Lasher Read Free Page B

man.
    Mona stared up at the huge keyhole doorway for one moment, thinking of all the pictures she’d seen of family members in that doorway, over the years. Great-oncle Julien’s portrait still hung at Amelia Street, though Mona’s mother had to take it down every time Aunt Gifford came, even though it was a dreadful insult to Ancient Evelyn. Ancient Evelyn rarely said a word—only drawn out of her reverie by her terrible worry for Mona and Mona’s mother, that Alicia was really dying finally from the drink, and Patrick was so far gone he didn’t know for sure who he even was.
    Staring at the keyhole doorway, Mona felt almost as if she could see Oncle Julien now with his white hair and blue eyes. And to think he had once danced up there with Ancient Evelyn. The Talamasca hadn’t known about that. The history had passed over Ancient Evelyn and her granddaughters Gifford and Alicia, and Alicia’s only child, Mona.
    But this was a game she was playing, making visions. Oncle Julien wasn’t in the door. Had to be careful. Those visions were not the real thing. But the real thing was coming.
    Mona walked along the flagstone path to the side of the house, and then back to the flags, past the side porch where Aunt Deirdre had sat in her rocker for so many years. Poor Aunt Deirdre. Mona had seen her from the fence many a time, but she’d never managed to get inside the gate. And now to know the awful story of the way they’d drugged her.
    The porch was all clean and pretty these days, with no screen on it anymore, though Uncle Michael had put back Deirdre’s rocking chair and did use it, as if he had become as crazy as she had been, sitting there for hours in the cold. The windows to the living room were hung with lace curtains and fancy silk drapes. Ah, such riches.
    And here, where the path turned and widened, this was where Aunt Antha had fallen and died, years and years ago, as doomed a witch as her daughter, Deirdre, would become, Antha’s skull broken and blood flowing out of her head and her heart.
    No one was here now to stop Mona from dropping down to her knees and laying her hands on the very stones. For one flashing instant, she thought she saw Antha, a girl of eighteen, with big dead eyes, and an emerald necklace tangled with blood and hair.
    But again, this was making pictures. You couldn’t be sure they were any more than imagination, especially when you’d heard the stories all your life as Mona had, and dreamed so many strange dreams. Gifford sobbing at the kitchen table at Amelia Street. “That house is evil, evil, I tell you. Don’t let Mona go up there.”
    “Oh, nonsense, Gifford, she wants to be the flower girl in Rowan Mayfair’s wedding. It’s an honor.”
    It certainly had been an honor. The greatest family wedding ever. And Mona had loved it. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Gifford watching her, Mona would have made a sneaky search of the whole First Street house that very afternoon, while everyone else swilled champagne and talked about the wholesome side of things, and speculated about Mr. Lightner, who had not yet revealed his history to them.
    But Mona would not have been in the wedding at all if Ancient Evelyn had not risen from her chair to overrule Gifford. “Let the child walk up the aisle,” she had said in her dry whisper. She was ninety-one years old now. And the great virtue of almost never speaking was that when Ancient Evelyn did, everybody stopped to listen. If she wasn’t mumbling, that is.
    There were times when Mona hated Aunt Gifford for her fears and her worry, the constant look of dread on her face. But nobody could really hate Aunt Gifford. She was too good to everybody around her, especially to her sister, Alicia, Mona’s mother, whom everyone regarded as hopeless now that she’d been hospitalized three times for her drinking and it hadn’t done any good. And every Sunday without fail, Gifford came to Amelia Street, to clean up a bit, sweep the walk, and sit with