Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

Book : Dollanganger

by V.C. Andrews

Genres: Sagas; New Adult Romance

Synopsis

A new novel from V.C. Andrews, the legendary author of Flowers in the Attic-now a hit Lifetime TV movie!

Release date: January 27, 2015

Publisher: Pocket Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

Christopher’s Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger
Seeing how upset my father was, I realized that I had another reason to get through Christopher’s diary: to solve the puzzles for him. Who wanted this large home on the Foxworth property, and why? I hoped that the clues were somewhere in the diary. Of course, I would say nothing of this to Kane. I had no idea what it all meant or even if it meant anything that concerned the Dollanganger children, and the one thing I didn’t want to do was start a conversation about it in school.

Talk among our group of friends was centered on Tina Kennedy’s upcoming party, anyway. Kane knew how I felt about going. Nevertheless, he enjoyed teasing her by saying we still weren’t sure of our schedule. “We hope to be there, but there are a few things in the works.”

“In the works? What does that mean?” she asked him, and he just looked at me and then gave her a smile and a slight shrug, leaving her gaping after us.

“Why do you tease her, Kane? Don’t you know that especially for a girl like Tina, any attention breeds hope?”

“I’m not teasing. It’s the truth, isn’t it? We have things in the works. Maybe we’ll go, or maybe we’ll be up in your attic.”

“Not when my father is home,” I said. “And if he sees us spending so much time in my room, especially on a weekend, he’s going to get suspicious.”

He gave me the oddest look, his head a little tilted to the right, his eyes smaller. “Sure you’re not exaggerating his attitude about the diary?” he asked.

“I’m sure. He’s made it crystal-clear a number of times.”

He still looked skeptical, which annoyed me. In fact, I was irritable for the rest of the day. I know I didn’t seem myself to my girlfriends. I had nothing funny or flattering to say about Suzette’s new shade of lipstick, which she was proudly demonstrating on her perky little sexy mouth. She had used that description of herself, the girl with the perky little sexy mouth, ever since her older brother’s college buddy described her that way and set her eyelids fluttering for a week.

But I wasn’t ignoring just Suzette. Kyra’s father had given her a black and gold pyramid stud wrap watch this morning, because her birthday was falling on Thanksgiving this year, and he wanted her to feel the impact of a special day. He and her mother would give her gifts every day until Thanksgiving and probably the day after, too. All of us had expressed interest in such a watch, so I knew I should have been happier for her when she showed it to us.

I was having moments like this ever since Kane first proposed reading the diary together. Without reason, I would find myself trembling and slinking away from contact with my girlfriends. The moments passed quickly enough. They were like tiny puffs of black smoke after a match was struck. Kane always seemed to be able to bring me back with his jokes and offbeat smile.

However, he knew he had annoyed me by doubting that my father was so against my reading the diary. He apologized at lunch and broke his rule that we shouldn’t talk about the diary outside of my attic, or at least outside of my house.

“It’s a very sad, even at times brutal story, but after some of the stories lately concerning people locked away for years, it’s not full of black magic or anything for me. That’s all I meant.”

“We haven’t reached the end, Kane. You might change your mind.”

He nodded. “I might,” he admitted. “But that’s more reason for us to do it like we’re doing it. We can comfort each other, right?”

“Comfort?”

“Just like Cathy and Christopher did,” he said. “Everything unpleasant is more unpleasant when you’re the only one feeling or experiencing it. That’s why as soon as something bad happens to us, we like to share it. We need the empathy and sympathy to help us get through it.”

“Apparently, they didn’t have anyone to do that for them, even their own mother,” I said bitterly.

“Looks like it,” he said.

“What is making you two look like you lost your best friends?” Serena Mota asked us as she was passing our table.

Kane looked at me and quickly said, “We’re upset because we might have to miss Tina Kennedy’s party this weekend.”

Serena looked at us, dumbfounded for a moment, and then shrugged. “I might miss it, too.”

As she walked off, we both laughed, but the lesson was learned. We looked at each other and repeated it word for word. “Don’t talk about the diary in school!”

I was afraid that Kane’s obvious anticipation of my meeting him at the end of the day and our usual rather quick departure from the building, both of us avoiding contact or conversation with any of our friends who might delay us even for a few minutes, would attract even more attention and interest in how we were spending our afternoons together. Of course, as with most things, he didn’t worry about it and just smiled and shrugged when I mentioned it on our way to my house.

It had been a while since my closer girlfriends had called me, too. I knew they were all getting a little upset with me, probably telling each other that I was getting snobby because I was going with Kane.

However, I noticed that he was acting a little different this time. As usual, he brought his book bag in to leave in my room so that later we could employ the cover activity we had been using, doing our homework together. But then he suggested that I get us a snack of some sort, since by now the Dollangangers would have something like that, too, perhaps leftovers from the holidays. While I was doing that, he said he would go up to the attic and arrange things. I knew it was silly to feel it at this point, but I couldn’t help being a little reluctant to give him the diary to take up with him without me. It was a ridiculous anxiety. After all, he had been alone in my room reading it, hadn’t he? It was just something about it being up in the attic without me that made me uneasy. I was like the Keeper of the Book or something in a science-fiction movie. As if he could read my thoughts, before I could say anything, he told me to bring the diary up with everything else and then charged up the stairs.

I went into the kitchen, cut up cheese for some crackers, got some cups and lemonade, put it all on a tray, and walked up, stopping in my room to get the diary and put it on the tray. I could hear him moving things around above. I stood there for a moment thinking about it. Corrine had given the children a television. When they were in the attic, they were playing games. The twins weren’t big, but their constant scuffling about and all the other sounds surely must have been heard by someone, some servant below. What did their grandmother tell anyone who commented about it? That maybe it was mice or rats or raccoons that had gotten into the attic? Kane’s insistence that they weren’t as big a secret as both Corrine and Grandmother Olivia told them they were was beginning to sound more credible to me. It could even have something to do with the mystery my father was discovering.

I walked up the stairs carefully, balancing everything on the tray. Kane had left the attic door open for me. I entered and stopped dead in my tracks. Kane had unfolded and set up the sofa bed, but that wasn’t what surprised me. It was what he was wearing, what he obviously had kept hidden in his book bag all day.

He was wearing a wig with a shade of flaxen gold hair nearly identical to my hair color. I didn’t speak. I just gaped at him and had this eerie feeling shudder through my body.

“Say something,” he said. “It’s pretty good, isn’t it? I stole some of the strands of your hair from your hair brush a few times and put them together to give the wig store guy a pretty accurate idea of the color I wanted. This was specially made for me. I’m assuming Christopher’s hair would be this long by now. I have the feeling he wore it this way, anyway,” he added. He kept talking, because I was making him nervous just standing and staring at him. “I mean, I don’t have your color eyes, but we can skip that one, or I might get color contacts of plain glass. So? Doesn’t this help you envision him—them?”

“Yes, I guess it does. It was just such a shock seeing you there.”

He smiled. “You thought Christopher might have appeared?”

“Not quite that,” I said, putting the tray on a small table. “It was just a shock.”

He nodded and picked up a cracker and some cheese. “I’m a little hungry,” he said, smiling.

I looked at the bed. “Why did you do that?”

“Before I closed the diary yesterday, I glanced at the next page. You’ll see,” he said. He poured himself some lemonade and ate another cracker and cheese. I took some and sat on the bed. We just stared at each other a moment. I was shaking my head. “What?”

“That wig. Changes your whole look.”

“That’s the idea. Actors don’t want the audience to see them; they want the audience to see and hear the character they’re playing. Let’s get started,” he said, swallowed some more lemonade, and then plucked the diary off the tray and opened it to where we had left off. I sat on the bed while he walked around reading, but it was taking me a little while to get used to him as a flaxen blond.

During January, February, and most of March, we rarely went up to the attic. It was so cold, some days we could see our breath, and the twins were very uncomfortable, their misery level going up a few notches every time we attempted to go up there. So what we had to do was stay in our claustrophobic bedroom, huddled up in bed together, watching television. I understood why people in foreign countries liked to watch American television. They could learn English and much more. Suddenly, for us, too, the television Momma had brought wasn’t just a window on the outside world; it was a teaching device, because the twins, and even Cathy, had questions raised by what we saw.

Kane paused, nodded at me, and then made himself comfortable beside me on the sofa bed. He looked so pleased with himself that I almost laughed.

“Big shot,” I said.

He blew on the tips of the fingers on his right hand, and I poked him. Then I lay back beside him, and he continued, his voice softening until he was almost whispering.

It was inevitable that I would see Cathy’s body maturing right before my eyes. She was at that age when some girls advance in leaps and bounds. I always believed she would be one of them. I could see she wasn’t reacting well to it. I caught her trying to pluck her sprouting pubic hair and saw that she was self-conscious about her budding breasts. My maturing had become obvious, too. When she discovered the stains resulting from my seminal night losses, she thought I was peeing in bed and wanted me to tell Momma. I tried to explain it, and then I realized it was time Momma had a mother-daughter talk with her, not about me so much as about what was soon to happen to her. As Momma was leaving us one day, I caught her arm at the door and turned her toward me to whisper.

“You’ve got to explain the facts of life to Cathy, Momma. She’s going to experience menarche,” I said.

For a moment, I thought Momma didn’t know that word, which meant a girl’s first period. Then it suddenly dawned on her, and she nodded and told me she would handle it. I should take the twins up to the attic and let her have that conversation when she was ready to do it. I wonder if she would ever have done it if I hadn’t brought it to her attention. Like some parents, was she hoping her children would just suddenly, almost miraculously, know what they had to know about their own bodies? We weren’t in school, where Cathy or I could get the information in some health class or science class, either.

One day soon after, Momma finally had the conversation with Cathy that I wanted her to have. Afterward, I assumed it had gone well, because Momma was so proud of me for alerting her. I was actually a little embarrassed by her over-the-top affectionate kisses and hugs. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the twins looking at us jealously, and I tried to get Momma to pay them more attention, but all she could do for now was smile and whisper, “My little doctor. Menarche.” She left laughing. When I glanced at Cathy, I saw a look of pure rage on her face. I realized she didn’t like the facts of life. None of us wanted to be dragged into adulthood this soon, but life at Foxworth Hall was making it impossible not to be. You could pretend it away just so long. Cold reality was there to greet us in the morning and especially at night when we went to bed.

The warmth of spring made it possible for us to spend more time in the attic again. The twins needed the space more than Cathy and I, the chance to move their legs and arms and hopefully grow normally now. Momma continued to lavish gifts upon us, especially on Cathy’s birthday and then the twins’ birthday. They were now six. It was when Cory began to take to the musical toy accordion and piano that Momma finally sat and told us about her two dead brothers. She said Cory had probably inherited their penchant for music. Then she described the death of her older brother Mal, who, eerily like my father, had been killed in a car accident. What happened to her younger brother, Joel, was even stranger. She said he had run away from home the day of Mal’s funeral.

“He didn’t want to become his father,” she said. “He didn’t want this life. My father didn’t appreciate Joel’s love of music.”

“Where did he go? What happened to him?” I asked.

“He went to Europe. He had taken a job with a traveling orchestra. I think he was always planning to do that. My father wouldn’t have permitted it, of course. He wouldn’t even hear of it. And then . . .”

“Then what?” We were all glued to her, the dreadful expression on her face, the way she hesitated. Even the twins, who didn’t quite understand it all, were entranced.

“We learned he had died in a skiing accident in Switzerland. We were told he went off into a ravine, and something of an avalanche had followed. It was too high up to melt away enough for his body to be discovered. At night, I would wake up after having a nightmare in which he emerged from the snow, still frozen, still dead.”

None of us spoke. Cathy’s eyes were big with fear. Momma realized it right away. She had gone too far.

“But I haven’t had that dream for years and years, and when your father came into my life, he washed away the sadness,” she said quickly, with her beautiful smile born out of the memories she obviously cherished.

Cathy’s face softened and then grew sad again. “He’s gone, too,” she whispered. I decided to pretend I didn’t hear her.

Afterward, to lift the gloom and doom, I suggested to Cathy that we take on a big job: teaching the twins to read and write. At first, I didn’t think she would be interested, but she was, and she was good at finding ways to overcome their resistance and make learning fun. One night, I told her how proud of her I was. The twins were asleep, exhausted from their lessons and their playtime, which Cathy ran like a school monitor and then followed with more lessons. I slipped onto the bed beside her. She opened her eyes with surprise.

“You were wonderful today,” I whispered. “I watched you. You were so into it.”

“What else is there to do?” she replied bitterly.

“It’s going to get better . . . soon,” I said.

She put her fingers on my lips. “No more promises, Christopher. I’m tired of promises. It’s like waiting for rain in a drought.”

“We’re going to get through it,” I said. “You’ll see. That’s not a promise. It’s a prediction.”

She smiled. I was just realizing how cute a smile she had. It had something of Daddy in it but more Momma’s lips. I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. As I drew back to return to Cory’s and my bed, she grabbed my wrist and then, to my surprise, kissed me quickly on the lips the way Momma often did. The instant she had done it, she turned quickly. I lay there a few moments more. I could see the graceful turn in her neck to her shoulder. I wanted to touch it, but I retreated.

That night, I woke during a seminal night loss that lasted so long it actually frightened me for a moment. Right before it happened, I had dreamed of touching Cathy in her private places, pretending I was explaining things to her like some health education teacher. In my dream, she saw what was happening to me as a result and then decided she should be able to touch me, too.

And that’s when it happened.

Kane put the diary down beside him and stared up at the ceiling. Then he turned to me slowly. I saw a deeply serious look of yearning in his eyes.

“What?” I whispered.

“Last night, I had a wet dream, what he calls ‘seminal loss’ . . . thinking of you. It was almost an identical dream.”

I did not know how something you heard could embarrass you and yet fascinate and excite you at the same time, but that was exactly what his revelation did. My close girlfriends and I trusted one another with confessions about our sexuality. Sometimes we told things to one another simply to confirm that our experience was normal. I know that for most of the girls, it was easier to tell one another these things than it was to tell their mothers or even their older sisters. They wanted to disclose their secrets to someone who wouldn’t impose any judgments. None of us would be critical or make fun of one of us for what she had told us.

But I couldn’t remember any of my girlfriends ever telling something as personal as this that her boyfriend had revealed to her. Even Suzette had nothing like this to tell us. Of course, Kane would trust that I would never tell any of them what he had said. I don’t know whether he expected to hear something similar from me, but I did feel that I should give him something to show him that I had as much trust in him as he had in me.

“I fantasize about you, too,” I said.

He smiled, and then we kissed. “Maybe we should live our fantasies,” he whispered, his lips so close to my ear that it felt like his words caressed me. “What was your fantasy?”

I hesitated.

“If you can’t tell me, who could you tell?”

“Maybe I should tell no one.”

“Okay. Don’t tell me. Show me,” he said.

Just the idea brought a flush into my face. I started to shake my head, but he leaned forward quickly and kissed me.

Then he said, “Please.”

My two voices that usually argued didn’t even begin. A wave of delicious warmth rose up my legs, consuming me in a rush of desire just like I had experienced in my fantasy, desire that had awakened me to the sound of my own moans of pleasure. And just like in my fantasy, my fingers moved to the buttons of my blouse. As I began to undress, Kane lay back on the pillow and watched. I saw his lips tremble when I unfastened my bra and then began to undo the belt on my jeans. As I lowered them, he put the diary down.

“What did I do in this fantasy?” he asked, sounding fragile, almost helpless.

“You just watched,” I said. “To prove to me that you could control yourself.”

His eyes widened when I stepped out of my panties. “That’s cruel,” he said. It looked like tears had come into his eyes.

I smiled and lay beside him again. “Just kiss me,” I said.

He did, and then he smiled. “You put words into my mouth unfairly in your fantasy.” Then he brightened with a thought. “This is a fantasy Cathy might be having just at this point.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’re not reading her diary, though.”

“Christopher is very intelligent. He knows she’s having it,” he insisted, and then he began to kiss me everywhere, moving randomly at first over my breasts, my stomach, and then my thighs.

I could feel my resistance rapidly defrosting, but I had a surge of caution and gently pushed him back.

“I’m dying here,” he protested.

“You insisted that I show you my fantasy,” I told him, and he groaned. I looked at him seriously and thought lovingly. “Not yet,” I said.

“When, then?”

“I don’t know. I just know . . . not yet,” I said. “Please.”

I felt his disappointment. It was that clear in his face, a face that was usually very good at hiding thoughts and feelings. He realized it, too, and gave me that smile and a shrug. “I promise I’ll respect you in the morning,” he said.

“But will I respect myself?” I countered, and put on my panties.

“Next time, I’ll keep my mouth shut, I think.” He put his hands behind his head and watched me finish dressing. “Was it the wig?” he asked when I was almost finished.

I looked at him. Was it? I wondered. “Maybe,” I said.

He reached for the diary quickly, so quickly it was as if he was positive that my hesitation would diminish somewhere in the pages to come.

And that was more eerie than anything.

Summer came, and because of the warmth, the attic was once again tolerable for us. Momma knew we needed more and more to keep us occupied. She began bringing us books that looked like they might have come from the library in the house, especially the history books. Sometimes I read things aloud to Cathy, and sometimes she read them to me. The twins would listen for a few moments and then get bored and distract themselves with their toys, Momma’s precious dollhouse, or just a nap.

One afternoon while they were napping, Cathy and I lay together on the stained old mattress by the attic window and had one of the most intimate conversations between us. We talked about what nudity could lead to and then about her menarche. I was honest about the changes in me, too. I was sure that the honesty we shared made us closer than most brothers and sisters. I pressed my face to her hair and assured her that what was happening to her and to me was right and good and nothing to be ashamed of. We clung to each other silently, as if the whole world swirled around us and we had no place else to go to be safe but into each other’s arms.

Before we parted, she asked me if I thought it was odd that Momma had kept us locked up so long, that she had put up with our grandmother’s demands no matter how it affected us. “She seems to be doing well,” she added. “Much better than we’re doing.”

I couldn’t deny that Momma seemed to have more money, beautiful clothes, and jewelry. I had to admit that I had the same thoughts, but I told her we had to have faith in her. She seemed to know what she was doing. She had a plan, and we had to let her work it out.

And then, after a time when she hadn’t been by to see us, Momma came and told us that, finally, her father was very ill. He was much worse than he was when we had first arrived. She was confident that he would die soon, and as soon as he did, we would be free. How happy Cathy and I were all those days as we waited, hopeful. I didn’t even feel guilty about wishing for my grandfather’s death.

And then one day, Momma came to our door, poked her head in, and told us he had recuperated and the doctors said he had passed through a crisis. She left before I could ask a single medical question.

Neither Cathy nor I could speak. We put the twins to bed that night and looked at the calendar. With rage in her fingers, Cathy made an X through the day, then turned to me and said something I had either deliberately forgotten or just hadn’t realized.

It was August.

We had been here a year!

When Kane stopped reading and lowered the diary, neither of us spoke. A dark pall of silence fell between us. Without looking at me, he got up and went to the windows and looked out. I watched him and waited, as if no matter what I said or how I said it, the sound of my voice would shatter us both. For a few moments, with him standing there like that and wearing that wig, I could easily imagine Christopher by a window in the Foxworth Hall attic, gazing out at the warm sunshine and the full-blown woods that surely resembled a green sea with waves of maples and oaks flowing toward the horizon. Perhaps he looked longingly toward the lake where Kane and I had picnicked. Perhaps he watched birds enjoying their freedom, soaring onto higher branches and enjoying their power of flight, and envied them. How torn he had to be, struggling to balance what he knew was their need to grow and mature in a world with others their age and his mother’s desperate plan to bring them back into financial security and promise for their future. Surely he was wondering if the price they were paying was far too high, especially after a year. Maybe he was wondering how he could have lost track of that fact. Maybe he was more afraid now about what was happening to him. If he lost it, what would become of his little brother and sister? What would become of Cathy?

“How long were they really up there, exactly, you think?” Kane asked, without turning back to me.

“I only know from the same stories you read and heard, Kane.”

He turned to me. “Your father never offered an opinion, a hint at what was true?”

“I told you, he doesn’t like talking about it. He said my mother hated hearing about it. It disturbed her, and he can’t forget that.”

“To keep your children locked up for just one year is crazy enough, especially those little ones. How confused and frightened . . .” His voice trailed off. He wiped his head with a quick motion and swiped off the wig. He held it for a moment, turning it slowly in his hand as though he was looking for something, and then he opened one of the trunks and dropped it inside. “I have to go home for dinner tonight,” he said, coming back to the sofa bed. “My sister might be back from college in time for dinner.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“With her boyfriend,” he added. “Should be interesting. It will be the first time my parents have met him. I hope my mother doesn’t put him in the maids’ quarters.”

“She wouldn’t do that, would she?”

“My sister would turn around and leave if she did.”

I stood up, and we began to put the attic back to the way it was.

“Maybe we should skip tomorrow,” I said. “Sounds like you’ll have lots to do.”

“No, no,” he quickly responded. “She’ll be showing him around all day. We want to get as much read as we can while your father has this schedule, right?”

“I’m not sure what his schedule will be. I’ll find out tonight.”

“Well, even if he’s back for dinner, we still have a few hours after school. I don’t want to whiz through it, but I can’t help but wonder where this is all heading.”

“Okay,” I said.

He smiled, but I could see that he was still quite disturbed. We walked down to my room. He started to pick up his books, paused, and flopped back on the desk chair. I stood there for a moment and then sat on my bed. He looked emotionally exhausted, like a shadow had darkened his eyes even more.

“Do you want to stop reading this?” I said, holding up the diary. “Because if you&rsq