Part 38: Ruin-union

Previously in the Vines Inquiry— Lillian and Thomas Voorhees, Harlow’s parents, smashed their car through the front of Vines Manor; (momentarily) saving Frank & Blevin from the cougars. Jumping into action, Thomas armed Blevin with a lead pipe while Lillian tasked Frank within using the house to find Harlow.

Frank demanded an answer—losing some blood that the house drank in the process. With that sacrifice, Lillian (somehow able to command the house) could feel where Harlow was and did what she could to help her daughter.

Upstairs, Harlow heard something sprint past the outside of her door.

Oh, god. Are we there, LoLo?

Was it her door? Stuck her for eternity, or however long she had left before the beasts managed to claw through.

The banging stopped.

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A siphoning anti-crescendo as the roars and yelps were flushed down the hall. Harlow’s door slammed open the wrong way, snapping from its brass hinges and the doorframe. The thick wood swung out into the hall and dented the aging plaster. Harlow fell on her back. 

From where she lay with the wind knocked out her, she could see a vicious, lapping tongue trying to sand her cheek from behind the door. The cougar pinned there panted, its hind legs kicking both ways as it tried to squeeze itself out of the door’s vice. The rotted smell dripping from the creature’s mottled gums brought her back. She coughed, sitting up and catching her air. 

“LoLo!” The voice came to her ears, clear as if Lillian was down the hall in the kitchen, holding a casserole dish in both hands, needing her daughter to open the oven. 

“Momma?” she said back. It was fake again. Like the pool. Had to be. 

“We’re here!”

Harlow didn’t need to be told twice. She got up, using the wainscoting to claw herself to one leg. Down the hall, a swinging door—held fast as if the hinges had rusted closed—vibrated from scratching claws. The other way, the direction of her mother’s voice, was wide open. She took a few tentative steps, her foot whining no matter how slow she went down the path that had been made for her. 

Harlow held out her free hand as she crossed the first open threshold, wary of the door slamming back. She stumbled through as her foot twinged and she fell forward, catching on the swinging door. It stayed where it was, frozen open. Harlow tested the weight of it, leaning more. It did not move. The whole house was holding its breath. Or someone was choking it.          

“I’m coming!” called Harlow, moving as fast as she could. When she reached the corner, a hiccup of doubt came bubbling, but quickly popped away. The path of open doorways continued in front of her. Harlow picked up speed, wincing and limping, but unable to stem the excitement. As she got closer, more sounds came to her. Subdued purring. Her father talking to Blevin about how to fight while wounded. Frank struggling with something, but not dead.  

They’d made it. They’d all made it. And now the cavalry was here.

She rushed forward. Another corner. Another. Each time, she feared a dead end, but no. This was it. The flowers here were fresher. The light fixtures dusted. Another turn. The final turn. 

It was a straight shot down the hall. She was on the second floor, eye level with the chandelier that hung over the foyer. Harlow remembered it that way, figured it that way. If she’d been any higher, she’d be looking at the chain, or heavy iron rods that held the forty-foot-long curtains. 

My god, these people. 

She stumbled down the hall, almost dragging her bad foot now as she scratched along the wall. Okay, she used her nails more than necessary on the ancestral (and ancestrally-delicate) wallpaper, but who could blame her?

Harlow’s heart raced with excitement over panic as the noises from below became clear. She was finally done with time out and coming downstairs for the Christmas party. 

“Frank, the door,” said Lillian. He asked for a pipe. More grunting. 

“I’m coming,” said Harlow, weakly. Out of breath. “I’m almost there.” It was as much to herself as her family. She’d made it. Harlow ran the last few yards, her limp so exhausted she lost control. Her arms sprang out to either side, trying to grab something, but all they found was empty air. “Momma!” 

Lillian looked up just in time for them to lock eyes. “Harlow, no!”

The fear in Lillian’s voice harmonized with that of parents everywhere. The screech as they saw their kid chasing a ball into the street.

Then, “Ooooh.” 

Harlow collided with the railing on the second-floor landing. Her top half folded over the bannister and she let her head hang, sighing. Unharmed, but annoyed.

“Sturdy railings in this house,” she said, peeling herself off the wooden beam, her words a scratchy whisper. 

“Yes!” shouted Frank as Harlow righted herself. “Thank god! Uh, I mean… Just yay. General yay. You know, that’s the advantage of having the stairs flush against the wall like that. I know a lot of people want that opulent ‘WOW’ of a staircase in the center of the foyer. You know the kind. It goes out on both sides at the top?”

“Oh, yeah. Very familiar,” said a stone-faced Lillian. 

“But you’d be surprised how often a sturdy railing comes in handy.”

“We all went to your parents Xanadu party, Frank,” said Thomas. “Makes me miss the roller rink just thinking about it.” 

“Oh. That’s why they themed my tenth birthday party on a movie I’d never seen.”

“That was your birthday?” Frank nodded. “Really? I didn’t see you.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t allowed to leave the kids’ table, but the rollerskating looked fun.”

“Frank,” said Lillian. “The door.”

He went back to yanking and shoving against the parlor doors. The staircase railing wasn’t the only thing that was sturdy. Frank could still hear the Call but knew it wouldn’t wait forever, no matter how busy his parents were at the hospital.

He heaved and hoed and made no progress. Why hadn’t it opened when Lillian did her…whatever she’d done? It was like she’d had a skeleton key to the house. One he was interested in learning more about. Especially if, like Blevin had said, they could be earned. But if that’s what it was, keys, Frank should have one too. The house had been able to tell him where Harlow was. Why not this? 

“Another good question.” Frank stopped struggling and pulled his shirt, unsticking it from his shoulders grown sweaty. Recalling Lillian’s moves, he clapped his hands together, fingers pointed in opposite directions and then smashed one palm flat against the door. It smacked, leaving a bright red handprint. Lillian turned at the noise. 

“Alright, House,” said Frank. “Open up!” 

Frank heard metal sliding against metal as the locks Harlow had set slid out of their holders and the doors flew open with a satisfied clatter. A cascade of accompanying bangs echoed through the manor. 

“Frank, no…” shouted Lillian. “NO!”

She ran for the staircase, for her daughter. Harlow only had time to turn around before the cougar leapt at her. She pushed off the railing with tired, bloodied feet that couldn’t move quick enough. 

They fell together. Harlow and the lion. 

It didn’t move in slow motion like she imagined it would. The cougar’s teeth against her throat. She didn’t feel them going in. Only warmth, an excess of it. Like she might never be anything but hot again. In whatever time she had, she imagined a cashmere turtleneck. She heard her mother crying out. Other gasps. Frank yelling too. Screaming for her. Wailing. Her father dropped his lead pipe. 

But they all faded, pushed away by the gust of her fall. The last thing she heard was bells. 

Lillian’s word still echoed in the foyer as the jagged edge of the marble table brought her daughter to a stillness.  

“Harlow!” screeched Frank. He rushed to her side, everything else forgotten. He reached out to shake her, was afraid to touch her. His hands spasmed next to Harlow’s shoulders as tears came swift and heavy. He flinched back, wary of even those pinpricks of salt hitting one of her wounds. She wasn’t breathing. 

Of course, she’s not breathing. Look at her, Frank. Help her! Help her die. Look what you—No! Don’t look!

Frank couldn’t believe how quick the change came. How hurried death was. He thought it would have been a release, a relief. Steam rising from the last remnants of boiling water in an empty pot. The winding down of your father’s watch. But there she laid. Gone. Immediately.

Faster even than an extinguished candle, for that at least had a siren song of wasting smoke.       

It was too rapid. Too thorough. Harlow had immediately become a sum of parts. Earthen objects that made better friends to the wood floor beneath her than those who mourned. Even her blood seemed to have lost its heat as it pooled around her, riding the canals made by her braids. 

“Harlow,” Frank said again. A declaration. Like “Fire!” “Go!” “ACTION!” Letting the world know she was there. She was still there and wouldn’t go this way. 

“She’s still here,” he said. “She’s still here.” 

Frank found Thomas’ eyes which seemed even farther away than the normal lives they’d all left behind that morning. Thomas didn’t blink. Didn’t seem to breathe. Part of him had gone too. A submarine left without a hatch. Heavy metal waiting to drown, weary of having to continue. 

Lillian stood in one spot with her head and eyes scouring every inch of the manor. Interrogating every cranny; every thread of the rugs, each sliver of metal that formed the doorknobs. Asking how one place could have such a grudge against her. How one measly plot of land could steal so much. Cause so much pain. 

The house would not answer. Not when she needed it most. She should have known. The house, the Vineses, had never seen fit to help her before.