebody knows.

  The bathroom door is slightly ajar. I close it, lock it and immediately start the shower, hardly able to stand the sight of the dried blood on my leg. I was just trying to make Margaret appear, I tell myself. That’s all.

  When I don’t feel calmer after a few minutes of standing underneath the stream of water, I crank the temperature almost as high as it will go. I wait until my skin is red and the room is so thick with steam I can feel it entering my lungs with every breath. When I finally step out and wrap a thick towel around myself, I decide I have to know if it was my father who found me in here all cut up with a scalpel in my hands. I’ll know immediately if it was him.

  I reluctantly get dressed before heading downstairs to his study, which is empty. I check his bedroom, the library and finally the courtyard, even though by then I know I’m grasping for straws. With every room I pass, my chest gets increasingly heavy.

  After I’ve checked all those places, I find Miranda in the dining room with Vanessa, arranging centerpieces down the long table that is draped with gold cloth. Vanessa makes a point to ignore my presence, but I’m here to speak to her mother, anyway.

  “Do you know where my father is?” Miranda looks beyond high-strung. I remember again what Vanessa said about her mother being spread too thin at this job, something that is painfully obvious in the messiness of her hair and the shadows beneath her eyes. I swallow my concern—I don’t have time to be worrying about Miranda right now.

  “Yes,” she mumbles, straining to lean across and straighten the tablecloth where it got rumpled from the centerpiece. “He said he had some things to take care of before the big night. Left early this morning.”

  She doesn’t look at me as she speaks. Vanessa looks worried about it for a moment, but when she sees me noticing, she looks away again.

  “If you see him before I do, could you please tell him I’m looking for him?”

  Miranda doesn’t answer, just keeps adjusting the centerpieces before turning toward Vanessa. “I’m going to take you to the bus stop so you can go into town and get the rest of the supplies from the list,” Miranda tells her daughter, still ignoring me. “It’ll take you most of the day, but that’s all right. I’ll be able to prepare the turkeys and get them into the ovens without too much hassle.”

  “Are you sure, Mom?” Vanessa says. “Before we went to bed last night, you said you needed more help here.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Miranda snaps, then makes her way to the edge of the room, where she readjusts candles that were straight in the first place. “Go get your coat and your purse. The list is on the desk in my bedroom.”

  Vanessa leaves the room, her eyes on the floor as she walks past me. Miranda follows her.

  “If you see my father,” I say after them, “please tell him to find me right away.”

  “Okay,” I hear Vanessa say right before they exit the room. I wonder if that means that she doesn’t hate me, but probably not. She’s probably beyond freaked out about all the stuff with the graveyard and Clara Owens. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to have her help me, after all.

  Or maybe it was her that found you this morning. Or Miranda.

  Riddled with nervous paranoia, I spend the rest of the morning wandering the grounds, waiting impatiently for my father to get back from wherever he is. He still isn’t back by the time I need to start getting ready for the holiday party. If I can’t find him beforehand, I’ll have to pull him aside at dinner.

  From the courtyard, I look into the woods and bite my lip and wonder just what in the hell is out there, but more important, why. I think back to all the things Penelope said about the Mother—that she was loving, protective, divine—but feel doubtful as I remember that poem I found in the attic when I was ten. I remember the Mother of the poem being terrifying, melodies of screams and whatever else.

  I make my way back around the front of the house from the courtyard. I’m rounding the corner where the driveway swirls around the fountain when I hear the unfamiliar sound of a buzz saw whirring loudly from inside the garage. Sometimes my father will hire a small team of carpenters to come make custom bars or archways to drape with flowers, to more intimately customize the bigger parties.

  When I try to open the side door to ask anyone if they’ve seen my father, I find that it’s locked. I pound on the door with my fist, but the sound of the saw is too loud to get through to whoever is working it.

  Accepting defeat, I go back inside and drop into the kitchen for a quick drink of water. Inside the refrigerator are five raw turkeys, prepped and rubbed with herbs and stuffed with handfuls of velvety-looking black truffles. Shouldn’t these be in the oven by now if they’re going to be ready for tonight? I hope Miranda didn’t lose it completely and blank out on the dinner, for her sake. After all the work she’s put into the party, she would probably never forgive herself.

  I briefly consider finding Miranda and offering a gentle reminder, but what do I know about cooking turkeys? That, and I couldn’t care less about the satisfaction of the club or the party in general, except for the fact that afterward I’ll hopefully know if it’s possible to free Margaret and my mother.

  By the time I’m finished with my shower, the halls are starting to become fragrant with the smell of roasting meat. It saddens me to think that Penelope would usually be hustling all throughout the house before such a party, preparing the guest rooms in case anybody drank too much or going over the music list for the hundredth time to make sure it was exactly how she wanted.

  I shake the thought from my head and concentrate on what I’ll say to my father when I finally see him while I roll my hair into curlers and put on makeup. I should just say hello or pretend to have a question about Penelope and study how he holds himself around me. If it was him, he won’t be able to hide his emotions. And what if that happens? I swallow hard, staring at my reflection, unblinking. Don’t get too ahead of yourself. It could have been someone else—how often has he ever come to check on you himself instead of sending someone?

  At least if it was Vanessa, she’s leaving in the morning. I’ll never have to see her again.

  When I open my closet, I choose the first dress I see, one of rich emerald color and cap sleeves of black lace. I grab my black tights from where they hang over the rack, not caring that there’s a run in them. Once I’ve finished pulling the dress over my head and have stepped into my shoes, I go to my window and peek outside. Sure enough, there are already five or six cars parked in the driveway, on the cobblestone that surrounds the fountain. Their spotless chrome bumpers glow orange from the sunset.

  What exactly do Penelope and my father have planned for the club tonight?

  In a minute I’m standing on the grand staircase, looking down over the herd of club members as they eat appetizers and make each other drinks at the bar. Still no sign of my father anywhere. I sigh in frustration as I make my way down the steps. The last thing I feel like doing right now is putting on a fake smile for these people through cocktail hour.

  “Darling,” Nancy Shaw nearly shouts when she notices me stepping off the bottom of the stairs. “Your dress is to die for!”

  “Thank you,” I say without smiling, walking past Nancy, past the group she’s with, all the way to the back of the room where the hallway to the study is. As I pass the appetizer table, I see Gregory Shaw talking in hushed tones with Howard, Penelope’s nurse.

  “Where’s my aunt if you’re here?” I ask, ignoring Gregory’s cold stare when he notices that I’m here. “Is my father sitting with her?”

  Howard lifts an eyebr
ow as he takes a drink, shooting Gregory a skeptical glance. “We thought maybe you could tell us.”

  “What?”

  “Are you unaware of the current circumstances?” Gregory asks. “How is that even possible? You live here.”

  “What circumstances?” I ask, my heart rate rising. I can see from where I stand that the light in my father’s study is off. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your father’s gone,” Gregory says simply, taking an uneasy sip of drink. “And Penelope, as well.”

  His words echo in my mind. Gone. I feel my breath escape me.

  “It’s been suspected that they’ve run off together,” Howard says. “Your father said he couldn’t handle the pressures of running the estate in coordination with the club anymore.”

  “What?” No. He wouldn’t do that. “Who said they suspected that? Are they both really gone?”

  “It was your lovely cook, Miranda.” Gregory looks over the table of appetizers but doesn’t take anything. “She told us shortly after we arrived this evening. I’m surprised you’re still here. Why wouldn’t they have taken you with them? Aren’t you under eighteen still?”

  I can hear my own pulse. “Dinner is being served!” I hear Vanessa’s voice call from the entrance of the dining room far behind me, which is followed by the sound of the crowd eagerly making their way in.

  My father and Penelope are gone. It could be so many different things, each and every one of them horrible, and this is it, I’ve run out of time, this is the end of everything.

  “Are you all right, Lucy?” Howard steps forward and takes me by the shoulder. “You look like you’re about to faint.”

  It’s a genuine struggle to breathe normally. I bring my hands to my face, as if hiding from the two old men will make me disappear. At least everybody else in the room is too busy making their way in to dinner to notice that I’m about to lose my shit.

  “Whoa.” Gregory quickly sets his martini glass down and reaches forward to help steady me. “You really didn’t know, did you?”