Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [83]
“But where did all these thoughts come from?
“Then the noise came again. It had a rather deliberate sound to it. I felt the hair stand up on my neck. I liked the excitement. I loved it. It was infinitely better than depression and misery, than thoughts of guns and death.
“I thought, A ghost is going to come. Voices. No, a rustling. It will be stronger than the apparition of William. It will be stronger than the vaporous ghosts that hover over the cemetery. It’s going to come because of this trunk. Maybe it will be Aunt Camille, who has been seen so often on the stairs, coming up to the attic.
“ ‘Who are you, Rebecca Stanford?’ I whispered. Silence. I opened the trunk. A mess of clothing was inside it and mildew had grown all over it, and there were other articles all tumbled with the fabrics—an old silver-backed hairbrush, a silver-edged comb, bottles of perfume in which the contents had dried up and a silver-backed mirror, all splotched and darkened and no good anymore.
“I lifted up some of the mass of clothing so that the items tumbled down into the lower portion of the trunk, and there I unearthed a mass of jewelry—pearls and brooches and cameos—all thrown among the dresses as if no one had cared about them, which was a puzzle to me because I knew when I held them that the pearls were real; and as for the cameos, I lifted them out one by one and saw that they were fine little works, specimens Aunt Queen would like very much, and all of them—all three—had gold frames, and good contrast to them, being made out of dark shell.
“Why were they here, so neglected, so forgotten, I wondered. Who had just heaped them here amid dresses that were molding, and when had such a thing been done?
“The noise came again, a rustling sound, and another soft sound like a footstep that made me pivot and face the attic door.
“There stood Goblin, glaring at me with alarm in his face, and very emphatically he shook his head and mouthed the word No.
“ ‘But I want to know who she was,’ I said to him. He disappeared rather slowly, as though he were weak and frightened, and I felt the air grow cool as it often did after his disappearances, and I wondered why he had been so weak.
“By now, you can guess that I was so used to Goblin that I wasn’t all that interested in him anymore. I felt superior to him. At this moment, I didn’t think much about him at all.
“I set to work laying out the entire contents of the trunk upon the top of another trunk beside it. It was clear that the contents had just been heaped inside, helter-skelter, and all except the cameos and the pearls was a total loss.
“There were beautiful old mutton-sleeve dresses, dresses that went back surely to the days of long skirts, and there were old rotted lace blouses, two or more with fine shell cameos attached at the throat, and what must have been silk gowns. Some items fell apart in my hands. Cameos, all ‘Rebecca at the Well.’
“ ‘So you loved just that one theme,’ I said out loud. ‘Were you named for it?’
“I heard the rustling again, and I felt something brush me, soft, as if a cat had brushed my neck. Then nothing. Nothing but the quiet and the dying afternoon around us, and a kind of dread I had to escape.
“There was nothing better than to explore this trunk.
“There were slippers that were dried up now and gnarled as if they were driftwood. An open box of powder had been tossed into the contents, and it still had a bit of sweet fragrance after all this time. A couple of perfume bottles were broken, and there was a small leather book with lots of pages of writing, but all of the writing had almost faded away. It looked like purple cobwebs.
“The mildew had gotten to everything, ruining all this finery and in some places covering the wool garments with a slimy blackness, making them a total loss.
“ ‘But this is sheer waste,’ I said out loud. I gathered up the pearl necklaces, of which there were three, and all of the five cameos, including two I had to take