Merrick - Anne Rice [81]
Merrick was as good as her word, and did move back to the “old neighborhood,” but not before building a caretaker’s quarters above the old shed.
The two miserably rundown houses which flanked the house were purchased and demolished, and brick walls went up around three sides of the enormous lot and along the front, coming to meet the high iron picket fence directly before the facade. There was always to be a man on the property; some sort of alarm system was installed; flowers were planted. Feeders were put out for the hummingbirds once more. It all sounded quite wholesome, and natural, but having once seen that house, I was still chilled by frequent stories of how Merrick came and went.
The Motherhouse remained her true home, but many afternoons, according to Aaron, she disappeared into New Orleans and did not return for several days.
“The house is now quietly spectacular,” Aaron wrote to me. “All the furniture was of course repaired and refinished, and Merrick has claimed Great Nananne’s mammoth four-poster for her own. The floors of heart pine have been beautifully redone, giving the house a rather amber glow. Nevertheless, it worries me dreadfully that Merrick secludes herself there for days on end.”
Naturally, I myself wrote to Merrick, broaching the subject of the dreams that had motivated her return to the house.
“I want to tell you about these things but it is too soon,” Merrick replied immediately.
Let me say only that in these dreams it is Great-Oncle Vervain who talks with me. Sometimes I’m a child again as I was on the day he died. Other times we are adults together. And it seems, though I cannot with uniform success remember everything, in one dream we were both young.
For now, you mustn’t worry. You must realize that it was inevitable that I should return to my childhood home. I am of an age when people become curious about the past, especially when it has been sealed off so successfully and abruptly as was mine.
Understand, I do not feel guilt for having abandoned the house where I grew up. It is only that my dreams are telling me that I must return. They tell me other things as well.
These letters worried me, but Merrick gave only brief responses to my queries.
Aaron had also become concerned. Merrick was spending less and less time at Oak Haven. Often he made the drive into New Orleans to call upon her at the old house, that is, until Merrick asked to be left alone.
Of course, such a manner of living is not uncommon among Talamasca members. Frequently they divide their time between the Motherhouse and a private family home. I had and still do have a home in the Cotswolds in England. But it is not a good sign when a Member absents herself from the Order for long periods of time. In Merrick’s case it was particularly disturbing due to her frequent and cryptic mentions of her dreams.
During the fall of that fateful year, her twenty-fifth, Merrick wrote to me about a journey to the cave.
Let me continue with my reconstruction here of her words:
“David, I no longer sleep through the night without a dream of my Great-Oncle Vervain. Yet less and less am I able to recall the substance of these dreams. I know only that he wants me to return to the cave I visited in Central America when I was a child. David, I must do this. Nothing can prevent it. The dreams have become a form of obsession, and I ask that you not bombard me with logical objections to what you know I must do.”
She went on to talk about her treasure.
I have been through all of the so-called Olmec treasures, and I know now they are not Olmec at all. In fact, I can’t identify them, though I have every published book or catalog on antiquities in that part of the world. As for the destination itself, I have what I remember, and some writings by my Oncle Vervain, and the papers of Matthew Kemp, my beloved stepfather of years ago.
I want