Let the Dark Flower Blossom (20 page)

“Where are we going?” she asked.

I told her that I was going to the movies.

She didn't want to go to the movies.

I remember just what she said.

“I don't want to watch other people doing things. I want to do something.”

And then I recalled Ro's lecture.

I told her that my old college roommate was giving a lecture.

She was wearing a black dress, for the party. She knelt on the sidewalk and put on her high-heel sandals. She was wearing her large diamond engagement ring.

We caught a taxi.

The lecture was about to start.

The house lights had already dimmed.

We slipped in—and sat in the back row just as Ro was taking the podium.

He was as charming as ever. He was wry and incisive.

He talked of mythology and television.

After the lecture there was a reception.

Susu grabbed my hand.

“Do you really know him?” she asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“
Him
,” she whispered.

She tilted her head. And lifted just slightly one bare shoulder.

And there was Ro standing by a table heaped up with copies of his books.

He had a pen in one hand and a drink in the other.

Susu reached for a chocolate wafer.

“I love these,” she said.

And she took a bite.

“Can I—may I meet him?” she asked.

It didn't occur to me—

What a stupid thing it would be—

To introduce Susu Zigouiller, green-eyed ingénue, to Roman Stone, lothario.

I did it. I took her arm. I maneuvered around the girls carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres; through the line of waiting fans clutching copies of Ro's books.

I brought Susu to Roman.

I saw him look at her.

He looked at her.

He took in her black dress, her young face, her diamond ring.

He seemed to take and take and not stop taking.

“This is—” I told him.

She gave him her hand.

Susu leaned close. He spoke into her ear.

The room was hot and the hum of the crowd was rising up into a less-than-literate roar. A woman tapped me on the shoulder and gave a reproving look. I had cut in line.

Aging academics, readers, critics, girls in slacks, their longsuffering boyfriends—

The crowd pushed.

Susu pushed her dark hair from her face—

There were other people waiting to talk to Roman Stone, author.

He had a stack of books to sign.

I should have taken Susu to the movies that evening.

We were about to leave; Ro got up from his table.

And he called out to me—

“Hold up a minute,” he said. “I wanted to give this to you—”

And he gave me a book.

Susu took it from me as we walked outside into the night.

“
Here Comes Everyone
,” she said.

She shrugged her bare shoulders and handed the book back to me.

And that—unless you count television—and the grinning ghostly faces in old photographs—is the last time that I saw Roman Stone.

Zigouiller said that whatever he told her now she mustn't hold it against him. Even though she had every right to. She mustn't. Did she understand?

What do I know about Roman Stone that no one else knows?

Zigouiller said, “Just listen.”

Eloise closed her eyes.

The story—it was dark and terrifying, as stories told on New Year's Eve in old houses should be—held us captivated around the fire. We had only just arrived that morning. And winter had followed. Snow fell upon the orchard; fell upon the frozen pond and the fields; was falling white upon the woods, which surrounded us. As the bare branches of trees scratched at the windows, we sat together that night, warm and drunk with good fortune. Roman took charge; it was his father's house. Ro stood before the grate, prodding the flames with an iron poker. Wren on the sofa finished off the bottle of Bordeaux. There was a blonde girl sitting beside her. I had taken up refuge near the bookshelves, the better to study the dusty leather-bound volumes. Eloise, wrapped in a blanket, sat upon the hearthstones. There were five of us. I, sitting a bit aside from the others, was lost in the ghost story and jarred strangely awake by its conclusion. It has been only with time; it is only now as I look back that I shudder in a different kind of horror.

The house stood lonely and remote. What possessed Roman's father to keep a house in faraway and desolate South Dakota?
Milton Stone had places like this all over the country; houses on unpaved roads; retreats where should the whim or will take him, should necessity strike; should the market bottom out or his latest wife scandalize him; he could hide out for a while. I had expected a rustic cabin; or a clapboard hunting lodge—and so was pleased to see the rambling Victorian farmhouse. The caretaker had arranged for everything; and upon our arrival we found the kitchen was well-stocked. Wood was stacked by the fireplace. Candles cast shadows from the wall sconces. There were four-poster beds and claw-footed bathtubs. The girls were charmed. Eloise remarked upon the faded floral wallpaper. I went from room to room in suspect—no, vigilant—exploration. Roman plundered the wine cellar where he discovered a store of aged whiskey. At night we sat before the fire. And it is difficult to recall—whose idea had it been to tell ghost stories?

I was nineteen years old.

This was the winter, the exact eve of 1980.

The future was a concept. The past was a theory.

Roman, Eloise, Wren, and I had driven from Iowa to South Dakota in the Range Rover.

We had picked up a skinny teenage girl, hitchhiking.

It was Eloise who made Ro pull over.

When we got to the house, we didn't know what to do with her. She didn't have any place to go. She didn't know anyone. And the house was big and warm. So she stayed with us.

We were spending the winter holiday together.

It was Wren who told the story about the possessed child. And El who pronounced that it gave her the shivers. Roman was restless. He was going to tell us a story. He didn't want to be outdone by Wren. He paced before the fire. He knew the house and the surrounding woods. He had spent time there when he was a child. He
hadn't been back in years. Still the old house had not gone completely out of favor; it was loaned for cross-country ski weekends, romantic trysts, and once even occupied by a famous horror novelist in search of solitary inspiration.

And nothing mysterious, let alone amiss, had happened.

“What if I were to tell you the story of two children?” Roman said.

“Is it true?” interrupted Wren.

Eloise said, “The point of a ghost story isn't truth, it's the scare.”

“Oh, so now there's a point?” said Wren.

“Don't start,” said El. “You'll ruin everything.”

Wren said, “It has to be true. You have to believe in something to be afraid of it.”

Said El, “Isn't it more awful to be in doubt, to be uncertain?”

Wren said, “Let's hear it, Ro. Let's hear the story.”

“Yes, yes,” said El. “Tell us your goddamnnedy story.”

Eloise could never hold her liquor.

Roman turned to the girl.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What do you think of ghost stories?” he said.

She was young.

She was pretty.

“I like stories,” she said.

“Leave her alone,” said Eloise.

“Ro,” said Wren. “Terrify me.”

I was paging through a volume of Poe.

Roman turned his back to us.

I closed the book.

Wren looked at me.

Upstairs—that four-poster bed awaited us.

“Tell the story,” I said.

Wren said that she doubted whether Roman knew any ghost stories—

He couldn't really give a girl a good scare could he?

Roman said, “It's the story of a brother and sister.”

A log shifted in the fire.

“What's so scary about that?” said Wren.

“It's a true haunting,” Roman said.

“How do you know?” said Wren.

“Because one of them told it to me,” he said.

“The brother or the sister?” asked Wren.

Ro had his back to us.

“Does it matter?” he said.

“Of course it does,” she said. “It matters. It makes a difference; what one person does or another does. Or else how would we know who's guilty and who's innocent?”

Roman threw another log on the fire.

In a halo of sparks.

“
Innocent
?” he said. “That's a big word.”

The girl laughed.

She covered her mouth with her hand.

She couldn't stop laughing.

Eloise said she was just now feeling awfully tired.

Too tired for more stories.

Said Wren, “Ro, I want to hear about the haunted children.”

Eloise put her hands, palms flat, out toward the fire.

Roman abruptly left the room.

Eloise rose from the warmth of the hearth and said good-night. Then, after a hesitation in the doorway, she followed Ro.

New Year's Day was lazy. There was sun that morning, but it soon disappeared into gray. The girls made pancakes for breakfast. They talked about sledding. Roman said that he remembered a cake that his mother had made when he was little, some sort of Swedish New Year's cake. And Eloise wanted to bake this cake for him. She and Wren were going to drive into town to see if they could find a grocery store. I told her that that was crazy. That nothing would be open. Ro gave them his keys. He said, let them go; let them have an adventure. Eloise decided that we couldn't have a real celebration without Swedish cake. And oranges. She wanted oranges. Oranges on New Year's Day in the snowy desolation of South Dakota. El and Wren asked the girl if she wanted to go with them—but she said that she saw ice skates out on the porch—and was it
O.K.
if she went down to the pond? Ro was drinking coffee with whiskey and cream. What about you, Shelly? Eloise asked. Up for an adventure? I had a headache. It wasn't a hangover; though the booze didn't help; the change in the weather was bringing on the first sideways throbs of a migraine. I wasn't up for an adventure, no. So Eloise and Wren set out in Ro's car in search of oranges and whatever it was that one needed to make Swedish cake. The girl slipped the ice skates over her shoulder and headed for the pond. Ro tried to get the ancient black-and-white television to pick up a football game, but the screen showed only static. A light snow began to fall. And Ro wanted to collect more firewood. He put on his boots and with an ax he started out that afternoon.

I stayed behind.

And then I was alone in the quiet of the house.

I must have fallen asleep for a while—not long—it couldn't have been more than half an hour. I woke suddenly with a start. It happens this way with headaches; they wake me from sleep, with a sort of ominous sense of disaster. I sat up, sweating, trembling. I was
alone. No one had returned to the house. I went to the window. The snow was coming down. I could barely see Ro's tracks, going away from the house. I had a terrible feeling. I put on my coat—

It was already too late when I found them, Ro and the girl in the snow.

She was white and naked. And he was covered in her blood.

Zigouiller sat on the bed.

Eloise stood at the window.