A Nest of Nightmares

The big kitchen was warm and felt comforting after the outside air. Marilyn leaned against the sink to catch her breath and let herself relax. But she felt tense. The house seemed unnaturally quiet with all the children away at school. Marilyn smiled wryly at herself. A week before, the children had been driving her crazy with their constant noise and demands, and now that they were safely away at school for nine hours every day she felt uncomfortable.

From one extreme to the other, thought Marilyn. The story of my life.

Only a year ago she and Derek, still newly married, were making comfortable plans to have a child – perhaps two – ‘someday’.

Then Joan – Derek’s ex-wife – had decided she’d had her fill of mothering, and almost before Marilyn had time to think about it, she’d found herself with a half-grown daughter.

And following quickly on that event – while Marilyn and Kelly were still wary of each other – Derek’s widowed sister had died, leaving her four children in Derek’s care.

Five children! Perhaps they wouldn’t have seemed like such a herd if they had come in typical fashion, one at a time with a proper interval between.

It was the children, too, who had made living in New York City seem impossible. This house had been in Derek’s family since it was built, but no one had lived in it for years. It had been used from time to time as a vacation home, but the land had nothing to recommend it to vacationers; no lakes or mountains, and the weather was usually unpleasant. It was inhospitable country, a neglected corner of New York state.

It should have been a perfect place for writing – their friends all said so. An old house, walls soaked in history, set in a brooding, rocky landscape, beneath an unlittered sky, far from the distractions and noise of the city. But Derek could write anywhere – he carried his own atmosphere with him, a part of his ingrained discipline – and Marilyn needed the bars, restaurants, museums, shops and libraries of a large city to fill in the hours when words could not be commanded.

The silence was suddenly too much to bear. Derek wasn’t typing – he might be wanting conversation. Marilyn walked down the long dark hallway – thinking to herself that this house needed more light fixtures, as well as pictures on the walls and rugs on the cold wooden floors.

Derek was sitting behind the big parson’s table that was his desk, cleaning one of his sixty-seven pipes. The worn but richly patterned rug on the floor, the glow of lamplight, and the books which lined the walls made this room, the library and Derek’s office, seem warmer and more comfortable than the rest of the house.

‘Talk?’ said Marilyn, standing with her hand on the doorknob.

‘Sure, come on in. I was just stuck on how to get the chief slave into bed with the mistress of the plantation without making her yet another clichéd nymphomaniac.’

‘Have him comfort her in time of need,’ Marilyn said. She closed the door on the dark hallway. ‘He just happens to be on hand when she gets a letter informing her of her dear brother’s death. In grief, and as an affirmation of life, she and the slave tumble into bed together.’

‘Pretty good,’ Derek said. ‘You got a problem I can help you with?’

‘Not a literary one,’ she said, crossing the room to his side. Derek put an arm around her. ‘I was just wondering if we couldn’t get a horse for Kelly. I was out to look at the barn. It’s all boarded and locked up, but I’m sure we could get in and fix it up. And I don’t think it could cost that much to keep a horse or two.’

‘Or two,’ he echoed. He cocked his head and gave her a sly look. ‘You sure you want to start using a barn with a rather grim history?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t I ever tell you the story of how my – hmmm – great-uncle, I guess he must have been – my great-uncle Martin, how he died?’

Marilyn shook her head, her expression suspicious.

‘It’s a pretty gruesome story.’

‘Derek . . .’

‘It’s true, I promise you. Well . . . remember my first slave novel?’

‘How could I forget? It paid for our honeymoon.’

‘Remember the part where the evil boss-man who tortures his slaves and horses alike is finally killed by a crazed stallion?’

Marilyn grimaced. ‘Yeah. A bit much, I thought. Horses aren’t carnivorous.’

‘I got the idea for that scene from my great-uncle Martin’s death. His horses – and he kept a whole stable – went crazy, apparently. I don’t know if they actually ate him, but he was pretty chewed up when someone found his body.’ Derek shifted in his chair. ‘Martin wasn’t known to be a cruel man. He didn’t abuse his horses; he loved them. He didn’t love Indians, though, and the story was that the stables were built on ground sacred to the Indians, who put a curse on Martin or his horses in retaliation.’

Marilyn shook her head. ‘Some story. When did all this happen?’

‘Around 1880.’

‘And the barn has been boarded up ever since?’