The Visitor(86)

“What has Rose left for you now?” she asked in a pleasant voice.

I didn’t respond. I was still reeling from the weight of my discovery.

Placing one hand on top of the other, she leaned heavily on the head of her cane. A subtle change came over her features and I could see something cold and calculating in her eyes. “You don’t know it,” she said in a raspy voice. “The energy you call an entity. But it knows you.”

Fear stole my breath as my heart began to pound. “Who are you?” I gasped, but I really didn’t want to know the answer. “What are you?”

“Oh, I’m still Nelda. Only stronger and smarter. A better Nelda, you might say.” Her eyes cleared and her voice lightened. “My visitor is here, too. My dark caller. We’ve coexisted quite nicely all these years.”

“How?”

“Oh, I think you already know the answer.” Her lips curled again as she hobbled toward the steps, but I didn’t feel threatened. Not at that moment. The entity that used Nelda Toombs as a conduit was limited by the constraints of her body. I could outrun her. I could get away whenever I wanted. Right now, I had a compulsion to hear what she—it—had to say.

“Rose has been waiting a long, long time for you to come into your own. We all have, I suppose. But for very different reasons.”

“What do you mean?”

“The rules kept you safe even from Rose. So she waited until you were free of them and strong enough to help her. She was clever luring you here with that old stereogram. Very clever indeed.”

“Did you send someone to break into my house to get it back? Why?”

“I had to find out what Rose was up to. I needed to know what she’d revealed to you in that image.” Nelda cocked her head as she gazed up at me. “The resemblance still amazes me, but you’re not as cunning or as clever as your great-grandmother. Truth be told, you’re a bit dense about all this. But you’re stronger than Rose ever was. You’ve got that going for you. I doubt you realize how much power you possess, let alone how to wield it. You’re the only one left who can truly do us harm.”

I clutched the viewer to my chest. “How can I harm you? By finding out the truth? Are you afraid of what I’ll uncover in the cemetery? In Rose’s house? Are you worried I’ll reveal what you did to all those colonists? That was you, wasn’t it?”

A sly smile flashed. “That was us. The idea was mine, though. It’s what made me so desirable.”

“Desirable?” I stared at her for the longest moment as a revelation washed over me. “It was attracted to you because of what was already inside you. Darkness... Evil...” I paused. “You let it in, didn’t you? Your dark caller. It didn’t have to cajole or seduce or barter. You wanted that thing inside you.”

Impatience flared as her head came up. “Don’t you understand anything? It chose me. Not Rose, not Mott, not any of the others. Me.” She put a foot on the bottom step and I caught a strong whiff of cloves. The scent was overpoweringly sweet, but the spice couldn’t disguise the putrid essence of the malcontent inside her. I rose and retreated to the porch.

She laughed. “Oh, are you afraid of me now? Imagine that. Someone so young and vibrant threatened by the likes of me.”

“You enjoy that, don’t you? Creating fear and chaos. You thrive on negative emotions. Is that why you wanted all those colonists dead?”

“What do you think, Amelia?”

My heart lurched at the sound of my name coming from her odious lips. I took another step back from her. “I think there was another reason. You said the idea was yours. You wanted them dead before the entity possessed you. Why?”

“Why does it matter?” she returned.

“You were little more than a child at the time. What could have motivated you to do such a thing?”

“Very well, if you must know.” She stirred restlessly as if bored by all my questions. Later I would realize that her apathy was only an act. My distress and curiosity must have been highly entertaining while she killed time waiting for her conspirator. “Ezra wanted to take Rose away from us. He wanted to leave the Colony and go somewhere new, make a fresh start. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Rose was the only mother Mott and I knew. She was our protector. What do you think would have happened to us if she’d left? Louvenia would have undoubtedly placed us in a home or a hospital, where we would have been poked and prodded and stared at like some carnival sideshow attraction.”

She climbed to the next step and paused in a beam of sunlight. I could see the entity clearly in her eyes now and in that rictus smile.

“Why kill all the colonists? Why not just Ezra?”

“Because it wanted me to. And because poison was so much easier for us to manage. A simple matter to take the container from the barn and sprinkle it into the food. Mott and I went to the Colony so often that no one paid us any mind that day.”

“But Ezra wasn’t there. He’d gone to see Rose.”

“His absence made things more difficult, but not insurmountable, as you know.”

“And Mott? Did she want him dead, too?”

Nelda sighed as a shadow flicked across her features. “My sweet little twin, always facing backward. Always at my mercy. Always wanting to see the best in people. She knew nothing until it was all over.”