Claire is hiding in the cabin’s attic just as she did when she was a child, when Claire was in her midteens and her grandparents regularly brought her out here to this tucked-away hollow because they knew she was tormented by something. “What is it?” her grandmother would ask. “Nothing you’ve done or nothing that anyone has done to you is so bad you can’t tell me about it.” But on this matter, Claire’s grandmother was wrong — Claire couldn’t tell anyone. Maybe if she had run out of Quinndell’s office right after he did it to her, had run to her grandmother then and told her what the doctor had done, maybe then the words would’ve come out. But after waiting a day, a week, the longer Claire waited, the more impossible it became to talk about it.
Her grandmother made sure Claire was treated carefully, handled as you would an object of great value and fragility, always telling Claire, “Whatever it is, whenever you want to talk about it, I’ll be ready to listen.” But the closest Claire came to talking about what the doctor had done to her was saying to her grandmother, “I just wish I could disappear, I wish I was invisible so nobody could ever see me again.”
Then came the day her grandmother took Claire to the house where the two blind women lived, placing the girl in the corner of a room as the grandmother and the two women chatted. Claire never found out if the two women were aware of her presence, if her grandmother had arranged the visit beforehand, but what Claire did know is that her grandmother had briefly granted her the wish: invisibility.
And then it turned out to be a disaster when Claire tried to extend that power to John Lyon.
What’s happened to him?
An hour ago someone came out to the cabin looking for her, a woman who walked all around the place, calling Claire’s name, saying John had sent her — but Claire knew it was a lie. The woman had been sent by Quinndell, and he’ll keep sending people, he’ll send Carl out here with five gallons of gasoline to burn the cabin down if that becomes necessary — but he won’t give up. He’s like Claire’s grandmother in that way, neither one of them capable of surrender.
Claire lights a candle and opens an old suitcase. Standing balanced on two floor joists, she removes her dress and underclothing, running her hands over her breasts and down her stomach, marveling at a sense of voluptuousness she has never before experienced. It’s because of John, the size of his desire for her making Claire feel powerful for the first time in her life. Even if he is white, John Lyon is a man she could marry without disappearing.
But if Carl delivered him to Quinndell, how long is it going to be before John is forced to tell them where she’s hiding?
From the suitcase she takes out a nurse’s uniform that belonged to her grandmother, one from the days when her grandmother was just beginning her career as a pediatric nurse, a uniform yellowed with age but that fits Claire exactly. To protect herself from Quinndell’s evil, Claire puts the uniform on inside out. She retrieves the nurse’s cap, still stiff with starch, and affixes it to her hair with bobby pins. Claire was wearing the uniform and cap several nights ago when she saw the monster defile her grandmother’s grave.
And now he has John. I shouldn’t have run out on John, I should be in town trying to rescue him, not hiding here playing with hoodoo.
But even as she thinks this, Claire works a piece of white wax. When she has formed it into the shape of a doll she takes a sheet of parchment paper and writes upon it the monster’s name. The first step toward controlling evil is to name it.
Claire turns the doll over and with a butcher knife slits open its back. Into that incision she stuffs the folded piece of parchment, sprinkles in some cayenne pepper, and then loosely sews up the slit with black thread. Everything she needs she finds in her grandmother’s suitcase.
By teaching Claire about hoodoo, her grandmother had hoped to empower the child: you think you are weak, at the mercy of those stronger than you, but there are ways you can bend people to your will.
She finds two tiny glass marbles, the size of peas, and embeds them in the wax doll’s face.
By raping her in that examining room when she was fourteen years old, Quinndell fashioned the rest of Claire’s life just as she has fashioned this wax doll in her hands. And Claire never did anything about it. Even when her grandmother was being driven insane trying to bring Quinndell to justice for the murders of those babies, Claire restricted herself to taking care of her grandmother, providing her a place to stay, never really joining the campaign against Quinndell — not until her grandmother killed herself.
And now the monster has John and here I sit playing with hoodoo.
Claire understands the attraction of hoodoo of course, the power it has over believers. Claire, after all, is an expert on the subject, a professor of American folklore, but she doesn’t believe in it.
“Then why do I keep doing this?” she asks aloud.
Because I don’t know what else to do, where to go, who to turn to.
Because the police won’t believe her, Quinndell will have the grave filled in, he’ll kill John and then get away with that murder too.
Because Quinndell has power — the power of being a doctor, a man, being white, being rich, the power that comes when you can function without a conscience.
And what power do I have? she wonders, looking down at the wax doll that seems now to be mocking her, Claire putting her thumbs on those two pea-sized marble eyes and pushing them deep, out of sight into the doll’s head.