He darted out into the moonlight. Panting, not yelling, not laughing, he ran toward her across the grass, to the tiles of the swimming pool, across the tiles, around the pool and toward the sycamores.
She stood waiting for him, arms outstretched to take him into their soft embrace, sycamore shadows stirring over her cocktail dress, setting it into dreamy motion.
He said, “Ellie, is that you?”
He reached the rim of stirring shadow and screamed. The universe seemed to explode. The cocktail dress whirled madly, toppling in a drunken insanity. The Trunk Lady bent and there came a hoarse panting sound. She was fainting.
No! She was falling! A shadow hit him across the face, jarring his senses, once, twice, three times. He fell to his knees and before he could rise fingers were over his face, fingers that numbed him, gripping tight his sobbing mouth.
Mother!
The thought slammed him! Mother, dressed in the Trunk Lady’s cocktail dress. Decoying him out into her arms, fooling him.
Mother, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! he tried to cry. I’m sorry I tried to bring the police! Mother, you love Father—is that why you killed Ellie? Mother, let me go! Mother, you looked so much like her standing in the sycamore shadows!
But the hands would not let him go. There was a rushing, a body against him. A series of shocks. The fingers were so strong
, so much thicker than they should be. Much thicker! Johnny screamed inwardly, drawing air in an awful slobbering whistle.
The house leaned over him as if to collapse and crush him in its fall. The great old sleeping house with everyone sleeping in it, unaware that this silent struggle was happening by the flat shine of the pool.
Suddenly he realized that it was not Mother, not the Trunk Lady. The fingers were too strong. Who is stronger than Mother, sterner, more quick and hard?
Grandmother, perhaps?
The body was too hard against him. He half broke free and saw the flat of moonlight, the filmy cocktail dress lying alone, sprawled—and a mannequin hand thrown out into light. The mannequin was on the ground, dead, plastic, cold. Someone else was behind Johnny, holding, fighting.
Cousin William!
But there was no smell of cognac. The actions were the actions of a sober man. The breath was clean and clear and quick, almost sobbing.
Father!
Dad he tried to yell. Don’t, don’t, please don’t!
Then a voice was talking. Something black and small clattered on the tiles beside the swirling water, and Johnny suddenly knew. The hands were tight, the voice tighter, whispering. “You hurt your mother!”
I didn’t mean to, Johnny screamed inwardly.
“If it hadn’t been for you,” said the voice, whispering, “your mother would never have known about the Dark One dying!”
I didn’t mean to find the Trunk Lady, cried Johnny silently, fighting.
“It’ll kill her, the shock of it. If she dies, I won’t want to live. She’s all I’ve had ever since twenty years ago when it all happened!”
The voice husked on: “Ellie came to the party. They tried to fool me, make out she was somebody else. But I guessed. She came upstairs in her cocktail gown and I gave her a glass of brandy with sleeping powder in it, and I put her to gentle sleep in the old old trunk. Nobody would have known if you hadn’t looked. Ellie would have just disappeared forever. Only Grandma and me would know! But you’re Dark, too, you’re Dark, just like Ellie!” the voice whispered. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I see her face! So, now—”
The Dark One. Johnny’s mind spun, ached, and thrust to get free. Uncle Flinny!
Uncle Flinny, he thought. Why do you call Ellie the Dark One? Why? Your bedtime stories, Uncle Flinny. For so many years you’ve told the same story, the same strange story about the Dark One and the beautiful woman, and now the Dark One came to be my teacher, and why did you kill her! What did she do to you? Why do you call her the Dark One? What does the bedtime story mean? I don’t know.
“Don’t kill me, Uncle Flinny. The water’s cold and shining tonight. I don’t want to be under the cold shine of it.”
Johnny grabbed onto the body behind him and fell forward. The two of them plunged screaming into the pool. There was a great plunging nausea. The fingers released him. There was a fighting in wet darkness, water stabbing his nostrils, bubbles breaking from his lips.
When Johnny broke surface there was a great sound of air rising from below, a dim surging of an old man jerking against the lazy tide. The man never came to the surface again. Just the bubbles came.…
Johnny was crying, screaming to himself as he dragged himself from the pool and saw her lying there so lonely and tired— the mannequin in the cocktail dress. His foot knocked something dark and small rolling on the tiles. He picked it up. One of the dark chess pieces Uncle Flinny was always stealing from the chess set in Grandma’s room.