Lisey's Story(154)

"Then I want to go back! Can we go back?"

"Yes."

"I don't know if I can make a picture of Scott's study in my mind...I'm so upset..."

Amanda looked around fearfully. "This isn't like Southwind at all. "

"No," Lisey agreed, gathering Amanda back into her arms. "And I know you're afraid. You just do the best you can."

Lisey was actually not worried about getting back to Scott's study, back to Castle View, back to the world. She thought the problem now might be staying there. She remembered a doctor telling her once she'd have to be especially careful of her ankle after giving it a savage sprain while ice-skating. Because once you stretch those tendons, he'd said, it's ever so much easier to do it next time.

That much easier next time, right. And it had seen her. That eye, as big as a spring sinkhole, both dead and alive, had been on her.

"Lisey, you're so brave," Amanda said in a small voice. She took one final look at the sloping hill of lupin, gilded and strange in the growing light of the moon, then pressed her face against the side of Lisey's neck again.

"Keep talking like that and I'll have you back in Greenlawn tomorrow. Close your eyes."

"They are."

Lisey closed her own. For a moment she saw that blunt head that wasn't a head at all but only a maw, a straw, a funnel into blackness filled with endless swirling bad-gunky. In it she still heard Jim Dooley screaming, but the sound was now thin, and mixed with other screams. With what felt like tremendous effort, she swept the images and sounds away, replacing them with a picture of the red maple desk and the sound of Ole Hank -

who else? - singing "Jambalaya." There was time to think of how at first she and Scott hadn't been able to come back when they so badly needed to with the long boy so close, time to think of ( it's the african Lisey I feel it like an anchor) what he had said, time to wonder why that should make her think again of Amanda looking with such longing at the good ship Hollyhocks (a goodbye look if there ever was one), and then time was up. Once more she felt the air turn, and the moonlight was gone. She knew even with her eyes closed. There was the sense of taking a short, jolting fall. Then they were in the study and the study was dark because Dooley had killed the electricity, but still Hank Williams was singing -  My Yvonne, sweetest one, me-oh-my-oh  - because even with the power cut, Ole Hank meant to have his say.

12

"Lisey? Lisey! "

"Manda, you're crushing me, get off - "

"Lisey, are we back?"

Two women in the dark. Lying tangled together on the carpet.

"Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozens..." Drifting out of the alcove.

Chapter 25

"Yes, would you get the smuck off me, I can't breathe! "

"Sorry...Lisey, you're on my arm..."

"Son-of-a-gun, we'll have big fun...on the bayou!"

Lisey managed to roll to her right. Amanda pulled her arm free, and a moment later the weight of her body came off Lisey's midsection. Lisey gasped in a deep - and deeply satisfying - breath. As she let it out, Hank Williams quit singing in mid-phrase.

"Lisey, why is it so dark in here?"

"Because Dooley cut the power, remember?"

"He cut the lights, " Amanda said reasonably. "If he'd cut the power, the TV wouldn't have been playing."

Lisey could have asked Amanda why the TV had suddenly stopped playing, but didn't bother. Other matters needed discussing. They had other fish to fry, as the saying was.

"Let's go in the house."

"I'm a hundred percent down with that," Amanda said. Her fingers touched Lisey's elbow, groped down her forearm, and seized her hand. The sisters stood up together. Amanda added, in a confiding tone: "No offense, Lisey, but if I ever come here again it'll be too soon."

Lisey understood how Amanda felt, but her own feelings had changed. Scott's study had daunted her, no argument there. It had kept her at arm's length for two long years. But she thought the major chore which had needed doing in here was now done. She and Amanda had cleansed Scott's ghost away, kindly and - time would tell, but she was almost positive - completely.

"Come on," she said. "Let's go in the house. I'll make hot chocolate."

"And maybe a little brandy to start with?" Amanda asked hopefully. "Or don't crazy ladies get brandy?"

"Crazy ladies don't. You do."

Holding hands, they groped toward the stairs. Lisey stopped only once, when she stepped on something. She bent over and picked up a round of glass easily an inch thick. She realized it was one of the lenses from Dooley's night-vision goggles and dropped it with a grimace of disgust.

"What?" Amanda asked.

"Nothing. I'm able to see a little. How about you?"

"A little. But don't let go of my hand."

"I won't, honey."

They descended the stairs to the barn together. It took longer to do it that way, but it felt a lot safer.

13

Lisey set out her smallest juice glasses and poured them each a shot of brandy from a bottle she found at the very back of the dining room drinks cabinet. She held her glass up and clinked it against Amanda's. They were standing at the kitchen counter. Every light in the room was on, even the gooseneck lamp in the corner where Lisey scribbled checks at a child's schooldesk.