Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [95]
“Bad, Quinn. Go home. They worry about you at home.
“The truth of that seemed very certain, but I had no intention of responding.
“ ‘What is this place, Goblin? Why did you say it was bad?’ I asked. But he gave me no answer, and then, after a pause, he told me again to go home. He said, Aunt Queen has come home.
“I was powerfully intrigued by that statement. Goblin had never told me the whereabouts of others. But I was by no means ready to go back!
“I sat down on the stairs. It was solid, which was no surprise to me since it was built of cypress; the whole house was built of cypress, and cypress never rots.
“ ‘Rebecca,’ I asked aloud, ‘are you here?’ There came that dizziness again, and, whereas I had been just a little afraid of it in the pirogue, I let myself slip deeper into it now, closing my eyes and lying back and looking up at the broken leafy light.
“There rose a wave of conversing voices, whispers, curses, a woman crying again, Rebecca crying, Can’t torture me like this, and then a man muttering and saying, Damnable, and someone laughing. What did you expect of me! asked a voice. But the surging, driving conversation broke with no further clarification and washed away from me, leaving me almost sick.
“I felt a hatred for the voice that had spoken, the voice which had asked, ‘What did you expect of me!’ and it seemed a logical hate.
“I stood up and took a deep breath. I was sick. The damned heat had made me sick. I was also getting bitten by mosquitoes, and that was making me feel sick as well.
“I’d been too softened by staying indoors on hot days like this.
“I waited until my head cleared, and then I went up the stairs and through the open doorway, the door itself having been pushed aside.
“ ‘Fearless squatters,’ I thought, and, as I noted that the door contained a big rectangle of leaded glass, glass that was clean, I was outraged. But I also had the strong sense that no one else was in this house.
“As for the room before me, it was perfectly circular and its unbroken surround of arched windows appeared to be bare of any covering at all. A stairway to the far left led to the floor above, and to the far right was a big heavily rusted iron fireplace, rectangular in shape with a rising chimney pipe and open folding iron doors. It was chock-full of half-burnt wood and ashes. The ashes were spilt out on the floor.
In the center of the room was the most surprising thing: a great marble desk upon an iron frame and a Roman-style chair of leather and gold. The style I mean here is what people today call a director’s chair. But it’s a style as old as Rome.
“Of course I went immediately to this configuration of marvelous furniture, and I discovered modern pens in a heavy gold cylinder, a nest of tall thick candles all melted together on a gold plate and a casual heap of paperback books.
“I fanned out the books and perused their covers. They ranged from what we so arrogantly call popular fiction to books on anthropology, sociology and modern philosophy. Camus, Sartre, de Sade, Kafka. There was a world atlas and a dictionary and several picture dictionaries for children, and also a pocket-size history of ancient Sumer.
“I checked the copyright dates in a few of these books. And I also glanced at the prices. This was all recent, though most were now swollen and soft from the humidity of the swamp.
“The wicks of the candles were black and the pool of wax that surrounded them on the gold plate argued that they had been burnt down quite a ways.
“I was shocked and intrigued. I had a squatter who came here to read. I had a squatter who warmed himself at a fireplace. And the gold chair, how handsome it was, with its soft brown leather seat and back, and its crossed legs, and its ornately carved arms. One little test with my knife assured me that its simple frame was genuine gold. Same with the plate and cylinder which held the pens.
“ ‘Same as the mausoleum outside,’ I whispered.