Mark Edward Hall

Chapter 5

“I am an artist,” Annie had proclaimed without conceit on the very day she and Doug had met. It was almost the first thing she had said to him, in fact, as though she were setting ground rules around which the two could establish a relationship. Doug had been left with little doubt that art was Annie’s calling. Regardless of her position in life as sole heiress of a political and financial dynasty and the responsibilities that went along with that position, Annie considered herself first and foremost an artist. They’d met at the University of Maine in Orono. It was their first day of classes, freshman year when Annie had made her proclamation.

“Oh?” Doug had replied. “What sort of artist are you?”

“I paint pictures,” she said.

“Pictures? Lots of artists do that. What kind of pictures?”

“Whatever comes to mind,” she said with a broad and beautiful smile, her mysterious eyes twinkling. Doug was lost in them almost immediately.

The University of Maine was the only school Doug could afford, and he was grateful to be there. Annie could have afforded anything, but that’s where she’d decided to go. At first Doug had been skeptical, little rich bitch slumming with the commoners, but the better he’d gotten to know her, the more he believed she was sincere. She was bright, and so filled with life. Like she was tasting freedom for the first time.

Little did he know.

And she was indeed an artist. As he would later discover, her work was both beautiful and strangely unnerving. She’d told Doug that she’d been painting since the age of two, much to her father’s chagrin. He had wanted her to become a lawyer, a diplomat, a statesman. Artists didn’t change the world, he’d told her. They were merely mute observers, albeit, documenters, of the changes wrought by the world’s true movers and shakers.

She’d begged to differ, however, reminding her father that artists such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Dylan and the Beatles had indeed been more than observers and documenters. They had shaped events, probably in more profound ways than any politician or businessman ever had.

“Not the sort of difference I want my daughter to make,” he’d told her, and went about the task of doing everything in his power to discourage Annie’s artistic pursuits.

To no avail. She would be an artist at all costs and the only way to accomplish it, at least in her way of thinking, was to abandon her life of privilege and live among ordinary people. Annie could have lived anywhere, yet she claimed to actually like living in the dorm, sharing her space with dozens of other young people. Doug had later learned that her growing up years had been so sheltered and lonely that by the time she escaped her father’s influence she’d been literally starved for the companionship of other human beings. And something he didn’t find out until years later; the close proximity of other people, “sane and normal people” is how she’d put it, helped in some small way to keep her demons at bay. Doug could only guess what terrible baggage lay at her core. Back then she rarely talked in detail about her childhood. Whenever Doug broached the subject she’d tell him that it had no relevance to the person she was now. And Doug hadn’t pressed her. Truth was, he sensed something volatile at her core and he did not want her to erupt.

Annie liked bicycle riding on campus. Doug knew this because he would ride with her for hours, talking and dreaming, feeling the cool, clean New England air in their faces. She grew to love the great outdoors, hiking and backpacking—experiences which were totally new for her. Doug remembered sitting on the edge of a wilderness lake with Annie in the gathering dusk listening to the call of wild loons. She was like a kid caught up in the miracle of discovery. She carried within her the grace and refinement of money and breeding, yet she had the sensibility and compassion of an ordinary person. But Antoinette De Roché was far from an ordinary person. Doug had sensed this from the beginning, and he had been in love almost from the moment they’d met.

From what Doug had been able to glean, Annie had grown up in a whirlwind of wealth, privilege and power. There had been mention early on about her father having descended from some obscure French Royal bloodline. But it had just been in passing and the truth was, Doug did not care about those sorts of things so he had never pressed her for details. She’d been born in Boston where her parents had a home, lived in Palm Harbor Florida, where they had another, and in various places around the globe including France, the United Kingdom and Barbados, all places her father had business ties, some of which he’d done diplomatic work for several U.S presidents. She’d often jokingly referred to her stint at the University of Maine as slumming. In truth her choice of school had been an act of rebellion against a domineering father and a mother who was so unhappy and indifferent she spent half her life sleeping, the other half drunk, drugged or both. Annie was a perfect mix of her two parents, Doug surmised. Like her father, Annie was stubborn and fiercely independent. Doug sensed that this irritated her father. He’d wanted someone more compliant, like his wife, a daughter he could mold and manipulate to his liking. She’d gotten her mother’s beauty, grace and compassion, however, along with an unhealthy share of her insecurity. In the years since Doug had met Annie he’d found her contradictions to be a volatile mix. Up one minute and down the next. She was a balancing act, but to Doug, well worth the effort.

Her father had literally kept her prisoner until it was time for her to attend university. He’d been infuriated when she’d chosen a small state university over some of the most prestigious ivy-league colleges on the east coast. He’d tried to stop her, of course, but with warnings to stay out of her way, Annie had escaped his influence and vowed she’d never go back.

De Roché didn’t take no easily, however. He’d tried everything in his power to talk sense into his daughter. But she’d had a will of her own. Then she met Doug, and that had been the icing on the cake. They dated off and on until their senior year. When she’d decided to marry him, De Roché had gone nearly mad.

In the end he had reluctantly relinquished her, of course. Annie had made her wishes perfectly clear; it was either lose her altogether, or gain a son-in-law. De Roché opted for the latter, albeit reluctantly, and the relationship between Doug and De Roché had always been filled with resentment and rivalry.

Up until that moment, De Roché had been arrogantly confident of his daughter’s eventual acquiescence. He believed she would come to her senses. Big miscalculation on his part. Eight years had passed since the marriage, and Annie had not relented, and the resentment had only deepened. Communication between parents and daughter had become less and less frequent until it was nearly non-existent.

“Excuse me, Mr. McArthur.”

Doug started. “Yeah?”

The reproving attendant had broken his reverie. He didn’t like her at all. There was something about her . . . something more than her smug attitude. Doug knew things. He had instincts and his instincts said that this woman was more than a simple flight attendant. “Sorry to disturb you,” she said, voice dripping with saccharine. “But it’s time to fasten your seatbelts. We’re about to land in Tampa.”

“Annie, wake up.”

He had to shake her to bring her out of her Valium-induced stupor. She stared at him dumbly, as if she was seeing him for the first time. Recognition finally dawning on her face, Annie smiled wanly and said, “Hey, Dougie-boy. We there yet?” She was drunk on the Valium. Out of her senses. Doug no longer recognized her. All their work, years of effort, had all been eroded in one morning of chaos. Annie had reverted back to type, and the realization was freaking him out. But had she changed suddenly or had it been a gradual transformation? Worse was the possibility that the real Annie had been there all along, hiding from him, as if the woman he thought he knew was a construction, covering something else altogether.

Such pursuits were useless, he knew, and he did not wish to go down that path. One thing was certain: the closer he and Annie got to De Roché’s world the less he recognized her. She’d spent the past eight years convincing him that she’d escaped her father’s powerful influence. Now Doug was sure of nothing. Something unnatural and a little frightening flickered in Annie’s eyes. Doug flinched, for he thought he recognized the same fluttering darkness that accompanied his own worst nightmares, the ones he’d tried for so long to cast out. Then, like a thief in the night, the vision was gone, and he could not say with any real certainty that it had been there at all. Now what he saw were Annie’s beautiful baby blues staring dazedly back at him from a sad and pallid face. He was paranoid. He understood this. But more than that, he was scared.

There was still so much he did not know about Annie and her family; so much he’d never cared to know. He suddenly felt as if he’d been living in the dark for the past decade and now he was about to emerge into the light. A cold prickling sensation began at the base of his spine, swiftly progressing northward through his brain stem. The sensation settled in his frontal lobe making his brain squeal. He lowered his head feeling the dim stirrings of the migraine that was almost certain to follow. He reached his hand up and massaged the place where the bridge of his nose met his skull, the place where a long-lost seven year old friend had unwittingly driven a bone shard into his frontal lobe. Behind Doug’s eyes the black and ethereal fluttering that had been so much a part of his youth blossomed and took wing, momentarily blinding him with fear and dread.

My name is Trinity and I need your help, a voice as clear as day said inside his head. Won’t you please help me, mister? I’m in the House of Bones and I don’t know how to get out.

Doug moaned; he was totally freaked, afraid that it was all going to come back on him again. Dear God, he begged of his maker. I can’t do this. Don’t you see? I’ve never been able to help even one of them, no matter how hard they pleaded. And I can’t help this one either. No matter how much I want to.

“We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes,” he told Annie, his heart sinking with the thought of what lay ahead of him. He reached over and squeezed Annie’s paint-stained hand. It fell limply back into her lap as though she’d felt nothing at all.

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