“True love is like a ghost: Everyone talks of it, but few have met it face to face.”
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
***
"I should warn you about my family. You may be in for a bit of a shock."
They were driving with the top down. It was damn hot. Devanie fixed a scarf around her head to keep her hair from blowing. "You'll have to take them as they come,” she continued. “And you need to be on your best behavior."
Charles winked. "Yes, ma'am. Shall I keep after class and write it out a hundred times on the board?"
He kissed the diamond ring on her finger, guiding the car with one hand. Devanie said you couldn't drive a big car on these old back roads, so close to the swamp, but the Coupe was taking it just fine. The twisted live oak branches formed a canopy over their heads. They were coming up on Caddo Lake, the state border, and the town of Uncertain. The boggy terrain looked like a picture in a book, though which book Charles couldn't quite say. One with a bad ending, maybe.
The June humidity was inhuman, but Devanie still looked like a million bucks. Somehow she never looked less than her best. Is this really happening, Charles thought? Is this woman really marrying me? Can life be this good?
Everything had turned up roses since meeting Devanie: The company sold right at the same time his tax problems went away. It was like nothing could ever go wrong with her around. She was his good luck charm. He thought of this summer trip to meet the family as something of a victory lap, a way to close the books on his old life once and for all and get on with the new.
"Mother and Father's approval means everything for me,” Devanie continued, reapplying
her lip gloss and slipping on her Jackie glasses. “We really shouldn't have gotten engaged without you meeting them, and now..."
"Now it won't matter a thing," Charles said. "I'm going to love them. They're going to love me. We'll all love each other, and you'll be the happiest bride in the history of the county. Tell me I'm right."
"Of course you're right."
"Well, there's no arguing with a lady. Are we far?" The road turned a corner into a particularly boggy and desolate stretch.
"Not far at all. We ought to be able to see the house soon."
"Did you really grow up out here?"
"All Darcies grow up here. This land has been in our family since before the sun shined. I want our own children to grow up here someday. In fact, they've just got to."
"Of course they will," Charles said. "I'll build us a house here myself. I'm sure your pop will lease us the land. Or heck, I'll buy it off him outright. He won't mind selling us a piece once I'm family, right?"
Before she could answer, they rounded another bend, and a big old house appeared, like something half-swimming in the swamp. Charles blinked. The place didn't look anything like he'd expected. It was big enough and obviously old enough, but it looked...not rundown, exactly. Tired, perhaps. Like a thing that had outlived its natural span.
As he cruised to a stop Charles saw a tall, well-dressed man at the foot of the drive, apparently waiting for them. He was blond and gray-eyed and much too young to be Devanie's father. She leapt from the still-moving car, threw her arms around the man’s neck and cried, "Uncle Ruthven! I didn't think you were coming."
He returned her hug a bit stiffly. "I wouldn't miss my favorite niece's wedding."
"Not a wedding quite yet," Charles said, getting out of the car. "Just an engagement party, by way of your big family reunion. But I'm mighty pleased to meet you either way. Put her there."
Ruthven looked at Charles' hand for a moment longer than most men would before sharking it. His palm felt slightly damp, and it tickled. He did not smile, and when Charles looked into Ruthven's watery eyes he felt his own smile flicker.
"Uncle Ruthven spends most of his time in Europe," Devanie said. "None of us have seen him in ages."
"Pleased to meet you," Charles said again. “Couldn't be more pleased."
“I’m sure I am as well. How did you find the drive?”
“It was exactly as long as it needed to be, and then it stopped.”
Ruthven didn’t laugh. He had the look of a person whose entire face might break if he chuckled. Charles gathered the bags and all three of them went into the old, dark house, where Devanie tossed her hands in the air and actually jumped for joy as she cried "I'm home!"
The family manor was every bit as brooding a thing on the inside as the out. It was tidy enough, but seemed oddly shaped. There were more portraits of unidentifiable people in antiquated dress than the walls could hold, and Charles detected a sour smell, like a coat liberated from the closet after too many years of disuse.
A plump woman with wiry hair and a spotted apron ran in from the kitchen and hugged and kissed Devanie to bits, and the two women cooed over each other like turtledoves for a full minute before Devanie introduced Charles to her mother. Mrs. Darcie looked so warm and pleasant that Charles couldn‘t think of anything except an apple pie cooling on a windowsill.
"Just look at you," Mrs. Darcie said, beaming. "What a man Devanie found."
"Isn't he?" Devanie said, clutching his arm. Charles stroked his mustache.
"You have a beautiful home, Mrs. Darcie," he said.
Which was true enough—the house and the grounds were certainly beautiful, albeit in a strange way. Like those museum paintings he never understood that made him faintly nervous.
"Devanie talks about almost nothing except all of you. If I didn't drive her on down here for this big family reunion she'd probably have burst. I've surely been looking forward to it too."
In came another tall, thin man, like Ruthven but much older, with a high forehead and steely hair. He walked with a cane, wore dark glasses, and Mrs. Darcie guided him and directed his hand to Charles. This, of course, was Mr. Darcie. Devanie had warned him to accommodate her father's blindness but not to mention it directly, and Charles was sure to look him in the eyes as they were introduced, even though it didn't matter.
"A pleasure," was all Mr. Darcie said. He looked as if he’d been born with his minister’s collar around his neck.
"We've got your room all ready," Mrs. Darcie said as they ambled up the creaking staircase, Charles carrying all the bags at once. "And you're in time for dinner. Nothing puts meat on your bones like genuine home cooking."
"Darn tootin', ma'am," Charles said. He was having trouble getting all the bags up the narrow stairs. Blank-eyed cupids decorated the banisters, and for some reason he found their gaze distracting as he juggled suitcases, so much that he almost walked right into the woman on the landing.
Without thinking, he steadied himself by grabbing her elbow. The feeling of soft skin registered at the exact moment as the flowery scent of her perfume. His eye trailed up the smooth, pale arm and across the rounded shoulder to a mane of dark hair and a pair of scarlet lips. The bags all dropped out of his hands with a thump.
"Are you another long-lost cousin who washed up for the reunion?" said the woman. "Or are you with the help?"
"Um?" was all Charles said. He thought he might actually be blushing. A hand on his shoulder brought him back to his senses. Devanie wrapped herself around him in a protective way.
"This is my sister, Lorelei," she said. "Lorelei, this is Charles. My fiance." She put a lot of emphasis on the word.
"Charmed," said Lorelei.
Charles' tongue was working again and this seemed like it might be a good time to say something. "Devanie's told me all about you.”
"I haven't heard a thing about you. How many engagements is this now, Devi? Three?"
"Charles knows all about that," Devanie said. "We're very happy, and we're going to be married in the fall."
"Right," Charles said, without knowing why. The scent of Lorelei’s perfumed seemed to have struck him dumb for a second.
"I guess you'll be staying for dinner," the sister said. “If you last that long."
The bedroom, when he and Devanie got there (somewhere along the way they'd lost Mrs. Darcie back to the kitchen), was at least cozy. The windows were made of pebbled glass with oaks growing all around, so it looked like late twilight instead of early afternoon. But the bed was comfortable, and the strange odor of the place didn't seem strong here. He shut the door. "You never told you had a sister?"
"She's the black sheep.”
"She seems nice enough."
"That's what they always say." Devanie wrung her hands. "Are you all right? I know it's a lot to take in at once."
"Everybody seems nice. Strange, but nice."
"If I'd known Uncle Ruthven would be here I'd have warned you about him. He's a very dear man, but he hasn't been the same since his wife died, and long trips are bad for his health."
She went over to the window, though she couldn't possibly see anything out of it. "Tomorrow everyone else is coming. Aunts and uncles and counins-in-law I haven't seen since I was a girl."
Charles slid his arms around her from behind. "I'm sure we'll all get along."
"It's not that I'm worried about. With the whole family here I want to seem...proper. Like I've really done something with myself. I don't want to just be the flighty little girl they all remember."
"Honey, you're going to be the prettiest bride anyone has ever seen. Not a one of those long-lost who-hows will go home thinking anything but that your mama raised a winner."
Devanie kissed him and his blood simmered. He glanced at the closed door. "Are they really putting us in the same room? You said they were old-fashioned."
"Old-fashioned is one thing, but they know what‘s what. Anyway, it doesn't matter because—"
"We're waiting," he said. "Don't think I'd forget it. I just didn't want your folks to get the wrong idea."
She patted him playfully on the behind. "Don’t you to get it either."
Dinner came. The dining room was long and narrow. The heads of animals, mostly boars and bucks, peered from the walls. Mr. Darcie sat at the head of the table, with a little black Bible as part of his settings. Ruthven sat on his right. Charles found himself seated between the two sisters. Wine was open, but only Lorelei was drinking.
Mrs. Darcie bustled around and served. She'd made enough for twice as many people: meat pies, meaty stews, sandwiches with thick slices of marbled cold cuts, and little meat-filled dumplings that all but popped in his mouth. "Don't be afraid to eat up," Mrs. Darcie said, piling seconds onto his plate. "It's been so long since I had a big, strong young man to feed."
"It's wonderful.” He held up a dumpling on the end of his fork. “What's in these anyhow?"
"If I told you, I'm afraid you wouldn't eat another bite.”.
Ruthven ate nothing. and refused wine too, regarding Charles over an empty plate. "I do love a wedding," he said. "I remember my own quite vividly."
"Which one?" said Lorelei. Devanie gave her sister a dirty look, but Ruthven shrugged.
"My brother has had poor luck in the matrimonial vein," Mr. Darcie said. "How many has it been, Ruthven?"
"Four," said Ruthven, sounding bored. "I'm a widower every time, I'm afraid."
"He's a lady killer," said Lorelei. Devanie tried to kick her under the table and hit Charles instead. He jumped, then coughed to hide it.
"I'm terribly sorry to hear that," he said.
"But it's not as bad as Devi has it," Lorelei continued. "She never even gets to the altar. I think it's very sporting of Charles to help give her another go. Maybe third time will be the charm. Although charms have never been your specialty, have they?"
"That's enough," Mr. Darcie said.
That's all he said, but the words carried such barely restrained anger that the table went utterly quiet. Devanie bit her lip; Mrs. Darcie flinched; Lorelei, who a moment ago looked like a cat who had eaten a whole nest of canaries, now paled and sat up straight. After a minute she excused herself, taking the wine with her. Dinner went on, but the sudden manifestation of Mr. Darcie’s anger had sucked all of the air out of the room. Under the table, Devanie held Charles’ hand, but the tightly wound fingers gave him the impression that the gesture was more possessive than reassuring.
Ruthven invited Charles for a walk in the woods after dinner. The thought of being alone with him on those dark, murky paths gave Charles the willies, but Devanie seemed so pleased he didn't dare say no. Day was coming into night, and fireflies bobbed over the still water. Charles breathed in the green, mulchy smell of everything (noting but ignoring the underlying pungency of decay). It’s a beautiful place, he told himself. Perfect for raising a family someday. It would just take a little getting used to.
Ruthven said nothing for a while, and he was so somber that to speak would have seemed an intrusion, so Charles waited for him to break the ice. As they tramped along a trail all but reclaimed by tall grass, buoyed by a chorus of croaking frogs and other, less identifiable sounds, Ruthven indicated a marker up ahead.
"Not far beyond that is the old family mausoleum. Almost every Darcie who's died since coming to this country is interred there. My wife is there, too. I visit her every time I come."
Charles nearly asked "Which wife?" but bit his tongue at the last minute. Instead he said, "You must have loved her very much."
"Maybe I did. Or maybe I'm just set in my ways."
He startled Charles by putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm pleased you're here. This family needs someone like you. We've grown thin over the years. We may look strong and numerous, but there's rot underneath it all. We need fresh blood."
"I...don't know what to say. I'm honored, really. I just want to be there for Devanie."
"Of course," Ruthven said, and Charles thought he detected the flicker of a smirk. "Your feelings do you credit. Do you think you can make it back to the house on your own? I‘d like to be alone for a while."
"Sure thing," Charles said, but as soon as he did a noise stirred out in the tall grass. The flickering, half-glimpsed silhouette of something slipping between the trunks of the primeval trees made his knees knock for a second. A bear? An alligator? Or maybe he'd imagined it?
Back at the house, everyone had turned in early. Charles crept in as quietly as he could, trying to remember his way in the dark. Enough moonlight came in that he could make out the huge oil painting at the head of the stairs. It showed a taciturn man who looked startlingly like Mr. Darcie. Charles understood it to be the family patriarch, who built Dark Oaks after the family was run out of Massachusetts in at the start of the 18th century. He tried not to imagine the fading, painted eyes staring at him as he rounded the corner into the hall.
Devanie was up waiting for him. He kicked off his shoes, threw his suspenders over the back of a chair, and searched a suitcase for his pajamas. “I tell you, sugar dumpling, it’s a whole other world out here. That swamp is just about prehistoric. I don’t know how—”
Devanie threw the covers aside. She wore a lacey pink negligee with a bow tied right between her breasts. Crawling to the edge of the bed on all fours, she beckoned him with one finger. Charles gulped.
“Darling…I don’t know what to…”
“Kiss me.”
“We’re supposed to wait.”
“And we did. Now kiss me.”
He couldn’t say no. Her lips trembled against his. She popped the buttons on his dress shirt and threw it aside before pulling him down to the mattress. He lost his balance and flopped hard. She pounced and knocked his wind out for a second. By the time he’d recovered she was busy undoing his trousers. She kissed him over and over, speaking in half-sentences between each:
“It’s okay, isn’t it? I know we wanted to wait, but I just can’t. And now that you’ve met everyone it’s basically official already, right?”
“Sure. Of course. Yes.” She stripped him in record time (most of him, anyway—he was still wearing his undershirt). Climbing on top, she loosed the little bow on her nightwear and let if fall open, pushing his hands underneath. When his fingers made contact with the hot skin of her small breasts she arched her head back. He circled her tiny, perky nipples with his thumbs and watched as her throat quivered around gasps. Then she dived back down onto him with a kiss that nearly crushed him into the mattress, then another on the neck that was more of a bite, and then again on the shoulder. Charles was having trouble catching his breath.
Her hands wandered lower. Charles gulped and sat up when she grabbed his prick in a full-throttled grip. He was already as hard as hickory. She sized him up much the same way she’d inspected the rock on her ring after he’d given it to her, and now that he thought about the two things had something in common by way of being marital offerings. She encircled him with two fingers and started to stroke.
Her other hand combed through his hair, petted his cheeks and chin, and encouraged him to kiss and lick her fingertips. She purred when his hands left their berth and started a trip along the lines of her body. She was a thin thing, and sometimes seemed frail, but now he found her sinewy and strong. The negligee billowed around her, inviting his hands onto it and then shortly under it, its silkiness matching the feeling of her naked body underneath.
She pressed her breasts to his face, rubbing them against the stubble on his unshaved chin. He kissed one and squeezed her little backside to encourage her. She kept stroking him all the while. “Is that good?” she said, whispering against her lips. In reply he tried to pull her closer but she nudged him away, teasing. “Not yet. There’s something I want to try first.”
“Baby—”
“No buts.”
She crawled down the front of him, her long hair trailing over his body. He squirmed like a little kid. My God, everything on her feels good, he thought. He was already about to blow his top. He tried to warn her again but all he could manage was a gasp when her hot, wet tongue slither along the length of him. The effect was like a lightning strike: He sat straight up and cried out with nerves tingling. She really knows what she’s doing, he thought. Maybe a little too much, because Charles already felt his big finish coming on strong. If she didn’t slow it down…
“Baby, wait,” he said.
“We’ve waited long enough.” She was still stroking him. He gasped.
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Are you ready for me?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then here goes!”
They almost managed it. Another second or two and they’d have been consummated with a capital C. As it stood (or didn’t), all they ended up with was a small mess and a moment of profound confusion for one of them.
As soon as Charles regained his composure he blushed with shame. Devanie looked for all the world like she didn’t know what to do with herself. Charles flopped back against pillow and put his hand over his face. “Well hell,” he said. “How’s that for a big night?”
Devanie slipped into his arms, surprising him a bit. “Doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t matter to me, then. I think it’s kind of cute, actually.”
“Oh, that makes me feel real damn better.”
“You’ll have the rest of our lives to make it up to me. For now I’m just happy knowing you’re really mine.” She snuggled up to him, and his heart melted.
“I am at that.”
They talked for a bit longer. Devanie fell asleep first, though she was usually a night person, almost to the point of insomnia. Charles felt jumpy; all these noises in a strange house like this, to say nothing of the positively primeval things going on out in that swamp. He couldn’t imagine getting a wink of sleep in a place like this. But no sooner did he think it than his eyelids began to droop…
He didn’t remember getting out of bed, but suddenly he was fully dressed (he even had his watch and loafers) and standing at the head of the stairs. It was still the middle of the night, and the house should have been black as the ace of spades, but a curious light came from below. It was a green light, like marsh gas, noxious and unwholesome.
Somewhere in the house, someone was singing. An old rocking chair at the end of the hall was shaking, as if someone had just stood up from it, and a shadow moved on the stairs, as if maybe one of the little cupids had turned its head. The hairs on the back of Charles' neck stood up. He looked back toward the bedroom and wondered if Devanie was still asleep. Something about all this just didn't feel right…
But then he realized he was dreaming. Obviously that was why he didn't remember getting out of bed. As soon as he accepted this he cheered right up and sauntered downstairs, curious to see what his sleeping mind had in store for him. The green light came from the kitchen. He tiptoed in. A smell like death (when was the last time he'd smelled something so vividly in a dream?) polluted the air, and an enormous black cauldron sat on of the floor. Whatever was inside seemed to be the source of the stench and unnatural illumination both.
Three women stirred the pot, one very young and very fair, the other two much older. The green-white glow of the crackling logs lit up their faces. "We expected you sooner," said the young woman.
"That's the problem with young men today. They've no respect for a decent timetable," said the oldest, a woman so hunched and crooked she could barely stand up.
“No respect for anything, although that’s nothing new,” said the third.
Charles scratched his head. "Didn’t know I was expected. What's cooking?"
"Trouble," said the oldest woman, looking right at him. "That's what men like you do: bring trouble.”
“Although I suppose we're the ones who stir it up, so we've all got our share of the blame,” said one of the others. “Do you think it’s almost done?” Her partners looked uncertain. “Young man! Be helpful and tell us how this tastes.” She held out a wooden spoon, sloshing with the simmering gruel. Charles held up his hands.
“I had a big dinner,” he said. “I’ll pass if it’s all the same.”
“It’s not all the same,” said the young woman. “All of this is for you.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“You wanted it,” said the crone with the spoon. She’d all but backed Charles into a corner. The smell of the concoction made him dizzy. “We’ve been brewing trouble entirely on your account, so the least you can do is taste it.”
Charles wanted to run away. He almost did, but when he turned he discovered Lorelei behind him. She laid a hand on his elbow. "Leave Charles alone," she said.
"Don't get smart with us," said one of the women. "Comes sticking his nose in family affairs and thinks nothing of it. I've no sympathy for him at all."
"Don't mind them," Lorelei said. "When you get to be their age there's no one left to chide you on your manners. These are my great, great, great aunts: Morgan, Hecate, and Jezibaba."
"Um, charmed?" Charles said, which they all seemed to find funny. He decided he was just never going to figure this family out.
Lorelei's fingers tightened a bit on his arm. "Why don't you join me in the garden?" she said, guiding him out the back door. He let her push him outside, relieved. “Really, don’t mind them. They’re actually very sweet, in their way.”
“What way is that?”
“Old.”
The yard was full of dark plants, crawling vines of blues and purples and greens so deep they were almost black. A heady smell clung to everything, and Charles realized it was the same scent as Lorelei's perfume.
She trailed her fingers along the petals of a purple flower on a particularly thorny bush. Charles couldn't take his eyes off her. She wore a highly revealing black dress. Around her neck hung something that looked like a silver bird's foot, which was actually very fetching. "Do you like my garden? Some of these plants I've tended since Devi and I were just little girls."
"It's very pretty," Charles said. He looked back over his shoulder toward the kitchen. "Who were those women, really?"
"I told you: very old relatives. Some of the oldest in our family."
"I thought everyone was coming tomorrow?"
"Most are, but it’s their way to always arrive first. Really, they're with us all the time. But you shouldn't worry too much about them. After all, you're only dreaming."
"That's right!" Charles said, and laughed. "I forgot."
“Since you're dreaming, there's no reason you can't come a little closer." She slipped her fingers into his hand and drew him in. The garden closed around them like a steamy jungle. The sky overhead was black, with no moon and no stars, but Charles had no trouble seeing anyway. He supposed that was a thing about dreams. His eyes were to Lorelei’s neckline. She tossed her hair back, perhaps to afford him an even better view.
"Are you looking forward to joining the family?" she said.
"Very much."
"But you find us strange."
"A little." The scent of night flowers was making him light-headed, as if he'd had a lot to drink. "But who isn't?"
"Devi isn't. Devi is the most normal, wholesome girl in the whole wide world. That's how she plays it, anyway."
"Let's not talk about her if that's all right? I don't think she'd like us talking about her while she's not around."
"It's your dream. The least I can do is accomodate."
She began to sing, very softly, and Charles recognized it as the same song that had brought him downstairs in the first place:
"Lie you there, dove Isabel,
And all my sorrows lie with thee;
Till Kemp Owyne come over the sea,
And borrow you with kisses three."
She broke off and leaned in as close to him as she could without their lips touching. "Everything in my garden is poisonous," she said.
"Does that include you?"
"Try me and see."
"We could get into trouble."
"But none of this is real. When it's over you'll wake up. Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice, did you know that? The longest day of the year. In the old days they thought ghosts and spirits were most numerous on that day, and witches held commune with their gods.”
“That’s…very interesting.”
“It‘s an important time for the family. Remember that when you wake up. Now kiss me.”
“I—”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe it would help to make you more comfortable?” She brought him to a spot where the vines and flowers formed a kind of bed. He was afraid of crushing them but she insisted he lay down anyway, and he found them a resilient but welcoming cushion. They even seemed to shift and stir to make more room for him.
Lorelei lay down with him and they canoodled in each other’s arms for a while. She was utterly different from her sister: plump and curvy, generously portioned in all the right places, not at all like Devanie’s thin, demanding strength. Her lips tasted like honeysuckle and lavender. The more they kissed, the more powerful the scent of flowers became, and the less Charles worried about anything. What a beautiful night this was; what a beautiful garden; and what a beautiful girl.
Her breasts strained against the dress, so she took it off. He couldn’t help but imagine picking ripe fruit straight off a tree when he put his hands on them. Where Devanie had been forceful and in charge, Lorelei was completely pliant. She swooned every time he touched or kissed her, and anything he wanted to do next she was always just a half step ahead and offering it to him. He kissed his way along the curves of her well-turned legs and thighs, tickling them with his mustache. Her giggle was completely non-girlish. It might have been the most mature, womanly sound he’d ever heard someone make.
“Isn’t this the perfect night?" she said. “Aren’t the moon and the stars lovely? They’re singing for you.”
“I hear them,” Charles said, and he could. It was a strange song, and very plaintive, but somehow it made him wild with desire.
“Do you know what makes my garden grow?” Lorelei said. “The thing it really needs is the seed of men like you. Let’s not keep it waiting any longer.”
He didn’t need a second invitation. He spread her legs and slid right in, their bodies coming together in a hot embrace. The whole garden seemed to sigh in relief, every blossom and leaf. Her soft, plump flesh yielded to his. Yes, he thought, that is the secret of making a garden grow. And what do you find in gardens? The fruit you’re not allowed, isn’t that the way the story goes?
Her body shone with sweat under the moonlight. She licked the perspiration off his and he shivered. She began twisting and howling like a cat in heat. By God, what a woman. She might even be too much for him, but he kept at it anyway. The least he could do was give her his very best.
They kept going like that for a long time, until Charles was so sore, wore out, breathless, and bit and scratched to bits that he just couldn’t go on. When the big moment came he imagined every ounce of himself leaving his body going into her and mixing all together.He practically crashed, then, back down among the flowers. Even though he was completely beat, he felt at peace. This must have been the way people felt in the old days, the Golden Days, when there were no troubles and every man had his woman and was happy. He realized that he’d often imagined married life just that very way.
Lorelei sang to him while he drifted into a perfect, dreamless slumber:
“Oh come list awhile my bonny child,
Lay your head low on my knee,
A dreadful tale I'll tell to you
Concerning a fair lady…”
There was more, but he didn’t hear it. Instead, forgetting that he was already asleep in the first place, he slept.
***
Charles woke up with the dawn, but it seemed Devanie had beaten him to it, as her side of the bed was empty. He yawned, stretched, did 25 pushups and came back up feeling relaxed. It seemed a night in this old house had done him some good after all. He no longer found it quite so disquieting. In fact, he wondered why he ever had. This place had real character. Not like those city houses.
He combed his mustache in the bureau mirror, whistling to himself. The mirror was cracked and seemed to split his face in two. Just twice as much of me to go around, he thought. This put him in mind of last night's dream, and a sly smile spread across his face. He'd have to be careful not to let his eye linger on Lorelei today.
He finished dressing and brushing Brillo into his hair. Mrs. Darcie was waiting at the bottom of the stairs to call him to breakfast, but he met her there before she could and kissed her on the cheek. "I slept like the dead," he said.
She beamed. "It's so nice to have a young man about the house." Before he could ask where Devanie was she appeared on the stairs behind him, twining her arms around him in a morning embrace.
"Hey, kid," he said. "Where'd you run off to?"
"Family business. I hope you didn't..."
And then she stopped. Devanie peered at him and narrowed her eyes in a way that put Charles alarmingly in mind of a snake. She seemed to be scrutinizing him on a level he couldn't conceive. Then, without warning, she reared back and slapped him so hard he nearly lost his teeth. Before the sting had even really set in she pushed him away and ran up the stairs.
By the time Charles recovered from the smack and went (somewhat unsteadily) after her, she'd burst into Lorelei's room, and the two were at each other with nails bared. They went down to the bed in a squawling heap. Devanie tried to rake Lorelei’s face, but her sister held her wrists firm, and instead they tumbled onto the floor, snarling and spitting.
“Tramp!”
“You’re one to talk!”
“I’ll take your eyes out, you whore!”
Charles separated them (somewhat reluctantly; you don’t see a show like that every day…). Devanie kicked and spit as he hauled her up. Lorelei's hair was tangled from the brawl, and she glared thunder. Mrs. Darcie stood in the doorway, gaping. "What in the world?" she said.
“You cheap little tart,” Devanie said. Charles had never heard her talk this way. “The next time you so much as look at a man I’ll curse your belly so that all you’ll ever give birth to are snakes. Snakes and pointed stones!”
"Come over here and say that!"
"Oh no you don't," said Charles, standing between the two of them. Devanie slapped him again, though not as hard.
"You're just as bad," she said. Charles rubbed his jaw. To her mother Devanie said, "She did it again!"
Mrs. Darcie's expression turned dark. "Lorelei, you promised."
Lorelei stuck her chin out. "It's not fair to him. She should find a husband who really loves her."
"Hey now!" Charles said. "I love Dev as much as—"
"You just think you do," Lorelei said. "She always resorts to a charm."
"You should have minded your own business," said Mrs. Darcie. "At this rate your sister will never be married. This family needs fresh blood."
"Maybe I'll marry him then," Lorelei said. "I've just as much a right as anyone." She grabbed Charles' hand. He shook her off, alarmed.
"What‘s this all about?" he said.
"You were with Lorelei last night," Devanie said. "Don't deny it: I can smell her all over you."
Charles scratched his head. "But...that was just a dream?"
Awkward silence ensued. Mrs. Darcie shook her head. Devanie fumed. Lorelei smirked. Charles felt a headache coming on.
"Wasn't it?"
Mrs. Darcie sighed. "Well, nothing to be done now. Devanie, if you don't want him anymore I think I can fit him in the oven. He'd make a decent roast for dinner tonight."
"Excuse me?!"
"Nobody's eating my fiance," said Devanie.
"He's not yours anymore," said Lorelei.
"I could get 30 good pies out of him if nobody minds organ meat," said Mrs. Darcie.
Charles decided he was still dreaming. It was the only explanation that didn’t make him feel faint. Mr. Darcie had appeared from somewhere, and now he patted Charles on the shoulder in a consoling way.
"I'm sorry, my boy," he said. "I like you well enough. But as much as I’d like to help you out of this situation, I'm afraid you're in quite over your head." He took off his dark glasses then. The eyes behind them glowed like red hot coals.
Before Charles could scream, a burst of thunder rattled the house. Mrs. Darcie jumped up and down with a giddy look. "They're here!" she cried and raced down the stairs. Charles, uncertain what possessed him, went to the window.
Outside it was a bleak, gray summer day (the solstice, he remembered, the longest day of the year, when witches went abroad…), and the wind blew the brittle corpses of leaves in a swirling mess across the yard. In the dark clouds Charles saw black spots that he at first took for some strange precipitation. But, as they came closer, he perceived them to be figures. One by one, light as rain, people dropped from the sky. Others came along the road or slithered out of the swamp, and some just appeared from nowhere at all.
Crones with stringy gray hair landed battered broomsticks and old poles. Owls and bats and buzzards with the faces of women and men turned into men and women who themselves looked very much like owls and bats and buzzards.
Some of those who came were a ghastly shade of gray, still dressed in tattered finery from their funerals. Others rode on the backs of wolves or great goats or other, even less savory animals. Some were hairy folk from deep in the swamps, with sharp teeth in their mouths and necklaces of even shaper teeth around their necks. And some were hairless and pale and half-blind from too long living underground or even underwater.
But some others looked no different from any other man or woman you'd meet on the street, and Charles found them most horrifying of all, walking as they did arm-in-arm with the grotesque parade and calling them names like “brother,” “aunt,” and “cousin.”
Lorelei slipped an arm around his waist, propping him up so that he couldn‘t faint. He found enough of his voice to ask, "What are they?"
Lorelei looked at him the way you'd look at an idiot child. "Don’t you know? That’s the Family."
Mr. and Mrs. Darcie greeted their guests at the door, embracing each and calling them by name (even those names Charles was sure no one should be able to pronounce), and swiftly the house filled up with a jolly, horrid, swinging crew of partiers. Wild laughter, banging and shouts, the whisper of capes and robes and shrouds brushing the floor this way and that as Family members rushed to each other for reunions a hundred of two hundred or a thousand years in the making.
Charles sat on a couch, too frightened to move. Lorelei sat on one side and Devanie on the other. Both had a hand on one of his knees, and they glared at each other over him.
"This time I mean it, Lorelei: As soon as we're alone again it's a pen-knife right in the back for you."
"Smile and look pleasant, Devanie. You're supposed to be the good daughter."
"You know, I just remembered there was a nice roadside motel about 40 miles back," Charles said. "Maybe I should just move on over there until all this family business is out of the way and then we can—"
"No!" said both sisters at once.
A crone with hair like a rat peered at Charles through the messy curtain of her locks. “What’s this morsel?” she said, picking her teeth with the end of one graying nail. Both sisters tightened their grips on him. “This is Charles,” they said at once. Charles himself squeaked.
The old woman (Aunt Keziah, the sisters would later call her) snorted and rolled her eyes. “At it again, you two? The same game since you were grubs. Do you know, once I told them, ‘If you both want the same man so bad, let’s cut him half.’”
“Poor Donald,” said Devanie. “He had such a good heart.”
“How would you know? I got the heart,” said Lorelei. “Anyway, this one won’t be like those other times. Charles is mine by right and I’m going to have him. I’ll marry him right here in front of the entire family.” She stood up and jerked him to his feet along with her. “Let’s do it now. Where’s Uncle Einar?”
“Here!” said a great voice, and a man with a huge beard and a face like Santa Claus and two enormous leathery wing folded up on his back approached. “Are we having a wedding? Marvelous. Is the groom with us, or do we have to go dig one up?" He winked at Charles with an eye the size of a silver dollar.
“Hold it you tart! You can’t have Charles because…well, the fact is, I’ve had him already! Tell them, sweetpea!”
Charles blushed and stammered. “We were going to wait. That is to say, we waited. But sometime last night, uh, one thing led to another, and…”
They had attracted quite a crowd now, aging hags picking at the straw of their broomsticks and doglike men grinning and panting. Lorelei shook her head. “Impossible. I would have been able to tell. Are you sure you did, you know, everything? I know you don’t have much experience in these things, Dev.”
Charles blushed even harder. “If you want to get technical, there wasn’t quite an, um, resolution, you could say. Not for lack of trying, mind you. The spirit was willing, but the body…”
The Family literally howled with laughter. Lorelei’s triumphant smile made him want to fall through the floor. Devanie jumped back in: “But she only had him in a dream. With me it was real. That makes my claim stronger.”
This seemed to stump the Family, one and all. (Except for Aunt Keziah, who declared that in her opinion Charles wasn’t really worth the trouble, thought Mrs. Darcie’s pie option best). It was Uncle Einar who first touched on the solution:
“To Great, Great, Great Grandmother! She’ll break the tie!”
A chorus of huzzahs went up. Charles found himself pulled and prodded and hustled along from every direction. They seemed to be taking him outside. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
“My dear boy: I’ve grown very fond of you in a short period of time, but you really are about as sharp as a bowling ball.” It was Ruthven. He put his arm around Charles’ shoulders and was ushering him along at the center of the mob. “That’s not how things are done in this family. If we say you’re one of us then that’s the way things are.”
“And if you say I’m not?”
“New blood comes in many forms. But since we have a moment, why don’t you tell me, man to man: If you could choose, which of the two of them would you want? Do remember I’m very fond of my nieces, so be careful what you say.”
“Well, Devanie and I…she’s a very special woman, and we…that is, Lorelei is quite charming and I happen to feel…what I’m trying to say is—”
“See? Lucky it’s not up to you. We’d be here all day.”
They took him along the old swamp trail, toward the mysterious marker and the family tombs, an eye of dry land, all vine-choked mausoleums and squat headstones with roses and gargoyles carved. The miasma of decay made Charles gag. The live oaks looked like twisted, grasping hands.
When they passed the first mausoleum Charles was not surprised to see movement at its gate: After all, the entire family was coming to the reunion, right? Rusty old gates creaked and faded stone markers moved as gray hands slowly but surely dug out of the mud. The mob grew larger. Then they came to the largest, oldest tomb of all, and Uncle Einar unlocked it with an ancient key from around his neck, and when he went inside everyone (Charles included) hushed and held their breath.
At first it was difficult to recognize the thing he brought out. It was so shrunken and warped that it looked like a bundle of old rags. But soon Charles recognized it for what it was: brown bones, brittle as a bird, wrapped in roll after roll of ancient linen, a shrunken, wizened, skeletal face the only thing left exposed. They called her Great, Great, Great Grandmother, but those Egyptian cerements suggested that she was a thousand times greater than that, the first and greatest of the Family.
Uncle Einar whispered in Oldest Grandmother’s ear, in a language no one else in the world spoke anymore, and then he listened for a voice that was less than a whisper in the wind. Nobody else could have understood what was said, but Uncle Einar nodded and reverently laid the ancient bones back in their crypt.
“Great, Great, Great Grandmother says: If this man is going to be One Of Us, fate will have to decide,” he announced later.
Everyone began to mutter. Charles sweated. “What does that mean?”
Ruthven shrugged. “Well, the good news is you’ll definitely know which one you’re marrying soon.”
“IS that good news?”
“Your other option is the pie crust. It’s going to come down to which of my nieces has the stronger gift. I suspect that’s Lorelei, which would be bad for you. She doesn’t keep men long.”
“What does she do when she’s done with them?”
“It takes good soil to grow a garden like that. Not everything she plants in it is a flower or a vine.”
Charles gulped.
“Devanie is much more compassionate. On the other hand, she’s feeling a little stung by your peccadillo last night. If she gets to have you, could be you wouldn’t last the night.”
Charles gulped twice.
“Of course, it’s not for me to know what’s in a woman’s heart. Could be you’re here to join the Family for good. Although I’d hold off making arrangements for the next reunion just yet.”
A great, black cauldron was rolled in. Charles recognized it; when he looked at his reflection in the surface of its roiling brew he saw three women, two old and one young, looking quite pleased. Devanie stood on one side of it, cut a lock of her hair, tied it a complicated knot around a stone, and dropped it into the pot. Lorelei did the same. The air between them practically crackled.
“You’re not going to get away with it this time, Lorelei. This time it’s my turn.”
“Talk is easy, Devanie. Let’s see you prove it.”
Both stones disappeared into the brew. Aunt Keziah stirred the pot around and around. Eventually, he knew, one stone would float to the surface. Charles leaned over so far that he almost fell in. Devanie grabbed him by one arm, Lorelei by the other.
“Something’s coming up!” Aunt Keziah said. A dark shape floated just beneath the surface. “Which is it?” everyone said at once, but it was too early to tell. “You can’t rush these things.”
Charles looked at Lorelei. “You wouldn’t really plant me in the garden, would you?”
She smirked.
He looked at Devanie. “You know I love you, right sugar dumpling? You know I only thought it was a dream.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Aunt Keziah thrust her hand into the pot, fishing for the floating stone. Both sisters let Charles go and leaned in close. Aunt Keziah grabbed the shape, pulled it out, and unclenched her fingers one by one…
Charles would be the first to admit that he wasn’t a brave man. If pressed, he’d also concede that he wasn’t particularly smart. If anything had gotten him to where he was in life (other than just being handsome, which he’d found was often all you really need anyway), it was that he always recognized an opportunity when he saw one. So as soon as Devanie and Lorelei let go, and he was sure every single Family member was looking at the stone and only the stone, he took the best and only opportunity that had presented itself all day:
He ran.
He probably wouldn’t make it to the car, he knew. The Family outnumbered him and knew the terrain better. Still, he had a decent start, and he was determined to give it his sporting best. Even as he heard the squawks of surprise and shuffle of pursuing feet, he couldn’t help but smile.
If nothing else, he was finally taking an active hand in Family business.
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