Legacy Of Terror

thought that it would have been far better to destroy the furniture and remodel the nursery immediately. To live in that house for fifteen years, knowing the nursery was exactly the same, except for the dust, as it had been on the day of the murder, would have worn her nerves to their last. What must it have been like for the children, and especially the younger Gordon, to pass that sealed door and know that the bloody cribs lay beyond it?
    Gordon said, “When you were hired and we had to prepare a room for you, we chose the nursery. Father had outgrown his emotional horror of it. It was opened. The furniture was removed. Carpenters and plasterers were hired to redecorate it, and new furniture was bought to match the rest of the house.”
    Again, Elaine interrupted him. “I don't see what this has to do with Celia Tamlin. Or with me. Or with anything you've done.”
    Gordon held up the knife, as if it were something he had just discovered and wanted them to appreciate. He said, “The cribs were very heavy, antique brass pieces. When I was moving one of them, the knob on the top of one of the two headposts fell off. It had, apparently, been loose for years. I don't know why, but-I tilted the crib and shook it, as if I thought something might be hidden in the brass pipe. Something was. The knife fell out.”
    Bess moaned, and Jerry seemed to draw back against the couch, though he still held his head as if all his discomfort were physical.
    Gordon said, “When I saw it, I knew what it meant.”
    He did not continue, and Elaine was forced to ask, “What did it mean, Gordon? I don't understand you.”
    “She had come back,” Gordon said. His mouth bent in an expression of hurt, and tears clouded his eyes. This was a genuine feeling, not one of the reasonless expressions he had previously seemed unable to control.
    “She?”
    But both Bess and Jerry could answer that. “Amelia,” they said. “Your mother.”
    “Yes,” Gordon answered. “I've always remembered that visit you paid to the medium in Pittsburgh. Mrs. Moses, her name was. You told me about it so many times, before father called it hogwash and forbid you to talk about it any more. When I saw that knife, I knew that Mrs. Moses was right. My mother came back-through me.”
    “Oh, God, God!” Elaine said, overwhelmed by the stupidity, the senselessness of all that had happened. She looked at Bess, who returned her look, and at Jerry who did not, and she said, “Don't you see what you've done to him?”
    “Nothing,” Bess said. “We educated him, that's all. We taught him things they don't teach in schools, but things a person should know about life, anyways.”
    “You planted this idea,” Elaine said. “You set the seed for this insane notion of spiritual possession!”
    She had thought, when she had first seen the ornate stonework of the Matherly house, that it was all too complicated, too fancy and clever for her. She had wondered if the lives of the people who lived in it were equally as silly, as decorative and useless. And now she found that they were, twisted and full of superstition.
    Gordon said, “You can't blame Bess and Jerry for anything. They only told me, once they had seen Mrs. Moses and had the cards read, what I suspected myself. I couldn't believe that my mother would leave me, or that she would do something like this-something-that she might have done-to me. I knew that she wouldn't do anything bad to me-anything like she had done to the twins. And I knew she wouldn't leave me without explaining it to me. Dennis broke down under it. Dennis couldn't sleep nights and didn't want to eat and became listless. It took everything father had to pull him out of it. I was different. I couldn't believe it, I hated to hear people call her a murderer, and so I came to understand that she was only temporarily gone. Mrs. Moses confirmed my suspicions. I did not cry like Dennis did, and I didn't stop eating either. You know,” he said, brightening suddenly, “I even made it a point to clean up my plate at every meal, down to the last crumb. I found an inner strength that was rare in a boy my age, the strength of a man. I was able to stand up against it and find my peace.”
    “It wasn't strength and it wasn't peace you found,” Elaine said. She spoke gently, warmly, for she genuinely pitied him now. “You merely found an excuse, an escape from reality. All this notion that your mother would return, that her spirit-”
    “No,” he said sharply. “It was lasting strength that