Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [204]
“Aunt Queen sighed. ‘You are stark raving mad.’
“ ‘Not raving,’ I said. ‘I became a bit heated, yes, at the effrontery of that creature, but not raving, not really raving. That’s a far worse state, wouldn’t you say?’
“ ‘What do I do?’ she asked.
“ ‘Let me call Stirling Oliver. Maybe he can vouch for my sanity. He sees Goblin. He was at dinner tonight. I must see him and talk to him. I must tell him my feelings as regards that creature! I must talk to him. I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel anyone is safe from that creature. He’ll help you to understand.’
“ ‘And you think I’m the one,’ she asked, ‘who needs the understanding?’
“ ‘I don’t know, Aunt Queen. I want to kill that creature, that’s all I can say. And there’s something very vile and awful about the being. It isn’t merely that it’s a hermaphrodite, that I could well endure and find fascinating. It’s something else. Goblin senses it. Goblin calls it evil. I tell you the creature frightens me. You must understand, at least that I believe what I’m saying even if you do not.’
“She wouldn’t look at me.
“I went into the bathroom. I was sick. After a while I was able to drink a paper cup of water. And then I came out. They were all there, in the same state of shock as when I left them. I apologized to everyone.
“ ‘But you have to see it,’ I said, ‘from my point of view. You have to understand what my experience of this creature was. And then I come home and find him with my Aunt Queen.’
“Nash made the kind suggestion that perhaps I ought to go to bed. I looked very tired indeed. I agreed to it immediately, but I couldn’t let it go without stating that the stranger, alias Petronia, was no great respecter of my being in or out of bed.
“But when I bent down to kiss Aunt Queen, she was loving to me, and I was as tender with her as ever, and I told her that I had really told the truth.
“ ‘We will call Mr. Oliver,’ she said. ‘We’ll ask him to come here tomorrow. And we’ll talk to him. How would that be?’
“ ‘I love you so much,’ I whispered. ‘And there’s so much I want to tell you about Mona.’
“ ‘Tomorrow, my darling,’ she said.
“I could hardly drag myself up the stairs. And as soon as I had the comfort of the soft flannel nightshirt I was dreaming of Mona, with my arm around Big Ramona, and thoughts of talking to Nash running randomly through my mind. Every now and then I’d wake with a start, fearing Petronia was on me, strange evil Petronia, bent on hurting me, bent on destroying me, but it was only drunken imagination and finally I went into a deep comforting sleep.”
33
“IT WAS about nine a.m. when I called Stirling, and, unable to contain myself, spilled out all of the story of recent events, as I invited him to dinner to discuss them in greater detail. Perhaps I wanted him to know this was a loaded invitation. I thought it only fair.
“He surprised me. He insisted that we meet for lunch. He asked if it wouldn’t be too inconvenient if we gathered at twelve noon. I went down to see Aunt Queen immediately. And finding her already awake, sitting up in her chaise lounge, watching a movie, saying her Rosary and eating strawberry ice cream, I was happy to have her agreement to lunch right away.
“Would Stirling come to Blackwood Manor? Of course.
“As Blackwood Manor was booked solid, we set up the small table in Aunt Queen’s room, and her bed was dressed in its finest satin along with a broad collection of her red-cheeked boudoir dolls, all got up in the flapper attire that Aunt Queen herself so much adored.
“Stirling arrived promptly at five minutes before twelve, though his flowers, a huge vase of pink roses, arrived before him, and we gathered in Aunt Queen’s room for Jasmine’s finest veal scallopini and pasta and white wine. Nash, who offered several times to absent himself, joined us, and to my amazement Aunt Queen started right in with the ‘strange tale’ of Petronia and how she or he—it varied