past Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, he was peripherally aware of something new and monstrous about the painting, the Chinese lanterns too bright, their orange color smeared across too much of the canvas, as if one or both of the little girls in white dresses had been set afire, but he refused to look directly.
The telephones shrilled in the living room, study, and kitchen. The pause between each ring seemed to be shorter than usual, the electronic tones harsher and more urgent.
He snared his raincoat from the newel post, didn’t pause to put it on. When he threw open the front door, the phones stopped ringing.
Stepping onto the porch, which lay now in the grip of night, he thought he saw a figure on the padded glider to his left, where Billy Lucas had once sat naked and blood-soaked to wait for the police. But when John swept the glider with the flashlight, it proved to be unoccupied.
He locked the house, slipped into his raincoat, found his car keys, and hurried into the rain, forgetting to put up his hood. On his head and hands, the downpour felt as cold as ice water.
In the car, as the engine turned over, he heard himself say, “It’s begun,” which must have been an expression of a subconscious certainty, for he had not meant to speak.
No. Not certainty. Superstition. Nothing had begun. What he feared would not come to pass. It could not. It was impossible.
He reversed out of the Lucas driveway, into the street, fence pickets flaring bright and shadows leaping.
The wipers swept cascades off the windshield, and the rain seemed foul, contaminated.
In the fullness of the night, John Calvino drove home to his family.
From the journal of Alton Turner Blackwood:
I am Alton Turner Blackwood, and I remember …
The south tower was chiseled stairs and stone walls spiraling up four stories to one round room, fourteen feet in diameter. Four pairs of leaded windows, beveled glass, crank handles to open. A truss-and-beam ceiling. From one of the beams, she hanged herself.
The family’s fortune started from railroads. Maybe it was honest money then. Terrence James Turner Blackwood – Teejay to his closest associates, who were not the same thing as friends – inherited the whole estate. He was only twenty-one, as ambitious as a dung beetle. He grew it bigger by publishing magazines, producing silent films, developing land, buying politicians.
Teejay worshipped one thing. He didn’t worship money, for the same reason a desert dweller doesn’t worship sand. He worshipped beauty.
Teejay built the castle in 1924 when he was twenty-four. He called it a castle, but it wasn’t one. Just a big house with castle parts plugged on to it. Some public rooms were accidentally lovely. Outside, from every angle, it was an ugly pile.
He worshipped beauty, but he didn’t know how to create it.
In one sense, the house was the opposite of Teejay. He was so handsome you could call him pretty. His worship of beauty was in part self-worship. But inside, he was as ugly as the outside of his house. His soul was not bejeweled, but encrusted. Not even Teejay could have named some of the needs that formed that crust.
The immense house was called Crown Hill, after the knoll on which it stood. The 280-acre property lay along the northern coast, which has always been a dangerous length of shore. Every coast is dangerous, of course: Land falls away to the chaos of vast waters.
Jillian Hathaway was the most famous and beloved actress of silent films. She made two talkies, as well. One became a classic: Circle of Evil. She supposedly married Terrence Blackwood in Acapulco in 1926. They were never wed. She moved in to the castle that wasn’t. In 1929, at the age of twenty-eight, she retired from films.
Jillian gave birth to Marjorie, her only child, also in 1929. The once-glamorous star hung herself fourteen years thereafter. She was still very beautiful. Even in death, she was very beautiful. Perhaps especially in death.
The Blackwood family continued to produce new generations. Decades later, Anita Blackwood gave birth to Teejay’s great-grandson. Terrence, connoisseur of beauty, wanted the deformed infant placed at once in an institution. The father, of course, agreed. But Anita would not allow her son to be discarded like trash.
In time, perhaps she regretted her decision. Over the years, though she taught the boy to read well at a young age, she otherwise distanced herself from him. Eventually she abandoned him at Crown Hill, to the mercy of the merciless old man.
She just went away. No good-bye. They said she had grown scared of the boy, her own boy, repelled by his form and face.
When he was nine years old and abandoned by his mother, the ill-made boy was moved from the guest house he had shared with her into the round room at the top of the south tower.
The boy wasn’t me yet. In time, he would become me.
The boy hated old Teejay. For many reasons. One reason was the beatings.
Another reason was the tower room.
An electric heater made the room warm in winter. Because of the ocean influence, the summer nights were seldom sweltering. A toilet and shower stall were added at some expense. A mattress on the floor made a good bed. There were as many pillows as the boy wanted. A fine armchair and a desk were built right there in the room because they couldn’t be hauled up the spiral stairs. Breakfast and lunch were sent up by dumbwaiter. Using an in-house phone, he could request any treat he wished. At night, he could borrow whatever books he wanted from the immense library off the main hall.
The boy was comfortable enough but lonely. The tower room lay high above everything and far from everyone.
In the evening, after others retired, if there were no guests, he was permitted into the house. A late dinner was brought to the boy in the library. He ate off disposable plates with disposable utensils. What might have touched his mouth must never touch another’s, although he had no contagious disease.
The staff was forbidden to interact with him or he with them. If a servant violated this rule, he would be fired. The old man paid them exceedingly well not merely to maintain silence toward the boy but also to remain silent about him to the outside world, about him and everything that occurred at Crown Hill. None would risk losing his job.
If the boy initiated conversation, they reported him. Then came the beatings in the privacy of the old man’s suite.
He hated Teejay. He hated Regina, too, and Melissa. Regina was Anita’s sister, the boy’s aunt, the old man’s granddaughter. Melissa was Regina’s daughter. They were beautiful, as the boy was not, and they could go anywhere they wished, anytime they wanted. Regina and Melissa spoke to the staff and the staff spoke to them. But because Teejay forbid it, neither of them spoke to the boy. Once he overheard Regina and a maid mocking him. How she laughed.
One evening when the boy was twelve, in the library maze, in a far corner, on a high shelf, he found an album of black-and-white photos of Jillian Hathaway. Many were glamour shots of the movie star in elegant gowns and costumes.
The last photo in the album might have been taken by police. The boy suspected old Teejay, then her
