Anne Rice: Lasher

Well, these powers didn’t scare Mona. More and more Mona felt like a dancer just coming into a time of perfect strength. So she was only five feet one inch tall, and not likely to grow much taller. Her body was maturing with every passing day.

She liked being strong and unusual. She liked reading people’s thoughts and seeing things that other people couldn’t see. The fact that the man she’d seen was a ghost thrilled her. And she hadn’t really been surprised to hear it. If only she had gotten into the house in those days.

Well, those days were gone, weren’t they? And now was now. And now was really quite terrific. The disappearance of Rowan Mayfair had stirred up the family; people were revealing things. And here was this great house, empty except for Michael Curry, and for her.

The smell by the pool had dissipated somewhat, or she’d gotten used to it. But it was still there.

And the moment was all hers.

She proceeded to the back screen porch and checked one by one the locks of the many kitchen doors. If only one door had been forgotten…but no, that stiff-necked Henri had locked up the place like a fort. Well, no problem. Mona knew how to get in this house.

She crept around to the very back of the house, to the end of the old kitchen, which was now a bathroom, and she looked up at the bathroom window. Who would lock a window that high? And how would she get to it? Pull up one of the big plastic garbage cans which weighed almost nothing at all. She went down the alley, caught the can by its handle, and what do you know, it rolled. How efficient! And then she climbed on top of it, knees first, then feet crushing down the flexible black plastic lid, and she pried open the green shutters, and pushed at the sash.

Up it went, just that easy. It didn’t jam until there was an opening quite big enough for her to get in. She was going to get her dress dirty on the dusty sill, but it didn’t matter. She gave herself a boost with both hands, and slipped through the window, and all but tumbled to the carpeted floor.

Inside First Street! And it had been a slam dunk! For one second she stood there in the little bathroom, staring at the glimmering white porcelain of the old toilet and the marble top of the washstand, and remembering that last dream of Oncle Julien where he had taken her to this house and together they had climbed the stairs.

It was hazy now, as dreams always get, but she had written it in her computer diary under \WS\DREAMS\JULIEN as she did all the dreams in which he came to her. She could remember now the file, which she had reread many times, though not the dream.

Oncle Julien had been playing the Victrola, the one that Mona was supposed to have, and he had been dancing about, in his long quilted satin robe. He’d said that Michael was too good. Angels have their limits. “Pure goodness has rarely defeated me, you understand, Mona,” he had said with his charming French accent, speaking English for her as he always did in her dreams, though she spoke French perfectly, “but it is invariably a nuisance to everyone else but the person who is so perfectly good.”

Perfectly good. Mona had typed in “Perfectly Scrumptious, Perfectly Delectable, Perfectly a hunk!” Then she’d gone and made those entries in the file marked “Michael.”

“Thoughts on Michael Curry: he is even more attractive now that he has had the heart attack, like a great beast with a wounded paw, a knight with a broken limb, Lord Byron with his club foot.”

She had always found Michael “to die for,” as the expression went. She hadn’t needed her dreams to tell her, though they did embolden her somewhat, all that drama of Oncle Julien suggesting it to her, that Michael was a splendid conquest, and telling her how when Ancient Evelyn was only thirteen-Mona’s age-Oncle Julien had bedded her in the attic at First Street, and from that illicit union had been born poor Laura Lee, the mother of Gifford and Alicia. Oncle Julien had given Ancient Evelyn the Victrola then and said, “Take it out of the house before they come. Take it away and keep it…”

“…It was a mad scheme. I never believed in witchcraft, you must understand, Mona. But I had to try something. Mary Beth had started to burn my books even before the end. She burnt them on the lawn outside, as if I were a child without rights or dignity. The Victrola was a little voodoo, magic, a focus of my will.”

All that had been very clear and understandable when she dreamed it but even by the next day the “mad scheme” was largely lost. OK. The Victrola. Oncle Julien wants me to have it. Witchcraft, my favorite thing.

And look what had happened to the damned Victrola, so far.

He’d gone to all that trouble in 1914 to get it out of the house-assuming that sleeping with thirteen-year-old Ancient Evelyn had been trouble-and when Ancient Evelyn tried to pass on that Victrola to Mona, Gifford and Alicia had had a terrible quarrel. Oh, that was the worst of days.

Mona had never seen such a fight as happened then between Alicia and Gifford. “You’re not giving her that Victrola,” Gifford had screamed. She’d run at Alicia and slapped her over and over, and tried to push her out of the bedroom where she had taken the Victrola.

“You can’t do this, she’s my daughter, and Ancient Evelyn said it is to be hers!” Alicia had screamed.

They had fought all the time like that as girls, think nothing of it, Ancient Evelyn had said. She had remained in the parlor. “Gifford will not destroy the Victrola. The time will come when you may have the Victrola. No Mayfair would destroy Oncle Julien’s Victrola. As for the pearls, Gifford can keep them for now.”

Mona didn’t care about the pearls.

That had pretty much been Ancient Evelyn’s quota of speech for the next three or four weeks.

Gifford had been sick after that, sick for months. Strife exhausted Gifford, which was only logical. Uncle Ryan had had to take her to Destin, Florida, to rest at the beach house. Same thing had happened after Deirdre’s funeral; Aunt Gifford had been so sick that Ryan had taken her up to Destin. Aunt Gifford always fled to Destin, to the white beach and the clean water of the Gulf, to the peace and quiet of a little modern house with no cobwebs and no stories.

But the truly awful part for Mona was that Aunt Gifford had never given her the Victrola! When Mona had finally cornered her and demanded to know where it was, Aunt Gifford had said, “I took it up to First Street. I took the pearls there too. I put them back in a safe place. There’s where all Oncle Julien’s things belong, in that house, along with his memory.” And Alicia had screamed and they’d started fighting again.

In one of the dreams, Oncle Julien had said, dancing to the record on the Victrola: “The waltz is from La Traviata , my child, good music for a courtesan.” Julien danced, and the pinched little soprano voice sang on and on.

She had heard the melody so distinctly. Rare to be able to hum a song that you hear in a dream. Lovely scratchy sound to the Victrola. Ancient Evelyn had later recognized the song Mona was humming. It was from Verdi-Violetta’s waltz.

“That was Julien’s record,” she’d said.

“Yes, but how am I going to get the “Victrola?” Mona had asked in the dream.

“Can’t anyone in this family figure out anything for herself!” Oncle Julien had almost wept. “I’m so tired. Don’t you see? I’m getting weaker and weaker. Chérie , please wear a violet ribbon, I don’t care for pink ribbons, though it is very shocking with red hair. Wear violet for your Oncle Julien. I am so weary-”

“Why?” she’d asked. But he had already disappeared.

That had been last spring, that dream. She had bought some violet ribbon, but Alicia swore it was bad luck and took it all away. Mona’s bow tonight was pink, like her cotton and lace dress.