Read Online Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice - Free Book Online

murky now, this portrait of Virginia Lee, but the style was robust and faintly emotional, and the woman herself, blond with eyes of blue, was very honest to look at, and modest, and smiling, with small features and an undeniably pretty face. She was dressed ornately in the style of the 1880s, in a high-necked dress of sky blue with long sleeves puckered at the shoulders, and her hair heaped on the top of her head. She had been the grandmother of Aunt Queen, and I always saw a certain likeness in these portraits, in the eyes and the shape of the faces, though others claimed they could not. But then . . .
    And they had more than casual associations for me, these portraits, especially that of Virginia Lee. Aunt Queen I had still with me. But Virginia Lee . . . I shuddered but repressed those alien memories of ghosts and grotesqueries. Too much was taking my mind by storm.
    â€œYes, why not your home, and the repository of your ancestors’ treasures?” Lestat remarked innocently. “I don’t understand.”
    â€œWell, when I was growing up,” I said in answer to his question, “my grandma and grandpa were living then, and this was a sort of hotel. A bed-and-breakfast was what they called it. But they served dinner down here in the dining room as well. Lots of tourists came up this way to spend some time in it. We still have the Christmas banquet every year, with singers who stand on the staircase for the final caroling, while the guests gather here in the hall. It all seems very useful at times like that. This last year I had a midnight Easter banquet as well, just so I could attend it.”
    A sense of the past shook me, frightening me with its vitality. I pressed on, guiltily trying to wring something from the earliest memories. What right had I to good times now, or memories?
    â€œI love the singers,” I said. “I used to cry with my grandparents when the soprano sang ‘O Holy Night.’ Blackwood Manor seems powerful at such times—a place to alter people’s lives. You can tell I’m still very caught up in it.”
    â€œHow does it alter people’s lives?” he asked quickly, as if the idea had hooked him.
    â€œOh, there’ve been so many weddings here.” My voice caught. Weddings. A hideous memory, a recent memory overshot all, a shameful awful memory—blood, her gown, the taste of it—but I forced it out of my mind. I went on:
    â€œI remember lovely weddings, and anniversary banquets. I remember a picnic on the lawn for an elderly man who had just turned ninety. I remember people coming back to visit the site where they’d been married.” Again came that stabbing recollection—a bride, a bride covered in blood. My head swam.
    You little fool, you’ve killed her. You weren’t supposed to kill her, and look at her white dress.
    I wouldn’t think of it yet. I couldn’t be crippled with it yet. I’d confess it all to Lestat, but not yet.
    I had to continue. I stammered. I managed.
    â€œSomewhere there’s an old guest book with a broken quill pen crushed in it, full of comments by those who came and went and came again. They’re still coming. It’s a flame that hasn’t gone out.”
    He nodded and smiled faintly as though this pleased him. He looked again at the portrait of Virginia Lee.
    A vague shimmer passed over me. Had the portrait changed? Vague imaginings that her lovely blue eyes looked down at me. But she would never come to life for me now, would she? Of course she wouldn’t. Hers had been a famous virtue and magnanimity. What would she have to do with me now?
    â€œAnd these days,” I pressed on, fastening to my little narrative, “I find myself cherishing this house desperately, and cherishing as well all my mortal connections. My Aunt Queen I cherish above all. But there are others, others who must never know what I am.”
    He studied me patiently, as if pondering