The darkest memories will finally find their way out of your soul.
She always waits until the moon comes out to walk past the entryway in front of my home. She haunts me. Once a month she prances by, looking through the iron grates to see if I’m there. Why? She senses my fear. I fear her for one very important reason. I fear her because she knows.
Jennifer and I had pulled back the French lace curtains covering my library window. I was mesmerized as I looked out past the front gate at a small dark shape revealed only by the moonlight.
“Damn it all Jennifer, she’s right there!” I turned my head and saw only confusion on the face of the woman beside me. She still didn’t understand.
“Come on, Beth, I don’t see anything.”
“But she’s there.”
What she knows lies buried underneath the stare of her deep green eyes. Her eyes are inflexible. She doesn’t use them to see normal things. She uses them to rip into my soul. She flaunts around in her black tuxedo, rambling up and down my tree-lined sidewalk.
“She knows the secret.”
“Oh, Beth.”
Her hatred transcends the darkness, and slowly worms its way into my mind. As her eyes light upon me, I hear her whisper in my ears: ‘I know what you are, and you’ll never be able to hide. Not in your closet, or your bedroom, not in your attic or garage, because I will always be there, waiting to destroy you.’
“Beth, there is no secret.”
I stared at the floor as Jen stood beside me. “You just won’t listen to the truth.”
How did she learn the truth? Who gave her the information that she now holds as ransom to keep me locked up behind four empty walls? The secret that now forces me to veil myself behind the curtain in front of my window. I can stand for hours looking out at the sky, the trees and the ponds. But I’ll never wander there. How can I make Jennifer understand? I’m too afraid to risk going out in the sunlight. And she made certain I’d be too afraid to walk under the radiance of the moon. I can only leave this prison on dark nights when no one is watching.
“Beth, don’t you remember? This didn’t start until after your father died.”
Jennifer, as always, was trying to assuage my fears. She had always been a good friend.
“Yes, I remember.”
My father knew the secret, but he’s long since passed away. He rests now in silence among the dead, no longer concerned with what he left behind in his life. Squirrels try to eat at him as he sleeps through eternity. Unable to breach the hard cold ground to get to his feet, they settle instead for an acorn that has fallen from a tree. He wears a headstone for a hat, one that never needs to be brushed or changed. He loved his hats.
“He told her before he died Jen. I know he did. Why won’t you believe me?”
My father began this nightmare on the evening of my coming out party in the Grand Hotel. While I waltzed around the floor in my flowing white gown, father stood in the corner and made a deal that would take away everything I had had known in my life.
“Beth, come away from the window, it’s only making you upset.”
I smiled and gently outlined the silhouette of a tree with my finger on the glass. “Do you remember the night of our debutante’s ball?" It was such a wonderful evening.
At the end of the night I saw that my father had traded his expensive fedora for a common laborer's cap. “It’s to secure a deal” was all he said on the matter so I let it go and dreamed instead of the glorious moment in time it had been.
A few weeks later, I heard a man arguing with my father in the library of our home. I put my ear to the heavy oak door and heard his muffled, accented voice accuse my father of stealing his fortune and condemning his own family to starvation. He stormed from the room swearing he’d find a way to retrieve what my father had taken from him. As he slammed the front door, I walked into the library and approached my father. He was nervously running his hands through his gray hair, and staring out the window. I refused to leave until he explained who this man was and why he’d been there.
“What are you thinking about Beth? I hope you're not going over your father’s accident.”
I didn’t tell Jen that I was now standing in exactly the same place that father had stood on that day so long ago.
“No, not his death. Something that happened before.”
My father wasted no time in addressing the point. ‘We are about to lose everything we own. I can use his money to take care of you, or let him use it to take care of himself.’
*I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. My father continued.
‘His children won’t go without.’
And I’m certain that that’s what my father intended. Sadly, he died in an automobile accident shortly thereafter.
I felt a chill as Jennifer reached for my arm.
“Darling, you’ve never gotten over the shock of his death. How many times do I have to tell you it wasn’t your fault?”
“You might not think it was my fault, but she has decided otherwise.”
It was during his graveside service that I first saw her. She was standing behind a tree wearing the same clothes she is wearing now. She didn’t try to approach me. No, she was busy laying her trap, knowing full well that I was about to fall into it.
“How about a cup of tea? Let’s get away from this window.”
“No Jen, I’m fine.”
But I wasn’t fine. There had to be a way to make Jennifer listen. I watched her head for the kitchen and, as though she too could read my mind, she called to me from behind the closed door.
“Sit down on the sofa and don’t think about your father.”
I went over to the sofa and whispered to myself as I sat down. “Shall I think about the secret instead?”
The attorney read through father’s will and mentioned a mine site in South Dakota. I knew this had to be what that man had given him. I merely looked bereaved as he finished reading.
I didn’t ask who this man or his family might be. When he came to the house shortly after the funeral – I had the maid turn him away. Though I never heard from him again, she came almost every day. At first she would only let me see her in the daylight. She’d stand outside the gate until she was certain I was at the window then slowly walk away.
“Here, Beth, drink this.”
I held the steaming cup in my hand and noticed it was much too hot. “I’ll drink it in a little while,” I said as I placed the cup on an end table. “Jennifer, I’m amazed that you can’t see her.”
By some fluke of luck I had looked out the library window on a moonlit night and saw her there, dancing under the streetlight. She would only come on moonlit nights after that. As I waited for the waxing of the new moon each month, I felt more and more that she had found a way to enter my mind.
“Did they tell you they found car fluid on my blouse after the accident? The police tried to say I hurt father.”
“That was a long time ago. Why do you keep bringing it up? You were not even here when he left the house that day. They knew you were with a friend who’d had car trouble.”
“But I had been here. I snuck back from my friend’s house to get a fresh set of clothes. Don’t you remember? I told you about that.”
Jennifer rubbed my arm and tried to console me. “Yes, and it’s all been put to rest.”
“She doesn’t believe them Jennifer, nobody believes them. They all think I did it on purpose.”
“Did what?“
I was getting exasperated. Did she never hear a thing I said? “I saw that the hood was up on the car that morning. Jonathan, our driver, had been working on something inside. When he went back into the garage, I stepped over to see what he was doing. That’s when the fluid stained my blouse. Everyone knows something happened to the car that day. That’s why father and Jonathan were killed.”
Jennifer continued as though I hadn’t said a word. “That’s a rumor and you know it. There wasn’t enough left of the car to find out.
The car had been destroyed as it tumbled to the bottom of a cliff. The odd thing was that no skid marks were seen on the highway. Jonathan’s family had always been dirt poor regardless of how much he made working for father. Jonathan knew he’d been put in father’s will and I had often heard him tell his children their future would be better than his own. After the wreck his family received a very handsome pension and I kept everything else.
“Why did they want to take me away Jen? Didn’t they know how much I loved him?”
Jen put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s because of what happened before. But that’s all over now.”
Jonathan saw me standing over the hood and shooed me away. He had never liked me. He said I had the eyes of a cat. I hated him as well.
“You mean about mama?” she asked.
I nodded my head. “Yes, about mama.”
I can still remember the look on his face as he approached me. Had I been anyone else’s child he would have beaten me for being there. But he couldn’t lay a finger on me and that thought alone seemed to make him even angrier. So he just sneered as he walked toward me in his dirtied work clothes. As he moved closer, I could see that he was holding something. The silver metal glistened in the sunlight as though it were fighting to shine past the grunge of dirty oil that covered his hands.
“Oh god Jennifer, I remember now!” My heart began to pound as an old memory crashed into my consciousness.
“What Beth? What do you remember?”
“Jonathan had a knife, he had a knife!”
Jennifer’s face seemed to freeze. ”What kind of knife?”
“A small pocket knife. He was hiding it in his hand, but I could see it in the sunlight. That’s why he chased me away! Don’t you see? He had cut the break line, that’s why the fluid stained my clothes.”
“Beth, wait a moment. This happened years ago. Why would he do such a thing? You need to think, to be sure about this.”
Jonathan would sit on the back porch for hours and core apples with that knife. He’d carve the seedpod from the center and let it fall to the ground where the birds would find it early the next morning.
“His family needed the money Jen. They were desperate for the money. Now I know why she’s there. She doesn’t want me to tell. I remember seeing her near the garage when daddy was still alive and at the funeral as well. I know who it is Jen. After all this time.”
I began to tremble as Jennifer put her arm around me. Tears were filling my eyes as the memories played out in my mind. If I had only remembered then I could have saved myself all these years of sorrow.
“Beth, I want you try to calm yourself.”
My head swayed back and forth as I continued to recall that afternoon. “Don’t lie to me anymore, you know what they’ve all said. I’ve heard the whispers and felt their cold stares. You’re the only one who even comes to see me.”
“Are you certain about the knife Beth? I mean really certain?”
“Yes, god yes I’m certain. I can see it clearly in my mind. He was holding it in his hand.”
Beth looked toward the window, trying at last to understand. I clenched my eyes shut as she struggled to come to terms with what she believed and what I now begged her to believe. I had not done these things. I had not hurt my mother or my father.
“They never meant to hurt you Beth. They talk without thinking, please don’t listen to what they say.”
I just nodded my head, all too familiar with how ladies of leisure spent their free time. Jen fell back into silence, leaving me to hope beyond hope that my prison walls were about to come down. Finally, she gave me a hug and got up to leave.
“I believe you Beth, and I’ll make certain the others do to. Please don’t worry anymore.” She bent down and kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”
I went to the window and watched her drive away. I was free. I could live again. The guilt and sorrow began to fade as the lights from Jen’s car shone onto the walls of the house. I shuddered at how fortunate I’d been to have finally remembered Jonathan’s knife, to have at last been able to put a cause to an event. As the car rolled down the driveway I knew that there was only one thing left to do. I had to kill the only living thing that could really tell Jen the truth. I had to kill the cat that pranced around in the moonlight, the little black demon that haunted me in my dreams, and watched me from my gate. The secret wasn’t that father had stolen another man’s wealth so many years before. The secret was that I was indeed the one who had killed him to get it.
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