Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

“Maybe. You know whose initials they are, don’t you?”

“Christopher Foxworth and Corrine Foxworth,” I replied.

He nodded and kept walking toward Todd.

“They changed their name,” I said. “At least, Christopher did.”

“And why did he do that?”

“They didn’t want anyone to know that they were related.”

“Have you finished reading that diary, Kristin?”

“No.”

“I want you to promise me you’ll get rid of it when you do.”

“Why, Dad? You don’t believe what they said, do you? You don’t really believe the devil was in that house?”

“In one way or another, maybe he was and moved right back in when it was previously restored,” he replied. “Whatever. The less we have to do with what went on there, the better off we’ll be.” He looked back at the structure. “Something in me didn’t want me to take this job, but the money’s so good I couldn’t refuse. It’ll pay for your entire college education.”

“Then that’s the way to look at it, Dad. Something good can come from it. Period, end of sentence,” I said.

I was expecting him to look upset with me because of how firmly I said it, sounding like I was the one giving the orders in this family. Maybe he’d even get very angry and finally show it, I thought, but instead, he looked amazed and then smiled. It threw me off.

“What?” I asked.

“That was exactly how your mother would put it when she wanted to end a discussion. ‘Period, end of sentence,’?” he said.

He walked off, shaking his head, and left me standing there a little amazed myself. I couldn’t say where the words often came from, words I didn’t recall hearing my mother say, or anyone else, for that matter. They just came. Worried that he was taking this all too seriously, I watched him for a few moments, but he got right back into his work. I was tempted to leave, but I didn’t. Instead, I started to walk around the developing house, now pausing when I reached the rear to look up at how high I envisioned it had been once from the pictures and drawings I had seen.

But I also imagined Christopher and Cathy lowering themselves out of the attic on their sheet ladder for their swim that night. Now that the grounds were cleared, I had a better sense of what it must have been like, the distance they had to travel, constantly terrified that they’d be seen. I could almost see them, disappearing like ghosts into the protection of the trees. I looked toward the lake before starting around to return to look closer at the pool being constructed.

“Isn’t it very big?” I asked Todd. My father was talking to one of the workers.

“Biggest I’ve seen at a private house. You should have been here when they started digging the hole for the pool,” he added.

“Why?” I had been to many of my father’s job sites and enjoyed seeing how he made something out of nothing or turned a pig into a princess, but I wasn’t terribly excited about watching the actual work, especially the tedious work of digging a hole for a pool.

“They kept looking for the skeleton of a child,” he said. “Every time they hit a stone or saw some tree roots, they paused, thinking they had found some bones.” He laughed.

My father turned and looked at us, his face full of questions. He walked over to us, expecting me to tell him why Todd was laughing and I wasn’t.

“I’ve got to go home,” I said. “To get ready for dinner with Kane’s sister and her boyfriend.”

“Oh, right. What time are you going?”

“Six thirty.”

“Right. I should be back by six. See you before you leave.”

“Okay,” I said.

I looked at the structure, the grounds, the pool construction, the place on the property where there would be a tennis court, and imagined all of it from the landscape plans I had seen on my father’s desk. There were to be fountains and walkways, gardens and ponds. It was as if whoever was behind this really wanted to develop a property that would erase practically all memory of what it had been. I knew that was the reason my father was aboard so fast.

“It will be something, Dad. You’ll be proud of it. No one will think of it as Foxworth Hall anymore.”

He smiled, nodded, and returned to the work. I headed for my car. I didn’t regret taking the ride over to see my father and what had been done, but I couldn’t shake off this dark feeling of dread that had come over me. Maybe it was that overworked imagination of mine, but suddenly, there were more clouds, shadows grew deeper and longer, and the mountains in the distance looked higher and reminded me of clutches of people who had hoisted their shoulders as if they all had experienced the same sudden chill because something had frightened them. It filled me with a strange sense of foreboding.