Bradley Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 01 Page 3

  What could she do? What could she say?

  There was nothing she could do—Aunt Caroline had been very clear on that point. And it was Aunt Caroline who had things to say, things she did not wish to go into over the phone.

  The secondary road gave way to one that was barely a lane and a half wide. Now Truth was in the foothills of the Taconic Range, and the choppy, glacier-carved terrain was a study in tall grass and scraggly bushes, scrub pine and an occasional stand of birch.

  She stopped in downtown Stormlakken to get gas; it was still the same place it had been twenty years ago, and ten, and five, though the five-and-dime was boarded up now and all that was left on Main Street was a bus shelter, an auto-parts store, a branch of the Mid-Hudson Bank, and a flyblown lunch counter. The rococo Victorian department store across from the gas station stood empty as it had for as long as Truth could remember.

  A dying town; a suitable counterpart to the bleak September day. Truth was glad to go on, heading up Main Street toward the lake. Or toward what locals called the lake, although there had been no lake there for nearly three-quarters of a century.

  A local water project in the early twenties—part of a plan to supply drinking water to New York City, outmoded when the Croton Reservoir was built—had drained the lake that had given the town its name and destroyed Stormlakken's tenuous claim to being a vacation spot. When the Thruway had gone in, the last of the vitality had drained from the town, until today it was nearly a ghost town, too far south of the tristate burgeoning of Schenectady/Albany/Troy and too far north of Pough-keepsie to be included in either area's urban sprawl.

  Caroline Jourdemayne's house was a few miles outside of town, on the shore of what had once been the lake. Most of the tidy Victorian cottages that had been built upon the lake shore were long since torn down; Aunt Caroline's little house sat in isolated splendor on the sparsely-wooded hillside looking out over the lush meadow that was the former lake bed.

  Truth pulled up and parked beside Aunt Caroline's old Honda. She got out of the car. A wet dank wind was blowing across the ridge, irritating without being either cold or hot. She shrugged her purse up onto her shoulder and trudged up the steps to the house.

  It took Aunt Caroline a long time to come to the door, and when she did, Truth was horrified at the changes that had already taken place in her. The black hair was limp and gray streaked, the skin pouched and yellowish, the woman herself suddenly, hideously, old.

  "Yes," Aunt Caroline said. The skull beneath the skin grinned out, blatantly visible. "I look terrible, don't I? The doctor has given me less than a month—and it was all I could do to twist that prediction out of him. They don't like giving out facts, doctors don't."

  "But when—but how?" Truth stammered. Caroline Jourdemayne turned away, walking as if her bones were made of glass. Truth followed her inside and closed the door.

  The living room had the faintly out-of-touch feeling of something outside of time; the furniture was what Aunt Caroline had purchased when she was a young woman thirty years before—sleek Danish Modern bookcases and tables and chairs with cushions in olive and orange and rust, a slice of the futuristic sixties carried forward through time intact as a fly in amber.

  "Cancer strikes in the best of families, I believe," Aunt Caroline said. She sat down gingerly on the sofa, wincing with the exertion. "You're looking well. How is the Institute?"

  "Oh, well enough," Truth said, not wanting to talk about work. She set down her purse and jacket on the low tile-topped cocktail table next to a nondescript cardboard box of the sort used for storing personal papers.

  "Can I get you anything from the kitchen?" Truth asked.

  "No, but do make yourself some lunch. I imagine you haven't been eating again—as usual."

  "Poor Dr. Vandemeyer is terribly embarrassed," Aunt Caroline said as Truth returned with her sandwich and tea, "but by the time I went to see him it was too late."

  Truth sat down opposite her aunt on a low-slung chair and set down her teacup carefully. Now that the first shock had passed, she felt more able to deal with this sudden catastrophe. There had never been much money in the Jourdemayne family, although there was more than none; Caroline Jourdemayne, the sensible twin, had worked as a librarian for many years at the Association Library in nearby Rock Creek, but it was Grandmother Jennet's legacy that had made affordable the house and the car.

  "What can I do?" Truth said simply.

  "I shall stay here as long as I can. A nurse will drive down from the HMO three times a week to look in on me, but I am told that fairly soon I shall have to have someone here all the time."

  "Do you want—" Truth began hesitantly.

  Aunt Caroline smiled, the skin stretching tight over sharp bones. "I shall engage a professional nurse, of course. I have spoken to Mr. Branwell at the realty agency and he feels he can sell the house very quickly once— once it becomes available; the proceeds from that should more than settle the debts of my estate. What is left comes to you, of course, though I'm afraid there won't be much."

  Truth shook her head slowly, trying to dispel the brisk, clinical efficiency with which Aunt Caroline tidied away her life. "I don't care about that," she said.

  "No. I don't imagine you do," Aunt Caroline said, studying her closely. "But since you are to be my executor—and that soon—perhaps we could go over a few things now."

  Truth felt the numb sense of impending doom that one feels in nightmares as Aunt Caroline went over the will and the other arrangements with her. Caroline Jourdemayne would be buried in the Amsterdam Rural Cemetery next to her twin. The coffin had already been purchased and the arrangements for the memorial service made with the local funeral home. Everything was ready.

  All Caroline Jourdemayne had to do now was die.

  "—but we could have handled all these matters by phone," Aunt Caroline went on inexorably. "There's something else."

  For the first time Aunt Caroline's iron will seemed to falter. "Please— If you'd get me a glass of water— My pills . . ."

  Truth fled to the kitchen for a glass of water, returning with it and the bottle of painkillers stickered all over with advisories: MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS—CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE—DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY WHILE TAKING THIS PRESCRIPTION. Seeing Aunt Caroline struggle with the cap, Truth opened it for her, and Aunt Caroline swallowed two of the pills. Truth frowned. She was certain the dosage was supposed to be one.

  It must be very bad already. And there was nothing she could do—no way to reach out to Caroline Jourdemayne. Truth felt a sudden panicky realization that there was no time left to forge close emotional ties to her aunt. Caroline would die and Truth would be left with the guilt of selfishness.

  "There. I shall be better presently, so Dr. Vandemeyer has been at pains to assure me. Now. There is another matter that we must discuss. The real reason you're here."

  Truth waited, but Aunt Caroline said nothing more. Truth let her gaze drift toward the window to the stark, Andrew Wyeth—esque landscape beyond. The sky was a palette of gray on gray that seemed to cocoon the house like wet spongy flesh.

  "We never did discuss . . . the past," Aunt Caroline said at last. "It's important for you to know that you're not the only one."

  The only one? Truth stared at her aunt, feeling a faint alarm tinged with uncomfortable pity. What Caroline Jourdemayne had said made no sense. "I guess—" Truth began.

  "I'm not quite senile yet—or drugged senseless," Aunt Caroline snapped, as if she could read Truth's mind. "But this is hard for me. For so many years I just tried to blot it all out—Thorne, and Katherine— but there are things you need to know about your family."

  "My family," Truth echoed. But Aunt Caroline was her only family, and Truth found it hard to imagine anything she needed to know about Aunt Caroline.

  "Your parents. Your father and mother. Thorne Blackburn most of all. You never had the chance to know him, and now . . ."

  Blackburn again! Truth struggled to keep her face sere
ne. "I don't think there's anything you really need to tell me about Thorne Blackburn, Aunt Caroline," Truth said carefully.

  "How quick you are to say that. Perhaps I should have— But there's no time now for vain regrets. You did not know him."

  And never wanted to! Truth cried out silently. There was an odd tone in Aunt Caroline's voice that frightened her.

  "There is a legacy. . . ." Aunt Caroline's voice trailed off, and her head drooped for a moment as the narcotic relief of the pills took hold.

  "Aunt Caroline?" Truth said anxiously.

  The old woman roused with an effort. "I tire so easily these days; I'm still not used to it. And I shall die before I am." She grimaced, impatient with her body's failing. "There is something I have been keeping for you, some of Thome's possessions. I know that you won't understand why; I'd hoped to wait until I could . . . But I have run out of time."

  / have run out of time. That calm statement of fact roused Truth's pity as no more dramatic statement could.

  "Time for what, Aunt Caroline?" Truth asked gently.

  "I didn't wish to give them to you until it wouldn't— I never wanted you to hate him," Aunt Caroline said, "I just couldn't bear . . . But there is no more time. These things cannot be left around for just anyone to stumble upon once I'm dead; no matter your feelings you'll have to take them now, and I pray that—" Once more Caroline Jourdemayne broke off in the middle of a sentence, as if there were still things that could not be said. "Call it Thome's legacy to you, and I wish you could understand what he ... They're in a box in the bedroom—go get them. And then we must talk about the others."

  What others? Truth wondered, rising to her feet. But Aunt Caroline's eyes were closed and Truth could not bear to trouble her further.

  Aunt Caroline's bedroom was at the back of the house. It, too, was filled with the falsely-modern furniture that seemed to belong to a vision of some happier tomorrow. The low dresser with its close-grained teak finish—who, in those more fortunate days, had ever heard of an endangered rain forest?—the chaste double bed with the bookcase headboard and bright cotton bedspread, even the pictures on the walls could have come straight out of—

  Out of 1969, Truth thought with a cold pang of realization. // is as though Time itself stopped here when Mother died.

  She did not want to think about that, to add one more crime to the list of Blackburn's villainies. She had never before considered how the house looked, but now the knowledge was inescapable. Nothing had changed here since Aunt Caroline's twin had died. It was as if Aunt Caroline and all the house were . . . waiting.

  For what?

  Truth walked over to the dresser. There was a photograph on it in a silver frame—a faded head-and-shoulders shot of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who was the image of Caroline Jourdemayne at twenty.

  But no one would keep a photo of herself on display in that way—and Caroline Jourdemayne had never in all her life worn her hair in that long, coltish tangle, or those gypsyish hoops of Mexican silver sparkling in her ears.

  Mexican . . . Blackburn had taken his little coven to Mexico the summer before they'd moved into Shadow's Gate—the summer before Kath-erine had died.

  This must be Katherine Jourdemayne.

  Truth had never seen a picture of her mother. If she had thought about it at all, she'd assumed there weren't any. She picked up the frame, wondering why Aunt Caroline had never shared this with her.

  As Truth moved the photo, another picture—loose, this time—slipped free from its concealment behind the frame and spiraled to the floor. Truth stooped down to pick it up.

  It was a Polaroid of as ancient a vintage as the framed photo, this time a full-figure shot of a slender, laughing, blond-haired man, his long golden hair spilling down his back as he lifted a dark-haired baby high above his head. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only bell-bottoms and some kind of bead necklace.

  Her father.

  She was entirely certain, even though there were few photos of Thorne Blackburn available today and certainly nothing like this candid shot. The one most people used was Blackburn's publicity photo that showed him in full mystic regalia.

  But there was no doubt. This was him. This casual, laughing stranger was her father.

  And the child must be—her.

  A fury so strong it could only be hatred possessed Truth Jourdemayne's consciousness with the force of an onrushing train. How dared the man in the picture seem so normal, as if he were any young father happily playing with his infant daughter? Didn't he know what he'd done—what he was going to do?

  Truth's skin crawled as though Blackburn were here with her in the room, and the fact that he had once held her tenderly in his arms seemed unforgivable. She set the photograph back on the dresser top gingerly, and set the framed picture of her mother on top of it as if she could hold down thoughts of Blackburn as easily.

  Why would Aunt Caroline keep a picture like this? Truth wondered.

  "/ never wanted you to hate him," Aunt Caroline had said. An ugly suspicion was growing in the back of Truth's mind, waiting patiently but with gathering momentum for the moment it could break through into her consciousness; the prerational certainty that psychics called clairsentience—the ability to know what you couldn't possibly know, a perception that baffled the restraints of space and time.

  Oh, knock it off! Truth told herself fiercely. Ten minutes more and she'd be seeing ghosts. Now wbere's that damned whatever-it-is?

  The box was on the bed.

  It was a white cardboard box—the old, heavy, glazed kind that good stores used to use—and stamped on the lid in silver was the logo of the now-defunct Lucky-Platt Department Store.

  Hesitantly, Truth raised the lid. The box was filled with crisp, white tissue paper—and with more. Truth wondered what grisly legacy Thorne Blackburn could have bequeathed her.

  No, not Thorne Blackburn.

  "Something 1 have been keeping for you; some of Thorne's possessions . . . These things cannot be left around for just anyone to stumble upon once I'm dead; no matter your feelings you'll have to take them now. . . . Call it Thorne's legacy to you. . . .

  "I never wanted you to hate him.

  "But there is no more time. ..."

  A ring, a necklace, and a book.

  She picked up the ring first. Its weight almost made Truth drop it again; it was far too large for her, big enough to cover her longest finger from knuckle to knuckle. It was set with a flat oval of lapis lazuli as big as a peach pit, deeply and intricately carved with some sort of design Truth couldn't quite make out. The stone was set in what must be a full Troy ounce of yellow gold, soft enough to be pure, cast in the shape of a coiled serpent that had red-enameled letters cut into its scaly flesh and tiny winking rubies for its eyes. There were other rubies studded about the ring's bezel—not cabochons, but whole, dark red spheres like beads of blood. The ring had a Greek inscription on the inside of the band, along with a date. Both were meaningless to Truth.

  The necklace was a magnificent thing: dark golden amber beads the size of walnuts, long enough to hang halfway down her torso. It's the one he's wearing in the picture ... A symbol dangled from it, a thick, heavy pendant of enameled gold in an eye-bewildering tangle of curves and circles and peculiar symbols. Both the ring and the necklace seemed theatrical, ceremonial, as though freighted with the weight of a vast store of purpose and intention.

  Blackburn's ring. Blackburn's necklace. His legacy to her—as preserved by Aunt Caroline. For her.

  Why had Aunt Caroline kept these things for her? Why had she brought her here to give them to her now?

  It wasn't what she'd expected from Aunt Caroline, no, not at all. . . .

  Truth realized with an unfolding sense of dismay that she'd never really known her aunt. Not what she'd expected. No. Not what a woman who blamed Thorne Blackburn for her sister's murder would have done. "/ never wanted you to hate him. ..." But what else could Aunt Caroline have expected?

  Coul
d she have expected anything else?

  Truth closed her hands tightly over the serpentine length of the necklace, half-hoping the force would crack the amber beads. All these years she'd just assumed that Aunt Caroline was as disgusted with Blackburn as Truth was, when the reality . . .

  She could see it so clearly now.

  Aunt Caroline and the house had been waiting since Katherine died in 1969. Frozen in time. Waiting—

  How could she ever have been so blind? It was so obvious. All you had to do was look. . . .

  Waiting.

  Waiting until Caroline could join Katherine in death.

  Waiting until Caroline could join Thorne Blackburn.

  Caroline Jourdemayne had loved Thorne Blackburn.

  It was as if the world had suddenly tilted 180 degrees. All the unexamined facts of Truth's past, carefully buried and unquestioned, rose up as if embodying another's will and assembled themselves to form an unwelcome and bitterly plausible history.

  Hadn't Caroline Jourdemayne also been at Shadow's Gate the night Katherine Jourdemayne had died and Blackburn had vanished? She had, and all these years Truth had never wondered why—but Caroline Jourdemayne couldn't have known how necessary her presence would be. She must simply have been—visiting.

  Her sister and her friend.

  Her lover!

  The past suddenly seemed real, here in this room—Truth could see them all together; Katherine, trusting and helplessly fond; Caroline, skeptical and seeing danger ahead, trying to be the practical one but powerless to avert the tragedy that claimed the two people she loved most. And Thorne Blackburn.

  Truth closed her eyes tightly. No—no—no . . . This isn't true. It can't be true!

  But it made so much sense. Why keep a photograph of a man you hated? Why save his things for his daughter if you didn't think his memory was worth preserving?

  Caroline had loved him.

  Truth sat down slowly on the bed. Her jaws ached with the force of the denial she would not give voice to. Everything she'd ever believed had been a lie, and all this, all the rest of Caroline Jourdemayne's life, had been spent behind the veil of withdrawn nunlike asceticism that Truth had tried to pierce in vain, spent as though Caroline Jourdemayne had dedicated herself to the chaste worship of Thorne Blackburn down through all the lonely years she had spent raising his daughter.