Элизабет Чандлер - The Back Door of Midnight

I stood next to her, shaking — after my spontaneous prayer I had felt the cold drain from the air. I paced back and forth in front of the clock. The air was warm now; only my skin felt cold and clammy.

“He’s left,” Aunt Iris said.

“I–I couldn’t see him.”

“I could. He’s gone.”

“You fought a lot with Uncle Will, didn’t you?”

“He was my older brother. Papa died when I was eighteen. William came back from the war and started acting as if he were my father too.”

“And my grandmother, your sister, she wasn’t around?”

“JoEllen was ten years older than William,” Aunt Iris explained. “She hated the Shore and moved out of the house at seventeen, moved to Philadelphia and married twice — came back here only once. She brought your mother when Joanna was a young teenager. Perhaps JoEllen foresaw that she would get cancer and her daughter would need us one day.” Closing her eyes, Iris rested her head against the high back of the chair. Her big hands hung heavily off its carved arms. She breathed slowly, deeply.

She was exhausted.

“Maybe we should get a little more sleep,” I said. “Come on, Aunt Iris, I’ll help you upstairs.”

Although she wouldn’t let me take her arm, she walked with me. Outside her bedroom door, she stopped, looking lost.

“This is your room. Would you like to go in?”

Her mouth worked, but she said nothing.

“Or maybe you would like to talk for a few minutes,” I suggested. “Are there some things you want to talk about?”

“I can’t.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

Her hands became agitated, her fingers plucking at her tattered nightgown. “I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you!”

“You can’t tell me. . about something from the past?”

“Past, future, it’s all one.”

“Sometimes it helps to talk.”

She shook her head. “There are secrets I can never tell.”

“Well, maybe not the secret part, but it might help to—”

“Never, never, never!”

“Okay.” I’d had enough. If she needed to talk, there was always tomorrow. “Try to get some sleep. G’night.” I headed down the hall to the entrance of Uncle Will’s room, aware that she was watching me. When I reached the door, I turned back and saw a suspicious look on her face.

“Why are you going in William’s room?”

“Because that is how I get to the other room, where my bed is, where you left the fan,” I added, hoping it would jog her memory.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re searching for something.”

“I’m going to bed, and I think you should too.”

“I can’t.”

I sighed and retraced my steps. Squeezing past her, I entered her bedroom and turned on a small lamp. She followed me into the room as far as her bureau, stopping suddenly, looking fearfully into the mirror that hung above it.

Her bed hadn’t been slept in. I pulled down the covers and plumped the pillows, trying to make it look inviting. She watched, facing me, then turned away to watch me in the mirror. She looked at me directly again and turned a second time to the mirror image, as if she thought she were seeing two different images and couldn’t decide which one was real. She was giving me the creeps.

“Your bed is ready,” I told her.

“You’re on his side.”

“What?”

“It’s the two of you against me,” she insisted, looking at me through the mirror.

“Who?” I asked, although I guessed that she meant Uncle Will and me.

“Don’t play dumb! You and William are trying to get rid of me. You want to push me out of my home. You want this place for yourselves.”

I walked across the room to her. “Aunt Iris, I have a home in Baltimore, and I’ll be going away to college in August. I’m not going to push you out of your home.”

“You think I’m crazy,” she said.

When I didn’t respond, she whirled around to face me directly. The anger in her eyes made me take a step back.

“You want to send me away.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” I replied. “I came for a visit.”

She turned back to my reflection in the mirror. “I don’t like what I see.” The way she peered into the glass made the mirror seem as deep as Oyster Creek. “I don’t like it at all.”

Her fingers curled around a hairbrush with a silver handle.

She lifted it slowly, her eyes locking on mine in the mirror.

Inch by inch, she pulled back her arm, as if fearing too quick a movement would give her away. The ornate back of the brush glimmered in the lamplight. She slammed it against the glass. The mirror shattered, fragments of our reflections dropping onto her bureau.

For a moment Aunt Iris seemed as stunned as I by what she had done. I grabbed the brush from her, then scooped up the matching hand mirror and retreated from her room.

Knowing she still had lamps and other potential weapons, I pulled the door closed behind me, pausing for a moment in the hall, listening for activity inside her room. Hearing none, I continued on to mine. I debated whether to shove a piece of furniture against my door. I assumed I could outrun her, but if I fell asleep and she came in. .

I could no longer deny it: If the right object were in her hand, Aunt Iris was capable of killing someone. It frightened me because I didn’t know what she saw, what she thought she saw when she looked at me, or the mirror, or the grandfather clock. I could only guess at what would set her off.

I considered calling the sheriff, but I knew that neither he nor anyone else had the power to whisk her away to a psychiatric hospital, not if she wasn’t willing to go. She’d have to do something clearly life-threatening, and even then, they’d probably just stick her in the hospital for a day or two and medicate her. Afterward, I’d be bringing her back here — spitting mad.

Mom would know how to handle this kind of thing, and she would be back in ten days. I just needed to hang on till then.

I didn’t bother to barricade the attic — there wasn’t much chance of me falling back asleep. Outside, the sky was growing lighter. At twenty minutes after five I crept to Iris’s room and quietly opened the door. She was sleeping soundly.

I returned to my own room and dozed for the next two hours, then was awakened suddenly by the loud creak of my door.

“Just me,” Aunt Iris called cheerfully.

I sat up quickly, hitting my head on the ceiling.

“The sun is up. It’s a lovely day.”

“Great,” I muttered, swinging my feet down to the floor, resting my arms on my knees, more tired now than when I had gone to bed. I watched her carry the broken mirror past my corner of the attic room, placing it with the cemetery of smashed television sets.

This had happened before; it would happen again.

ALWAYS CHRISTMAS WAS a world apart from Aunt Iris’s house, and as soon as I entered the shop, I felt better. Marcy and I got along well, maybe because I liked to work hard. About three o’clock that afternoon, when the temperature and humidity had soared high enough to keep vacationers inside whatever air-cooled place they’d found, the sleigh bells on the door stopped jingling. Marcy perched on a stool behind a counter, paging through wholesale catalogs, circling items. I picked up a spray bottle and attacked smudgy surfaces.

“Audrey mentioned meeting you two nights ago,” Marcy said. “I’d be willing to bet you had an interesting conversation.”

I glanced across the room at her and detected a smile.

“Yes. When Uncle Will invited me, he didn’t tell me I’d be living in a house of evil.”

She laughed. “That’s Audrey for you. My friends find her very strange and wonder why I keep her on.”