Legacy Of Terror Part 7

Downstairs, the rooms were dark, lighted only by the cloud- filtered sun which shone dimly through the deep-set, rain-streaked windows. In the kitchen, she found dirty dishes stacked in the sink. Bess was neither clearing up the morning's debris nor preparing the afternoon meal, though it was now a few minutes before ten o'clock. That meant, she decided, that the old couple had the day off and were away shopping or visiting. Bess was too compulsively neat to have left work to be done.

She fixed herself toast and coffee, finished them at the kitchen table where she had a view of the back lawn, the scudding clouds, the willows whipped by the wind. She was dawdling over a second cup of coffee when the kitchen door opened, and Dennis Matherly entered the room. His face was flecked with red paint along the left cheek, and his hands were stained with green. He wore tattered jeans and a work s.h.i.+rt, quite a less affected costume than what she was used to seeing him in.

'Good morning!' he said, cheery despite the rain and the mood of this old house.

Uneasily, she said, 'Good morning, Denny.'

'I see you made coffee.'

'I didn't fill the pot,' she said. 'But there should be another cup or two.'

He poured a cup, added sugar and cream in doses she found excessive, then sat down at the table, directly across from her, sipping cautiously at the steaming brew.

'Have you heard about Celia?' he asked.

She found she did not want to look directly at him. She said, still staring past his shoulder at the rain, 'I haven't, no.'

'She's past the crisis,' Dennis said.

She looked at him. 'Out of the coma?'

He frowned and pulled at his lip. 'Not yet. But the doctors say that her chances are very good for a complete recovery. They're intent on keeping her under heavy sedation whenever she does regain consciousness, so we probably won't know for some time who was responsible.'

She did not know what to say in response. She did not want to talk to him at all, and especially not about the stabbing of the young girl he he had originally brought to this house. Looking at him, somewhat entranced by the perfection of his good looks, she saw something behind his eyes that she did not want to face and could not clearly identify, something that frightened her more than a little. had originally brought to this house. Looking at him, somewhat entranced by the perfection of his good looks, she saw something behind his eyes that she did not want to face and could not clearly identify, something that frightened her more than a little.

'Is it Bess and Jerry's day off?' she asked, hoping the conversation would quickly extinguish itself in trivialities.

'Yes,' he said. 'And Bess will shout the roof down when she sees the dishes stacked here.' He chuckled and sipped the last of his coffee.

She finished hers, too, and put her cup in the sink after she rinsed it out.

He came up next to her, put his cup with hers, and said, 'Would you like to come up to my studio and see the last few 'masterpieces' I've been working on so diligently?'

No.

But she said, 'Well, I have things to do and-'

'Come on,' he said. 'Father's away on business in town. Gordon's gone with him. I don't have anyone to admire a miniature I just finished. And I am utterly lost without admirers.'

'Your Uncle Paul seems to be your greatest admirer,' she said.

'Yes, but he's gone as well. It's that day of the month when he collects his trust check from his portion of mother's estate. He'll have picked it up at the bank by now-but he won't be home till supper. He likes to celebrate the receipt of each check in one or another of his favorite bars.' He smiled as he said it, and she saw there was no anger or recrimination in his face or voice. He didn't seem to mind, at all, that his uncle was a drunkard.

Then it occurred to her that, but for Jacob Matherly, they were alone in the house.

And Jacob was a cripple, incapable of helping her If- If what?

'Come on,' he said. 'You've not been up to see my work yet, and it's high time you were.'

He took her hand.

His hand was warm, large, dry and firm. She did not know why she should have expected anything else, but when she felt his hand and found it was not cold, she was surprised.

'I actually should look in on your grandfather and see-'

'He'll be fine! Only for a few minutes,' he said, leading her from the kitchen, into the downstairs corridor.

She did not see any way that she might gracefully refuse his invitation, and she did not want to make him angry. He was, after all, his father's favorite son. And he had Honneker blood*

'I want an honest opinion,' he said, as they started up the stairs to the second floor.

She did not reply. She could not could not reply, because her throat had constricted, and the ability to speak seemed to have left her. reply, because her throat had constricted, and the ability to speak seemed to have left her.

'I hate people who say they like everything. Uncle Paul is my best critic, because he's honest. He never fails to point out my failures and to criticize mistakes in my technique. He had a bit of art training himself- among many other things.'

Elaine remembered Paul Honneker's honesty at the supper table that first night, when Celia had been expounding on her notions for a complete rebirth of the mansion. She wished she could be as truthful herself. She wished she could overcome her fear of Dennis and her reluctance to risk insulting him. If only she could say: 'I am afraid of you. I don't want to go up there with you while we are alone in this house. Let me go!' If only* if only she could run.

At the end of the second floor corridor, they opened a door and went up steep, narrow wooden steps to a second door which opened on the attic. They walked into a large room where Dennis Matherly slept and worked. The walls were intensely white and hung over with perhaps twenty of his paintings and drawings. The floor was polished hardwood and softened to the tread, on one half, by a tattered oriental rug. The ceiling was open-beamed and polished until it gleamed darkly. A skylight broke the wooden arches and shed sunlight on the large drafting table and swivel stool which occupied the center of the room. There was a great deal of other furniture, though it was all utilitarian. There was a bed, an easy chair, a desk and chair, bookshelves crammed full of art texts, four easels, a cabinet of supplies, a xerox machine, a mounted camera for photographic enlargement, and a small refrigerator where cold drinks might be kept.

'Not much, but it's home for me,' he said.

'I like it,' she said.

She meant that. She had been prepared for a room full of plush and expensive furniture, deep pile carpeting, senseless knicknacks, a playboy's notion of what a working artist's studio was like. This was more the sort of place she could feel at ease in, utilitarian, sensible.

'I'm glad you like it,' he said.

He closed the door to the stairs so that they were, more than ever, completely alone.

Chapter 9.

Here at the very top of the mansion, the storm was nearer, and its fits of temper were more explosively loud than they had been downstairs. At times, it was even necessary to stop talking and wait until a roll of thunder had abated before continuing.

The lightning forked the sky directly overhead, spearing the blue- black clouds and making-for brief instants-a flat mirror of the panes of the skylight.

Elaine did not consider herself an art critic, but even so she felt that Dennis Matherly actually did have some talent. More than she would have guessed before seeing his work. True enough, the paintings were all too colorful to be comfortable with, splashed through with fantasy, disembodied faces, weird landscapes not. of this earth, detail so intense-at times-that it bordered on madness to have spent such time to trace the tiniest of lines. But they were good, no question about it. Good, she decided, in a way that was not exactly professional. Who, after all, could stand to live with such blatant fantasies and such unreal bursts of color hanging on their walls? He might be good, but he would not be financially successful.

As she made the tour of the room, she stopped before a painting of a startlingly beautiful woman. The entire canvas was composed of her face and a few, detailed yet indecipherable shadows behind her. She looked out upon the room with a gaze that appeared empty, directionless-strangely inhuman. Her flesh was tinted a light blue, as was nearly everything about the portrait. Only the green droplets of some fluid, glistening on her face, were at variance with the dominating blues.

'Do you like it?' he asked.

He was close behind her, so close she could feel his breath. But she had nowhere to move as she stared at that woman's strange face.

'Yes,' she said.

'It's one of my favorites too.'

'What is it called?'

'Madness,' he said.

When she looked again, she could see that was quite appropriate. And, in a moment, she realized who the subject must have been. Amelia Matherly. His own mother.

A crackle of lightning, reflected downwards by the skylight, made the green droplets on her face glisten and stand out as if they were real and moist and not dried oils.

'The spatters of green are blood,' he said.

Elaine felt dizzy.

He said, 'The person who is mad, I think, might not look upon death with the same viewpoint as the sane. The madman-or madwoman- might very well see death as a new beginning, a chance to start over. They might not see it as an end, a final act. That's why I chose the green for the droplets of blood in the picture. Green is the color of life.'

She could not say anything. She was grateful when a clap of thunder relieved her of that duty.

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"The woman in the painting is a murderess,' he said She nodded.

He said, 'You know who?'

'I've heard the story,' she managed to say.

'I loved my mother,' he said. 'She was always doing odd things and reacting strangely. But I loved her just the same.'

Elaine said nothing.

She considered excusing herself and walking for the door, but she had a terrible premonition that she would not reach it. Best to wait.

'When I discovered what she had done to the twins, what she tried to do to grandfather, I almost lost my mind.'

Lightning and thunder. The door: so far away.

He said, 'You can't imagine how adrift I was. For more than a year, I wanted to die. I had counted so strongly on my mother, depended so deeply on her love. And then she was gone-and she had ruthlessly destroyed two of her children-and might have destroyed me if I had been there at the time. I was possessed with a pessimistic certainty that no one in this world could be trusted, and I dare not turn my back on anyone, even for a moment, no matter how much they might profess their love for me.'

Elaine managed to turn from the picture and look at him. His squared, handsome face was drained, drawn in fatigue and paled by the memory.

'I can imagine how terrible it was,' she said.

'Fortunately, my father understood that. He saw what was happening with me, and he went out of his way to see that I knew I was loved. For long months, he left the business in the hands of his accountant and spent endless hours trying to a.s.sure me, to make me forget. In the end, he succeeded. But without his care, I'm afraid I would have given up long ago.'

Abruptly, he turned away from her and walked to the largest easel where a work-in-progress was clipped.

He said, 'Look here.'

Reluctantly, she walked to his side.

'Do you think it's shaping up well?' he asked.

'It's Celia, isn't it?'

He said that it was. Half of her face had been painted in, while the other half was still in sketch form and pasteled over with a pink- brown stain.

'I thought you were bad at portraits,' she said.

'Funny thing is, I am. But with my mother, and now Celia, I haven't had any trouble.'

'You must love her a good deal.'

'Celia? Not at all. She's a fine girl, but I don't have those emotions for her. It's just that-that I seemed only to be able to paint the faces of those who have fallen under the misery of the Honneker legacy of madness. I have two other portraits, of the babies. They turned out not as well, for they were too young to have distinct images, individual faces.'

'I see this is done in tones of orange,' she said.

'Except for the blood,' he said. 'When I paint the blood, I'll make it red. Very bright red. Celia did not see death as a beginning, but as an end. She wasn't mad.'

He picked up a palette knife and tested it against his finger.

It was not sharp, but long and flexible.

And pointed.

He picked at a section of the canvas he didn't seem to like, peeling away the coa.r.s.e peaks of the oils.

'It will make a nice set-this one and the portrait of my mother.'

'Yes,' Elaine agreed.

She saw that, now, he was standing between her and the door, and she did not know how she could have let that happen.

Stop it! she told herself. You are acting like a fool, a silly, empty-headed fool.

He squeezed some paint onto the palette and began mixing it with the palette knife. It was scarlet paint. It clung in lumps to the silvery tool like-like- 'Blood,' he said.

She started, though he did not notice, and she said, 'What?'

'I want to see how the blood will work against that orange pallor of her skin.'

Be still, she told herself. There is no need to be afraid. He is only a man, and you have learned how to deal with people. But she also knew that he might be mad, as mad as Amelia Matherly had been, and she realized that she could never cope with anything like that. Madness had no place in her world of logic and reasonableness. Madness was complex. She wished for everything to be simple.

He held the knife up, staring at it as the red paint ran slowly down toward the handle and his fingers.

'It looks good,' he said.