Hallow House - Part Two Read Free Page A

stopped and looked away.
     
    What had she thought? That John might marry her? Would he if I hadn't come? Vera shook her head. No, John would never have married Marie.
     
    One day in March, Marie, Vera and the two old ladies were having tea in the living room, a newly established custom. Adele and Theola often came downstairs since Vera had asked John to have a chair lift installed to convey Adele up and down the staircase. Marie usually didn't join them for afternoon tea, but Vincent was home and she made an obvious effort to drink less alcohol and be more sociable when he was around.
     
    "Are you sure you started this baby in November?" Marie asked, staring pointedly at Vera's girth.
     
    Adele shook her head wisely. "Not baby," she corrected. "Babies. Vera will have twins. The Gregory wives all do sooner or later"
     
    "Twins," Theola echoed. "Of course."
     
    Vera had heard this from them before, Though she didn't take them seriously, lately she had begun to wonder if they might not be right.
     
    When asked, Dr. Whitten insisted it was early to tell. She'd been to consult a San Francisco specialist and was scheduled to deliver at St. Sergius. She and John planned to go up to the city several weeks before her due date in July and stay until the birth. Meanwhile, Dr. Whitten saw her regularly in Porterville.
     
    In May they celebrated Johanna's second birthday. Though she seemed normal in every other way, her speech problem persisted--a stammer combined with stuttering, making her difficult to understand. She was especially fond of her Uncle Vince, and never forgot him during his absences.
     
    Summer drenched the valley in heat, as usual, and Vera kept mostly to the air-conditioned house, By now both Dr. Whitten and the specialist had confirmed she was carrying twins. She tried not to think about having two babies, tried not to remember what had happened over the years to one of every pair of Gregory twins. Death. Madness. Surely Hallow House couldn't be responsible for such tragedies. Or could it?
     
    In July she began the arrangement to leave for San Francisco with John. The night before they were due to leave, Vera woke in the night feeling someone had called her name. John slept on next to her, warm and oblivious. She could see nothing in the dark room and after a while she drifted back to sleep...
     
    Vera knew she was somewhere she didn't want to be. Even in the dark she could feel evil about her and she suddenly realized where she was. In the room behind the black door. "Of children two, the one must die," someone, something invisible whispered. The words dropped into her mind like lead weights...
     
    Vera woke, heart pounding to find her membranes had ruptured, fluid pouring from her. Alarmed, she sat up and started to slide out of bed to get Frances when the first contraction hit her.
     
    Identical twin girls, Naomi and Katrina, were born prematurely at Hallow House with Dr. Whitten arriving barely in time. They were large for preemies, five pounds for Naomi and four pounds, ten ounces for Katrina. There were no complications for mother or daughters.
     
    I've won, Vera thought dazedly as she lay in bed the next morning. The house didn't take one of my twins from me. And it won't, she vowed. I'll not let it.
     
     
     
    Chapter 22
     
     
     
    A new decade began when January ushered in 1940, one Samara Gregory hoped would be full of wonderful surprises She hummed as she drove her yellow convertible east toward the Sierra foothills. The top was down and the warm afternoon breeze blew through her shoulder-length black hair. She didn't mind the heat--a hot summer seemed right. A hot summer was home.
     
    Samara looked forward to seeing her family. Her memories of growing up were full of pain and fear, but Hallow House was a happy place now and she'd done her best to forget the past.
     
    "Somewhere," she sang, "over the rainbow..."
     
    She drove by cotton field where the bolls were swelling to puffy