15 Tales of Love (9 page)

He shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I think the police have arranged the search parties. I heard someone had called for search dogs.”

She said, “Oh.”
But they won’t find her. What do I do? What can I say that anyone would believe?
“The brush is pretty thick in there.”

She saw several people emerging from the woods. Phil turned and walked that way, and she followed slowly.

She heard a man say, “We walked in as far as the brook. No sign of anything.” After a moment he asked, “What now? Where to?”

Arlena asked Phil, “How long has she been missing?’

“She was supposed to be home about three hours ago.”

Then there is still time for them to find her
! But she knew they wouldn’t. Before she could change her mind and stop herself, she said, “I know where Doria is.”
The girl is more important than my feelings, my fear, what people might think of me.

Several men turned to stare at her. Phil asked, “How do you know that?”

“It came to me as I drove by, like that accident I told you about.”

“Well, you were certainly right about that one.” He let out a long breath. He asked, not looking at her, “Where’s the girl?”

He sounded almost as if he believed her. Arlena waved her hand vaguely toward the old road on her left. “Out there somewhere is an old cellar hole. There’s a well there and she’s in it.”

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then, scanning the onlookers, he called, “George!”

An older man came toward them. “Yeah?”

“You hunt around here? Is there an old cellar hole out there?” He pointed up the old road.

George looked where Phil was pointing. “Yeah, I think so, quarter mile maybe.”

“There a well by it?”

“Not that I recall, but it’s been a few years.”

Phil said, “Arlena says the girl’s in the well.”

George looked at her suspiciously. “We can check.” He called to several other men, walked toward the old road, and stopped to speak to a police officer.

Phil glanced at her and said, “I’ll go with them. You wait here.”

She watched him trot off after George and debated going back to her car. Instead, she chose a spot on a stone wall and sat down to wait and watch and see what happened. The sickness in her stomach was spreading, getting worse, and she wondered if she would vomit. She fervently hoped not. That would be embarrassing.

A police officer started up the ATV and followed the men onto the old road. The actions brought a relief that eased the sickness in her stomach. At least they would find Doria.
But what about me? What will happen to me? How can I possibly explain this?

Arlena saw a police officer walking toward her, and sat up a little straighter, taking a firm grasp on her roiling stomach. He stopped beside her and she was relieved to recognize him.

“Arlena? What’s going on? What’s this about you knowing where Doria is?”

She wondered how to explain. “Rob.” She released a long breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “It just came to me, remembering about the old well and I wondered if maybe she had wandered that way.” She knew it sounded lame and didn’t explain anything. She remembered having seen the cellar hole but not the well. “I used to walk out that way when I was younger. Isn’t this where they found her bike?”

“Near here.” He looked away from her, up the old road. “Her cell phone was in her back pack. She can’t call us.”

Arlena felt Rob’s coldness, his drawing away, and was convulsed by another fit of shivering.
How can I possibly explain all this? I don’t understand it myself.

Rob looked back at her, suddenly concerned. “Are you all right, Arlena?

“Nerves,” she said, knowing that it was making her look bad, guilty even.
What happens to me when they find her? But Doria will know I wasn’t there, won’t she? She will tell them, won’t she?

Rob’s cell phone jangled. He listened a moment, then said, “Right.” He looked sideways at Arlena. “You were right. Doria’s in the well.”

She tried to hide the sudden flood of relief, “Is she all right?”

“They don’t have her out yet, but she’s conscious and probably able to help them.” He returned to the phone and listened again. “She hurt her leg when she fell in. Thank goodness the well doesn’t have much water in it. Now,” he asked, official again and looking directly at her, “how did you know?”

She whispered, “I don’t know, I just did.”

Rob snorted, turned away. “Stay here,” he said, and walked toward the other searchers.

She could feel his unbelief as a palpable thing, but she had no argument to counter it, and wondered wildly what to do. She had to stay. The police would insist on that. Trying to leave would be a disaster, staying would make her sick. It didn’t seem like much of a choice. She sat and waited, trying to control the chills and shaking.

Phil came back on the ATV with an officer. “We need a stretcher,” he said to Rob.

He didn’t look at Arlena. “They’re getting ready to try to pull her out.” He added, “They got a rope down to her.”

Arlena sat huddled on the wall, cold and lost in her misery, and watched Phil and two other men collect their gear. When they picked up the stretcher and walked back into the woods, she got up and trailed along behind. She had to know what was happening.

The cellar hole was as she remembered it: an ancient stone-lined hole about twelve feet square in the center of a small clearing. Bushes filled much of the structure. The well was to one side, only a few feet from the old foundation. Several men were clustered around it. One held the end of a rope that had been dropped into the well.

She didn’t go closer, staying far enough away so she couldn’t hear what was being said. She didn’t want to know.

Phil stopped at the edge of the well, looked down into it, spoke to the men there, and then dropped to his knees. She could hear his voice but not his words and knew he was offering encouragement to Doria. She watched as Phil stretched out on the ground, his arms in the hole, leaning into the well. He gradually inched farther along, two men holding his ankles, until he was bent at the hips, more than half inside the hole. There was a period of intense silence, filled with a tension Arlena could feel. She closed her eyes, prayed silently, and kept a firm grip on her stomach.
Why can’t I know what I want to know? Just this other stuff?

A delighted yell brought her back to the present. “He’s got her!”

Phil was inching back out of the hole, pulled by the others. Doria’s hands emerged, held firmly in Phil’s, then the girl’s head and shoulders. Hands guided her, lifting her out. A rope was removed from around her chest, the rope that Doria had apparently placed under her arms. The girl was placed carefully onto the stretcher, covered with blankets, and secured.

Men crowded around her, and Arlena could hear the questioning voices and covered her eyes to hide the sudden tears of relief. She opened her eyes when she felt someone beside her. She looked up at Rob and an officer she did not know. She could see Phil beyond them, still concerned with Doria and getting the stretcher back to the ambulance.

“Now,” Rob said. “Doria says she was running from a man who stopped her on the road. A man driving a blue car. He tried to pull her into the car.”

Arlena was suddenly flooded with relief. There was a suspect after all. She said, “I saw him this afternoon, early, right after lunch time. I don’t know him.”

“Jim Tucker says he saw you talking to him.”

She heard the unspoken accusation and mentally cringed. She tried to keep her voice even. “I was walking my parents’ dog. The man in the blue car stopped to ask directions, said he was looking for Bowden Road.”

Rob turned to someone behind him. “Did you see Prince Hal? The Corwins’ German shepherd?”

After a moment a voice said, “Yeah. The dog was there.”

Arlena breathed a small sigh of relief. “Hal didn’t like him,” she said. “And he gave me the creeps.”

Rob turned back to her. “We’ve sent out a bulletin on him, but you’ll have to come down to the station, fill out some forms, answer some questions.”

Arlena thought he sounded almost apologetic, or maybe she just wished it. She said, “Sure.” It was what she had expected.

When she had tried to explain it again for probably the fourth time, to yet another skeptical officer, how it had happened, and that it had happened to her before, it was sounding implausible in her own ears. People just couldn’t do things like that. Such things only happened on
The Twilight Zone
or in novels. Her head ached, she was heart sick, and she wanted to go home and get a cup of tea. Really strong tea.

She knew Doria and her parents were grateful, that Doria had said she hadn’t seen Arlena. “I didn’t see anyone but the old guy who grabbed my bicycle,” she said. “Miss Corwin wasn’t there.”

The man had grabbed Doria’s arm and pulled her off her bicycle, but the girl had gotten away. “The only place to go was down the old road, so I ran. I saw the cellar hole and thought maybe I could hide in it.”

The man had not been in sight when the rotten well cover had given way beneath her. “The fall knocked my breath away, so I didn’t say anything and I guess he didn’t see the hole or just went away. I didn’t hear anything until the officer looked down the well and saw me. Boy, was I happy!”

Doria had a broken ankle, several nasty scrapes on her arm, and some bruises from hitting the stone well casing. She was cold and wet but was otherwise all right. She had managed to get herself above the few feet of water in the well by pushing her back against the rocks and resting her good foot on one of them that protruded slightly, but she couldn’t climb out because the well sides were too smooth. “But I don’t know how much longer I could have kept myself out of the water. My leg was starting to hurt where I had it pushed against the side of the well,” she said. “My ankle was hurting awful and I was cold and wet and getting pretty tired. I didn’t dare yell.”

They checked her out at the hospital, set the ankle, and sent her home.

“You can go home,” Rob told Arlena finally. “I guess we just have to take your word for it all. The Staties found the guy at a diner and checked his record. He’s been arrested before on suspicion of molestation but never convicted. Maybe this time. He comes from upstate New York and was just driving through here when he saw Doria. He apparently asked you for directions to cover himself and picked a road name that happened to be one we have here in town.”

She said, “Thanks,” trying to keep her weariness from showing.

The police chief snorted. “Next time, give us a heads up, will you?”

She said, “Sure,” positive that he didn’t believe anything she said.
Isn’t there anyone, any place, who believes me? But how can they, when I don’t believe it myself?

Filled with deep sadness as well as the bone-deep numbing tiredness, she walked out into a parking lot dim with evening shadows. A tall figure detached itself from the side of the building and came toward her.

“I think you need a good cup of coffee,” Phil said.

She stopped and looked at him, not speaking, unsure why he was there.

He looked down at her, but Arlena couldn’t see his face in the dimness. “They probably weren’t very kind,” he said, gesturing toward the police station. “Police have to be skeptical, but I know that it happened just like you said it did.”

“You believe me?” she asked, incredulous and wishing she could see his face to see if he was laughing at her. “Nobody else does.”

“You were right about the accident, and there was no way you could have known that. I’ve read about such things. They’re unexplainable but they happen sometimes.” He put his hand gently on her arm. “How could I not believe? Maybe you need supper, too. And somebody to talk to, help you calm down. You’re pretty tense.”

“Yes. It’s been a long day.”

“And nobody thought to give you anything to eat?”

“They offered coffee but I couldn’t drink it.”

“Figures. I’ll take care of that. Proper EMT procedures and all that.”

She looked up at him, finally able to see his eyes and the concern there, and was flooded with warmth that eased the chill around her heart.

“I think it’s all pretty neat. I’ve never met anyone like you before.” Phil gently steered her around. “We’ll take my car. That ability might even be a help to me sometime.” He paused, glanced at her. “Once I get used to it. If you’ll let me try to get used to it. You haven’t been treated very well.”

As she let him help her into his Jeep, she wished she could really see the future, know what this could lead to, once the novelty had worn off and he was facing the reality. She released a long breath. “Why not? I’d like to be able to talk about it with someone. Somebody who wasn’t laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing.” He climbed in beside her. “I asked around a little about you, heard how your longtime friend had left you, and I was going to ask you out when all this happened. Your knowing about that accident shook me for a while, but the more I thought about it, the neater it sounded. I’m intrigued by that sort of thing.”

His projected warmth had spread to all of her bones and she knew he meant what he said. She said softly, trying not to sound too eager, “And I’d have taken you up on your offer. I need somebody who can accept, if not understand what I don’t understand myself.”

He reached across the console and squeezed her fingers. “It may take some time.”

“I have time.”
All the time in the world. Sometimes it helps not to see the future – just accept it as it comes along—but she could see possibilities.
“But right now, I really need that coffee.”