Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [30]
Aunt Queen paused to sigh at this old violence and then went on:
“They all hated Rebecca, or so the story went. My poor Aunt Camille. She might have been another Emily Dickinson or Emily Brontë if that evil Rebecca hadn’t sung out her poetry. My poor Aunt Camille, she tore it all up after those eyes had seen it and those lips had spoken it and never wrote another verse again. She cut off her long hair for spite and burnt it up in the grate.
“But one day, after many another agonizing dinner-table struggle, this evil Rebecca did disappear. And, with no one loving her, no one wanted to know why or how. Her clothes were found in the attic, Jasmine says, and so says Quinn. Imagine it. A trunk or two of Rebecca’s clothes. Quinn’s examined them. Quinn’s brought down more cameos from them. Quinn insists we keep them. I’d never have had them brought down. I’m too superstitious for that. And the chains! . . .”
She stole an intimate and meaningful glance at me. Rebecca’s clothes. The shiver in me was relentless.
Aunt Queen sighed, and, looking down and then up at me again, she whispered:
“Forgive me, Quinn, that I talk as much as I do. And especially of Rebecca. I don’t mean to upset you with those old tales of Rebecca. We best have done with Rebecca perhaps. Why not make a bonfire of her clothes, Quinn? You think it’s cold enough in this room, what with the air-conditioning, for us to light a real fire in the grate?” She laughed it off as soon as she’d uttered it.
“Does this talk upset you, Quinn?” Lestat asked in a small voice.
“Aunt Queen,” I declared. “Nothing you say could ever sit wrong with me, don’t be afraid of it. I talk all the time of ghosts and spirits,” I continued. “Why should I be upset that anyone talks of real things, of Rebecca, when she was very much alive and cruel to everyone? Or of Aunt Camille and her lost poems. I don’t think my friend here knows how much I came to know Rebecca. But I’ll tell him if he wants to hear another tale or two later on.”
Lestat nodded and made some small sound of assent. “I’m very ready for it,” he said.
“It seems when a person sees ghosts, for whatever reason, he has to talk of it,” said Aunt Queen. “And surely I should understand.”
Something opened in me rather suddenly.
“Aunt Queen, you know my talk of ghosts and spirits more truly than anyone except Stirling Oliver,” I said calmly. “I’m speaking of my old friend of the Talamasca because he did know too. And whatever your judgment of me, you’ve always been gentle and respecting, which I appreciate with all my heart—.”
“Of course,” she said quickly and decisively.
“But do you really believe what I told you of Rebecca’s ghost?” I asked. “I can’t tell even now. People find a million ways not to believe our ghost stories. And people vary in their fascination as to ghosts, and I have never been very sure of where you stand. Now’s a good time to ask, isn’t it, when I have you in the storytelling mood.”
I was reddening, I knew it, and my voice had a break in it which I didn’t like. Oh, the thunder of ghosts and their aftermath. Let it distract me from Stirling Oliver in my lethal arms and the bloody bride lying on the bed. Blunders, blunders!
“Where I stand,” she said with a sigh, looking directly from Lestat to me and back again. “Why, your friend here is going to think he’s entered a house of lunatics if we don’t break off with this. But Quinn, tell me now that you haven’t gone back to the Talamasca. Nothing will upset me so much as that. I’ll rue the night I ever told such stories to you and your friend if it sends you back to them.”
“No, Aunt Queen,” I answered. But I knew I had reached my limit as to how much I could conceal if this painful conversation went on. I tried to rejoice again quietly in the fact that we were all together, but my mind was jumbled with frightening images. I was sitting very still, trying to keep all tight in my heart.
“Don’t go into that swamp, Quinn,” Aunt Queen said, abruptly appealing to me, as if from the core of her being. “Don’t go to that accursed Sugar