Twisted Tales from a Murderous Mind Read online

  “These are just the kind of stories I’d like to write…if I were still alive.”

  Edgar Allan Poe

  TWISTED TALES

  FROM A

  MURDEROUS MIND

  By Linda Ungar

  © 2018

  ISBN: 9781543933055

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Her Last Will

  2. Tapestry/Part One

  3. Part Two/Unraveled

  4. Change of Heart

  5. Mirror Image

  6. Miss Fortune

  HER LAST WILL

  “I can’t believe that I have you two together again.” Amelia, withered and pale, smiled as she settled back on to her pillows. Amelia, now confined to bed, was a victim of time. Time the master thief – silent, never seen. Only when it passes is it apparent what has been lost. “Your being here brings back so many memories. Do you remember how it was when we were all girls? Poor Daddy, what a bother we were in those days, always running to him with our troubles, and he left alone when Mommy died after catching your chicken pox. Of course you girls were too young to remember.”

  “But you always remind us, don’t you Amelia?” sniffed Rose. Her resolve to remain calm, shattered. Amelia continued as if nothing had been said. “Why I don’t know how that man put up with all that squabbling going on! Mommy swore you two fought in the womb. She’d say it was the only explanation for all the turmoil she felt inside. Charlotte, you really were wicked hiding that doll Rose got for Christmas when you were six…on the day she got it, too!” Amelia’s eyes narrowed as she twisted her head to smile at Charlotte.

  “You still remember that? Hmm…I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve given that incident a thought. You certainly have an amazing memory Amelia.”

  “It’s part of my life and I’m not about to relinquish a moment of it, unless I absolutely have to. Though it looks to me as if I don’t have much longer. Knowing that makes my memories even more precious.”

  “Oh hush now!” Rose said anxiously, and went about adjusting Amelia’s blanket and pillows, as if that could put everything into its proper order.

  “I don’t like to hear you talk like that either,” agreed Charlotte. “You just have to be patient, you’ll begin to feel stronger before too long. I know it’s hard waiting for what you want. You never did learn to have any patience, did you?” She turned her head quickly away from Amelia’s fixed gaze, blinking back the tears, her eyes searched the room intently.

  “Well, I see you haven’t changed anything in here since Daddy died. It’s almost like a museum. How about freshening this place up, give it some life! By getting some new curtains and throwing out that old…”

  “Charlotte,” Amelia rasped sharply, “I’m getting rather tired now.” Her voice softened somewhat as she continued, “Why don’t you two unpack your things, take a short rest and then go downstairs and have something to eat. Mrs. Mulden has already prepared platters and left them in the refrigerator for you. We’ll be able to talk later, when we’re all feeling more refreshed.” Charlotte left abruptly; walking quickly down the long hall to her old room, she felt perturbed at Amelia’s irritability. “I just don’t know what will set that woman off,” she thought. She unpacked at a furious pace. Rose, leaning over Amelia’s bed, kissed her. “Have a good rest dear, we’ll see you later.” She was relieved to be able to leave her sisters and looked forward to a luxurious nap. She tired easily, the long drive had been fatiguing.

  The afternoon sun cast its lengthening shadows over Charlotte and Rose as they sat having lunch at the well-worn kitchen table. Charlotte, still greedily chewing her food, turned her critical eyes on the kitchen. “I see she hasn’t gotten rid of a thing down here either. Why, that woman acts as if she hadn’t a penny. With all Daddy left, you’d think that…”

  “You’d think,” Rose snapped, “that you’d have learned by now not raise that subject. You know damn well how Amelia is about Daddy. I don’t believe she’s ever gotten over his death. Why she’s practically appointed herself guardian of his memory. You and I had families to raise, but think how it was for poor Amelia, all alone with nothing but her memories.”

  “Well it’s what she wanted or she wouldn’t have done it. She always did exactly what she wanted.”

  “How can you say that Charlotte!” Rose’s voice grew louder, “Amelia was only trying to…” They snapped at each other until Mrs. Mulden hurried into the room to stifle their argument.

  “Don’t you know we can hear you all the way upstairs? Where’s your sense? At a time like this, going at it like a pair of fighting cocks. You know what it does to Miss Amelia when you two fight!” Mrs. Mulden scolded on, “She doesn’t have anyone else in the world. I know she’s told me dozens of times how she promised her father on his deathbed that she’d take care of you. Why only last night I heard her worrying to herself – ‘I must take care of them, I must take care of them.’ She kept repeating that. I had a time settling her down for sleep. And now this! You don’t make my job any too easy.” Charlotte and Rose were silenced.

  “I’m sorry,” was all that Charlotte could finally think to say. “I don’t know why I get so quarrelsome, I’m not usually like this.” Rose threw her a sharp look, but Mrs. Mulden’s massive presence discouraged any further discord.

  “Well,” Rose said, trying to smile at Mrs. Mulden, “you’re looking quite well, especially considering the strain you’ve been working under.”

  “To tell you the truth Miss Rose, I don’t feel all that well. As soon as this whole ordeal is over, I’m going to retire and move in with my son and his family. He keeps asking me, you know. I wouldn’t have considered it a year ago, but today…I’m just not sure I can face old age alone. But from the way Miss Amelia’s been feeling, I don’t think my retirement is that far off.” A self-conscious silence overcame the three women.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Mulden forcing them out of the moment, “why don’t you two put on some cheerful faces and go up and talk to your sister. I know she’s awake-by now …thanks to you two,” she muttered peevishly to herself. Rose and Charlotte stood up and obediently followed Mrs. Mulden’s instructions.

  “If they aren’t like contrite children,” Mrs. Mulden mused, as her gaze followed them up the stairs.

  “Amelia, are you up?” Rose was tapping gently at her sister’s door.

  “Of course I am, you can come in now. Did you have a nice lunch?” Her question, aimed at embarrassing her quarrelsome sisters, was cloaked in a honeyed voice. Charlotte and Rose looked at each other sheepishly. Their heads slightly bowed, neither felt entirely prepare for the difficulty of facing Amelia. Amelia smiled at the sight of them so obviously subdued.

  “Was that a triumphant smile?” Charlotte wondered to herself as she drew nearer to the bed and sat in the place she had occupied earlier. Rose also seated herself in the chair she had been in that morning.

  “Did you have a good lunch?” Amelia inquired again, still smiling. Rose shifted uneasily in her chair.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mulden is quite a good cook.”

  “Oh I know that. She’s a rare treasure, that one. I can’t think of a sweeter, more devoted person in the world. You can’t imagine all the kindness and consideration that she’s shown to me during my illness, and it’s no small sacrifice on her part. She’s no youngster, you know!” Charlotte felt tension constricting her body while Amelia went on talking. She had the disquieting suspicion that Amelia was unfavorably comparing her sisters to Mrs. Mulden. Was Amelia deliberately trying to hurt them?

  “I must be overwrought,” Charlotte thought trying to rest her fears, “I must be upset over the shrewish
way I behave whenever Rose and I get together.” Charlotte’s conscience chastised her further with the remembrance of her own vicious tongue. It was mainly Charlotte, but Rose too, who could lash out with her hateful words, and wound anyone unfortunate enough to enrage her.

  The next few days of the visit were spent trying to avoid any upsetting remarks, but even the most seemingly innocent comment would remind one of the sisters of some past hurt, some bitter half-buried memory. Their being together was an ordeal, just as it always had been. To have it be otherwise would require that the sisters be otherwise.

  Charlotte wondered if she were mostly to blame for the rift. She felt a need to love her sisters, for Charlotte’s world, though glutted with people, was curiously devoid of any real friendship. She hungered for just one place where she would be welcomed and loved. There were times, only when she had not been in contact with Amelia and Rose for several months, when she felt the rigid knot of hatred loosening its grip, allowing the beginnings of remorse to strain through her. Perhaps she had judged her sisters too harshly. They had all been different people then. If she could forget their past, she could become optimistic about their future.

  But the next reunion of the sisters would follow the pattern of the past. It was as though another person lived hidden in the unknown recesses of Charlotte’s unconscious. One who listened to her resolutions, remaining dormant until some cue would suddenly waken her, and pushing Charlotte violently aside, burst free. It was then that she found herself losing control, flying into a frenzy, and accusing Rose or Amelia of some past maliciousness. The gap between them grew wider, the edges sharper and more dangerous to bridge.

  Though Amelia pretended to be the peacemaker of the family, she too harbored no kindness toward either sister. She would have agreed that Charlotte was the major cause of the rift within the family, but she was not unaware that without Rose’s viciously wagging tongue fanning the sparks, their explosive tempers would never have ignited. Amelia had long since controlled her own violent eruptions, cooled slowly over many bleak years. Her once molten anger had hardened like impenetrable lava, encroaching upon the place where her living heart once beat.

  She scrutinized her sisters’ behavior during the visit, experiencing a cold satisfaction in their continued quarreling. They were proving what no longer needed proving. Amelia’s sick, martyred face would stare reproachfully at them. Her expression eloquent — hateful wretches — it screamed, while she remained mute.

  She continued her reticence while her somber reflection led her back, only half unwillingly, through other days, to yet another battle raging between Charlotte and Rose. Daddy had come home early from his office that still August afternoon. Pale and fatigued, he longed only to free himself of his stifling clothing and to find refuge from the beating sun on the long-shadowed veranda that snaked around the gray stone house.

  He sat leaden in his high-backed rocking chair, too exhausted to sip the icy lemonade that Amelia had brought him. The air was becalmed; only the bees hungrily extracting fragrant sweetness from the wilting flowers seemed able to move through the intense heat.

  “I did not!” Rose’s high-pitched shriek ripped through the stillness like a sudden bolt of jagged lightning.

  “You’re the only one who knew that I had it, and now it’s gone!” Charlotte sobbed.

  “What makes you think I’d even want your ridiculous locket?” Their madness persisted.

  The weakened man moved heavily in his chair. His hands, groping uncertainly at the sides of the rocker, seemed to search for support. His greyed face strained at the horrible sounds.

  “I can never find peace, not even here in my own home,” he whispered lifelessly.

  “What was that Daddy?” Amelia hovered solicitously over his chair. “Are they bothering you?” She waved her arm angrily in the direction of the voices. “I’ll just go and put an end to this!” She turned, about to go into the house, but the distress contorting her father’s face stopped her.

  “Amelia, you’ve got to stop those girls, they’re going to destroy each other someday. I can’t stand much more of it myself. They’ve got to be stopped,” he breathed heavily. “I feel like my chest is caving in. I can’t seem to catch my breath in this air.”

  Amelia stood transfixed, as if she were in a nightmare, helpless to alter the scene playing out before her unwilling eyes. Charlotte and Rose oblivious of everything except their own hostilities kept up their awful screaming.

  “They’re killing him,” Amelia’s brain raced wildly, though she was still unable to move. “They’re poisoning the air with their venom. That’s why Daddy can’t breathe, they’re killing him…”

  He died before the searing light faded from the relentless August sky. The weeks following her father’s death were a merciful haze. A high fever and delirium dulled her pain. Lost in fevered sleep, she dreamt that policemen had come, sirens screaming, in a long hearse to take Charlotte and Rose. They were hung for her father’s death. When the fever subsided, she awoke to find her sisters standing over her bed. In those first moments of consciousness, she thought that she must have died with them.

  “No, you’re not dead silly,” Rose had smiled at her. “You’ve just had a very high fever.”

  Amelia remained confused; the dream had been so real, it was right that her sisters had died. She pulled towards reality. “The wages of sin are…,” unable to finish her thought, she sank back into the pillow, exhausted from her effort, she drifted helplessly into sleep. No, time does not heal all wounds. Some can fester an eternity. Some can rupture anew at the slightest provocation, inflicting a fresh agony, a throbbing pain that does not diminish.

  During their last hours together, Charlotte labored to bring about conciliation. She wanted desperately for Amelia to feel that there was peace among them, if only to assuage her own guilt. “I was down in the library this morning with Rose, having our coffee, when I saw your portrait. I haven’t seen it for years. I can’t believe that portrait was painted in 1935 for your eighteenth birthday. I know people always say it seems like yesterday, but it really does. What a beauty you were then, Amelia. That smile…I remember all the young men it dazzled. Why, you were always considered the most beautiful of the Rupert sisters!”

  Rose, also eager to make amends and eager not to be cut out of Amelia’s will, joined in Charlotte’s attempts at making peace. She added to her sister’s compliment, “You had so much to smile about then, your youth, your beauty, your always having life your own way…”

  “Life my way!” Amelia interrupted irritably. “What makes you think that?” Rose laughed, “Oh come on Amelia, don’t get so upset. You know you always could twist anybody to do your bidding… Daddy, all those boyfriends you had.”

  “If I’m so capable of getting everyone to do my bidding, how is it that I can’t get you two to stop your quarreling? No, I haven’t gotten my way in everything. But perhaps I still do have something to smile about. I have you two now, don’t I?” Her wrinkled hands reached out for theirs and held them for just a moment. She had a surprising grip for one so close to death.

  Amelia’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, “It’s going to be hard to give up everything, to leave my home, and I won’t be seeing you again, will I?” Turning her trembling head to gaze at each of her sisters, she sobbed uncontrollably. She was more distraught than either of the women had ever seen her.

  Charlotte quickly searched for a handkerchief on Amelia’s night table. Her fingers ferreting among the medicines, photographs, and magazines that crowded the small table. She almost toppled over the alarm clock whose relentless ticking had unnerved the sisters during many of their uncomfortable silences. She found a handkerchief and wiped Amelia’s pale, hot face. Charlotte spoke soothingly as she dried the streaming tears. “Don’t cry, and don’t worry about having to give up everything, you never did before. Everything will be fine. We’re here now, aren’t we? We always will be. There’s nothing for you to wor
ry about.”

  Charlotte’s words seemed to have calmed Amelia. She smiled faintly, closed her eyes and slept.

  Charlotte and Rose sat in the small hot room listening to the attorney’s droning voice mingling with the humid air. It lulled Rose into drowsiness, reminding her of her childhood nap time when alone in her quiet room she would hear the soothing drone of a plane flying high, hidden among the clouds.

  “And to Mrs. Mulden, my devoted…” the voice continued. “God!” thought Charlotte, “if you don’t listen to the words, it sounds just like the eulogy given at Amelia’s funeral. The same modulated voice feigning humility in the presence of death, the same stilted language conveying the same lack of feeling for the deceased.”

  “And to Charlotte and Rose my dear sisters who…”

  Rose startled from her drowsiness, bolted upright in her chair, then leaned forward intent on hearing every word. Charlotte also sat at attention in her place next to Rose. The two women listened in satisfaction as they heard the remainder of Amelia’s considerable fortune being divided between them. The only worry that marred the enjoyment of the moment was their concern that they did not appear sufficiently bereft over their recent loss. Both women had involuntarily smiled as they calculated their new riches.

  The income from the aforesaid real and personal property is to be distributed annually for a period of ten years in equal shares to my sisters Charlotte and Rose, at the end of the ten-year period all of my property is to be distributed equally to my said sisters. The sole condition to each such distribution is that my sisters Charlotte and Rose shall remain two weeks together in my home with no other person or persons for company. Only after completing the two-week visit are they to receive their annual distribution. This is my final attempt to bring my sisters together.