Duma Key(162)

"Did Eastlake have the silver harpoons made then?" Wireman asked.

"I can't tell you. There's so much I don't know, because what I do know comes from Elizabeth, and she was little more than an infant. I have no sense of what happened in her other life, because by then she'd quit drawing. And if she remembered the time when she did-"

"She was doing her best to forget it," Jack finished.

Wireman looked glum. "By the end, she was well on her way to forgetting everything."

I said, "Remember the pictures where everybody seems to be wearing these big, loopy drug-addict grins? That was Elizabeth, trying to remake the world she remembered. The pre-Perse world. A happier one. In the days before her twin sisters drowned, she was one scared kid, but she was afraid to say anything, because she felt that the things going wrong were all her fault."

"What things?" It was Jack.

"I don't know exactly, but there's one picture of an old-timey Negro lawn jockey standing on his head, and I think that stands for everything. I think that for Elizabeth, in those last days, everything seemed to be standing on its head." There was more than that to the lawn jockey I was almost positive but I didn't know what, and this probably wasn't the time to chase after it, anyway. "I think in the days before and just after Tessie and Laura drowned, the family might almost have been prisoners at Heron's Roost."

"And only Elizabeth would have known why?" Wireman asked.

"I don't know." I shrugged. "Nan Melda might have known some of it. Probably knew some of it."

"Who was at that house during the period after the treasure-find and before the drownings?" Jack asked.

I thought about it. "I suppose Maria and Hannah might have come home from school for a weekend or two, and Eastlake could have been away on business for part of March and April. The ones who were surely there that whole time were Elizabeth, Tessie, Laura, and Nan Melda. And Elizabeth tried to draw her new 'friend' out of existence." I licked my lips. They were very dry. "She did it with her colored pencils, the ones in the basket. This was just before Tessie and Laura drowned. Maybe the night before. Because their drownings were punishment, right? The way Tom killing Pam was supposed to be my punishment, for prying. I mean, you see that?"

"Christ almighty," Jack whispered. Wireman was very pale.

"Until then, I don't think Elizabeth understood." I thought about this, then shrugged. "Hell, I can't remember how much I understood when I was four. But until then probably the worst thing that had ever happened to her in her life other than falling out of that pony-trap, and I'll bet she didn't even remember that was getting turned over her Daddy's knee and paddled or having her hand slapped for trying to take one of Nan Melda's jam tarts before they were cooled. What did she know about the nature of evil? All she knew was that Perse was naughty, Perse was a bad doll instead of a good doll, she was out of control and getting out-of-controller all the time, she had to be sent away. So Libbit sat down with her pencils and some drawing paper and told herself, 'I can do this. If I go slow and do my best work, I can do this.'" I stopped and passed my hand over my eyes. "I think that's right, but you have to take it with a grain of salt. It could be mixed up with what I remember about myself. My mind playing more tricks. More stupid f**king pet tricks."

"Take it easy, muchacho, " Wireman said. "Go slow. She tried to draw Perse out of existence. How does one do a thing like that?"

"Draw and then erase."

"Perse didn't let her?"

"Perse didn't know, I'm almost sure of it. Because Elizabeth was able to hide what she meant to do. If you ask me how, I can't tell you. If you ask me if it was her own idea something she thought up by herself at the age of four-"

"Not beyond belief," Wireman said. "In a way, it's four-year-old thinking."

"I don't understand how she could have kept it from this Perse," Jack said. "I mean... a little kid?"

"I don't know, either," I said.

"In any case, it didn't work," Wireman said.

"No. It didn't. I think she made the drawing, and I'm sure she did it in pencil, and I think when she was done, she erased the whole thing. It probably would have killed a human being the way I killed Candy Brown, but Perse wasn't human. All it did was make her angry. She paid Elizabeth back by taking the twins, whom she idolized. Tessie and Laura didn't go down that path to the Shade Beach to look for more treasure. They were driven. They ended up in the water, and they were lost."

"Only not for good," Wireman said, and I knew he was thinking of certain small footprints. Not to mention the thing that had been in my kitchen.

"No," I agreed. "Not for good."

The wind blew again, this time hard enough to send something thudding against the Gulf side of the house. We all jumped.

"How did it get this Emery Paulson?" Jack asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"And Adriana," Wireman said. "Did Perse get her, too?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe." Reluctantly I added: "Probably."

"We haven't seen Adriana," Wireman said. "There's that."