Ghost Moon (33 page)

CHAPTER 53

DADDY, HAS SOMETHING HAPPENED TO SARA and Olivia?’’

At Chloe’s question, Seth turned to look at her. Huddled next to Martha on the couch in the den, Chloe had a lightweight blue blanket wrapped over her yellow nightgown. Her face was pale and her eyes were scared. He was in the front hall, giving Ira a quick, tense run-down of the situation. On his say-so, deputies had already been deployed to search the grounds of the estate. In the first frantic minutes after he had discovered Olivia and Sara were missing, he had already determined that there were no cars gone from the garage. They had to be somewhere nearby.

Please God let them be safe.

‘‘Honey-bug, I don’t know. You stay right where you are with Martha, and Ira and I will do our best to find them.’’

‘‘They’re dead, like Nana, aren’t they?’’ Chloe began to sob. ‘‘I don’t want them to be dead, Daddy. I don’t want any more blinky stars to wave at. I want them right here on earth.’’

‘‘Chloe.’’ Giving Ira a helpless look, he took the few quick strides needed to bring him to his daughter’s side. He wrapped his arms around her, hugged her tight, kissed her cheek. ‘‘They’re all right. We’ll find them. Don’t cry. Martha, take her. Chloe, I have to go look for them. You stay right here with Martha. Martha, don’t let her take one step away from your side.’’

‘‘I won’t, Mr. Seth. Don’t you be a-feared of that.’’ Martha’s reply was fervent. Like Chloe, like himself, she was scared to death, both by the reality and the possibilities.

Please God let them be safe.

Seth disengaged himself from Chloe, who turned to Martha with a sob, and walked back into the front hall, where Ira waited. Ira had bags under his eyes that hadn’t been there when his mother was alive, and he’d lost weight.

‘‘If they’re on this property, we’ll find them,’’ Ira promised grimly as Seth joined them. Seth nodded. His greatest fear was that they were not. No cars were missing. But what if they’d been stolen away by a stranger, in a stranger’s car . . .?

Get a grip, he told himself firmly. How likely was that?

Please God let them be safe.

A hideous memory of Olivia walking into the lake that day he’d waded in after her surfaced in Seth’s mind. She’d been having nightmares about her mother’s drowning lately, too. What if for some reason—sleepwalking, maybe?—she had gone down to the lake, and Sara had somehow followed? Olivia wouldn’t drown herself, not on purpose. He knew she wouldn’t. And yet—her mother had. And Olivia might not be aware of what she was doing. That day he had gone in after her, she had almost seemed to be in a trance.

Please God let them be safe.

‘‘I’m going to look down by the lake,’’ Seth told Ira abruptly, and headed for the front door.

‘‘I’ve already got a man searching the lake area.’’ Ira followed him.

‘‘I don’t care. I’m going down there, too.’’

‘‘I’ll come with you.’’

Seth emerged onto the veranda, and was glad to see that a deputy was stationed by the front door: He recognized him as Mike Simms, a good man.

‘‘Stay inside with my little girl, would you?’’ he asked Simms abruptly. ‘‘I don’t want her coming up missing, too.’’

With a quick glance at Ira for confirmation, Simms nodded and went inside.

Seth, with Ira trailing, headed down toward the lake.

CHAPTER 54

NO! NO! NO!’’ OLIVIA’S HEAD SLEWED around so fast that for an instant it left her dizzy as she strained to see what Charlie was doing. He was moving behind her, out of her line of vision, and when he reappeared he was carrying Sara, her own sweet Sara, clad in the Cinderella nighty that was her particular favorite, like a baby in his arms. She was obviously groggy, her eyes blinking, her head lolling against his chest, her arms dangling.

‘‘Uncle Charlie, no!’’ Olivia begged, straining uselessly against her bonds. ‘‘Please don’t hurt her. She’s only a baby. Please let her go. Please.’’

All the terror she’d refused to let herself feel now boiled to the surface for Sara. Despite the stifling heat, she was suddenly cold as ice. Her heart pounded. Her breath sobbed in her chest. Her limbs shook.

Please, God, please. Save Sara.

She got a glimpse of her own reflection in the brass plaque to her left. She was struggling, fighting her bonds, her head and shoulders lifting away from the metal in a futile attempt to reach her child. She was struggling so much that it was almost as though she were seeing double, as if there were two of her reflected in the brass. . . .

‘‘Don’t you see, Olivia, I’ll be giving her a kind of immortality. She’ll be a sweet, innocent little eight-year-old forever.’’

‘‘Please don’t hurt her,’’ Olivia begged. Please God please God please . . .

‘‘Mommy?’’ Sara lifted her head from Charlie’s chest to blink sleepily at Olivia. ‘‘Mommy, what’s wrong?’’

Olivia’s desperation seemed to be penetrating Sara’s drug-induced stupor. Sara looked around, blinking, then stiffened in Charlie’s arms, and began to flail.

‘‘Ah-ah,’’ he said to her, almost tenderly, as he restrained her by wrapping his arms tightly around her. ‘‘None of that, now, or Daddy will have to punish you. Here, let’s put you right in your nice little cage until Daddy is ready to play.’’

He walked around the foot of the table, and through another of the brass plaques Olivia saw the reflection of a large dog cage with a padlock on the front. He was going to lock Sara in a dog cage! A finger of ice ran down her spine.

‘‘Uncle Charlie, no! Please, no! Sara! Sara!’’

‘‘Mommy . . . !’’

Again Olivia saw the double images of herself in the brass plaques, and saw, too, that one of the images now appeared to be standing beside the table while the other image was lying upon it, still restrained, just as she was. She thought the standing image had a wider jaw, a longer nose—and a white nightgown.

‘‘Mommy! Mommy!’’

‘‘Mother, help me!’’ Olivia cried, and smelled the faintest hint of White Shoulders perfume. As Charlie, clasping a now-struggling Sara with only one arm, bent over to jerk the padlock free, Olivia looked wildly around and saw the battery-powered lantern perched on the edge of the table near her feet. She gathered her legs and kicked downward with all her strength—and the lantern flew across the room, although she never felt her bare feet actually make contact. It crashed into the metal door of the crypt, shattering, sending sparks flying everywhere. In the instant before the bulb flickered out and the crypt was plunged into darkness, Olivia saw Charlie whirl toward the sound of the crash, stumble, fall to one knee—and drop Sara sprawling on the floor. The blow from the lantern had knocked the crypt door open just a crack. A burst of cool air whooshed past Olivia’s face. The charcoal-gray of the night beckoned just beyond the door.

‘‘Run, Sara! Run, Sara! Run, run, run!’’ Olivia shrieked.

Sara ran, scrambling to her feet, bursting through the door, screaming as if all the demons of every nightmare she had ever dreamed were chasing her, as indeed they were. Charlie went after her, shouldering through the door, his big body a ponderous shadow plunging through the night. Olivia lay in her duct-tape prison and screamed, screamed at Sara to run, screamed for help, screamed until her lungs ached and her throat was dry and she was gasping for breath.

She screamed until Charlie stumbled back into the crypt, alone, a large dark presence blocking the charcoal-gray of the night. Sara was safe. Sara had to be safe, or he wouldn’t be alone. Olivia sagged with relief, thanked God in a rush of dizziness, sank back against the table and took a deep, shuddering breath. . . .

And watched as Charlie lurched to the metal cabinet, fumbled with the doors, and removed something from it.

A second later he was coming toward her. The gray light filtering through the open door showed her the filled syringe in his hand.

Dread iced her veins anew.

‘‘Uncle Charlie,’’ she croaked. Nothing else would emerge from her scream-parched throat.

He stopped by the table at about her waist level and smiled at her. She could see the gleam of his teeth through the darkness.

‘‘Olivia, dear, what I have here is a syringe filled with potassium chloride,’’ he said, almost pleasantly. ‘‘If you remember, this is the one that stops your heart.’’

CHAPTER 55

WHEN THE SCREAMING STARTED, SETH WAS standing on the bank of Ghost Lake near the spot where Olivia had walked into the water that day. He was playing the beam of his flashlight over the lake’s surface and praying with all his might.

At first, the screams were hardly distinguishable from the cries of predators and prey that routinely split the night. Seth stiffened as the first one reached his ears, and then, as it was followed by another and another, wondered if perhaps something was attacking the flock of peacocks. But he was running even as he wondered it, running in the direction of the sounds, stumbling more than once as he pounded along the uneven path that led around the side of the lake, and shouting for Ira as he went.

By the time he knew for certain that they were screams, human screams, Olivia’s and Sara’s screams, a small, plump figure was hurtling down the trail that climbed the bluff toward the old graveyard. Picking her out with the beam of his flashlight even as he ran toward her, Seth recognized Sara with a rush of both terror and relief. Sara was alive, and screaming her lungs out, and running as if the hounds of hell were on her tail—but where was Olivia?

Oh, God, where was Olivia?

‘‘Seth, Seth, Seth, Seth!’’ Sara collapsed into his arms as he reached her, wrapping her arms around his waist and clinging like a monkey, shaking, shivering, gasping, crying. ‘‘Seth, he’s got Mommy! He’s got Mommy!’’

‘‘Where?’’ Seth demanded, even as he bellowed for Ira. He could tell the sheriff was not too far behind him from the bobbing yellow beam of light that labored up the trail in his wake.

‘‘Up there! In the graveyard!’’

‘‘Go to Ira! See that light? Run there!’’ Seth detached Sara and thrust her in Ira’s direction. Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he took the trail in great bounds, his heart pounding, a cold terror driving him.

The screams had stopped.

The graveyard gate was around to the side, and a glance showed him that it stood open, but Seth didn’t even hesitate. He put one hand on top of that fence and leaped it like it was two feet high. Up here, in the shadowy sanctuary where his mother lay in her freshly dug grave, where stone angels stood sentinel and the moon and passing clouds combined to give them eerie life, the silence shrieked at him.

‘‘Olivia!’’ he bellowed. ‘‘Olivia!’’

‘‘Seth!’’

Her voice was faint, muffled even. Seth ran his flashlight around the graveyard, looking everywhere—and almost missed the fact that the door to the mausoleum stood ajar, just a little bit.

He sprinted toward it, and yanked it wide. It swung open with surprising ease, as if someone had recently oiled the old hinges.

As the inside of the crypt was exposed to his view, what he captured with the beam of his flashlight stopped him dead in his tracks.

Olivia was looking at him, her head lifted away from whatever unholy thing it was that she was lying on. Her face was white as paper, her eyes were huge, and she was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, unable to move. Charlie stood beside her, right beside her head, a hypodermic needle poised to inject just below her ear.

Seth wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but he knew it wasn’t good.

‘‘Charlie, don’t,’’ he said hoarsely, warningly. And thought, where the hell is Ira with his gun?

‘‘If you come any closer, I’m afraid I’ll have to inject this directly into Olivia’s carotid artery,’’ Charlie said, sounding so much like his normal self that Seth had a hard time believing what he was hearing and seeing. One glance at Olivia told him that Charlie was in deadly earnest. ‘‘It’s loaded with potassium chloride, you see. It will stop her heart within minutes.’’

Seth took a deep breath. ‘‘You don’t want to do that,’’ he said calmly. ‘‘We’ve always been friends, you and I, haven’t we? I love her, Charlie. You don’t want to hurt her, because if you do you’ll hurt me. That’s how much I love her, Charlie. Enough so that anything you do to her, you do to me.’’

‘‘I don’t want to hurt
you,
Seth, but you see . . .’’ Charlie paused as the approach of Ira and what sounded like a whole posse of deputies reached their ears.

‘‘Charlie, please . . .’’

‘‘They’re coming for me,’’ Charlie said. He glanced down at Olivia, and, then, as Seth readied himself for the leap of his life, looked at Seth.

‘‘Have somebody check what’s in Big John’s IV bags, Seth,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve been keeping him heavily sedated. Once he’s not, he should recover.’’

‘‘The nurses at the hospital already found out. They told David, and that’s why he brought in another doctor. Everyone thinks you just made a mistake. It’s all right, Charlie.’’

‘‘Ah, nurses,’’ Charlie said disparagingly. ‘‘Mommies! Women! Why can’t they just stay little girls?’’

He glanced down at Olivia again, hesitated, then turned the hypodermic needle on himself.

‘‘Charlie!’’ Seth leaped forward, knocking the needle away from Charlie’s hand, but it was already too late. The syringe was empty. A little trickle of blood ran down Charlie’s neck where the needle had pierced his skin. Charlie sank to his knees, gasped once, then fell forward onto his face. ‘‘God
damn
it, Charlie!’’

Ira and his henchmen came bursting through the door then, brandishing guns and flashlights.

‘‘We need CPR here,’’ Seth said, staightening away from Charlie, who no longer seemed to be breathing. He turned to Olivia, who had collapsed limply back against the metal surface she was lying on.

‘‘And somebody better call for an ambulance. Charlie just shot himself in the neck with potassium chloride.’’ Then, to Olivia, as he found and unfastened the mesh strap that held her to the table, ‘‘Did he hurt you?’’

‘‘No.’’ Olivia took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘‘Sara?’’

‘‘She’s safe,’’ Seth said, lifting her into his arms. It was stultifyingly hot in the vault, and smelled like something about the size of a horse had crawled in there and died. To top it off, there was a sickly sweet note to it, like bad perfume. Two deputies were crouched on the floor, giving Charlie CPR, and Seth stepped carefully around them. Another was outside the crypt, talking into a cell phone, presumably summoning an ambulance.

‘‘Call down to the house and let them know we’re all right up here,’’ Seth instructed, and the man nodded.

As Seth put Olivia down on the grass just outside the crypt, he heard Ira exclaim to one of his deputies, ‘‘Hell’s bells, will you come over here and look at this!’’

Whatever it was, Seth didn’t, at the moment, particularly want to know.

‘‘What is this, duct tape?’’ Seth asked, feeling the silvery bonds that made Olivia look half mummy.

‘‘I think so.’’

She was shivering despite the fact that it was a warm night, and Seth guessed that she was suffering from shock. And no wonder. He felt pretty shocked himself, and he hadn’t endured anything near what she had. He had only endured the thought that he might lose her. But that, to him, would be the worst thing of all.

‘‘Hold still.’’ Reaching into his pocket, he found the Swiss Army knife that Big John had given him years ago and pulled it out. After that, it took just a few minutes and some judicious sawing to free her. Gingerly, he pulled the tape away from her skin, taking care not to hurt her. When it was off, he chafed her arms and legs to restore her circulation, then helped her to stand up. She leaned against him for support, resting her head against his chest, and he wrapped both arms around her, holding her tight.

‘‘You saved my life,’’ she said. ‘‘Thank you.’’

‘‘I saved my own life,’’ he corrected, pressing his mouth to the top of her bent head. ‘‘I couldn’t have lived if you’d died in there.’’

‘‘Seth, what we’ve got in there looks pretty bad.’’ Ira emerged from the crypt, shaking his head and looking pale. ‘‘You need to come take a look.’’

‘‘Charlie—he . . .’’ Olivia shuddered in his arms. ‘‘He murdered four little girls. Their bodies are in there. And he drowned my mother. He told me.’’

Seth looked at Ira, who nodded grimly.

‘‘Sit down here a minute,’’ Seth said to Olivia, and left her on the single step leading into the crypt, leaning against one of the marble angels.

When he emerged, he felt sick to his stomach.

Olivia cast a fleeting look up at him. ‘‘Charlie was going to do that to Sara. He was going to do that to me, when I was a little girl. That’s why he killed my mother. She saved me.’’

‘‘Jesus,’’ Seth said, and sat down beside her on the step as she told him everything that had happened.

In the distance, just faintly, came the wail of a siren. The ambulance itself arrived moments later.

When EMTs came bustling into the graveyard, Seth pulled Olivia to her feet.

‘‘Can you walk back to the house, do you think?’’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘‘Come on, then,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t want to see this.’’

With his arm wrapped around her waist, they moved slowly out of the cemetery and started down the path. Seth was careful to set an easy pace, but Olivia seemed to gain strength as they went. In the places where she had to walk in front of him, Seth looked at her dark, bent head and sweetly curved form in the fluttering nightgown, and thanked God that he had her still.

He had thought there was plenty of time for the two of them. But tonight, time had almost run out.

They were in the woods now, under the sheltering darkness of the trees. The night was alive with sounds. The rustling canopy overhead blocked the moon, but moonlight filtered through, dappling the path. Barefoot when they had started out, Olivia was now wearing his socks to protect her feet. His shoes were so big she couldn’t keep them on.

‘‘Livvy?’’ They were walking arm in arm, with her leaning slightly against him, moving in the direction of the house. Ghost Lake glimmered off to the right. The stone steps that led up to the lawn were ahead of them.

‘‘Hmm?’’

Seth cleared his throat. He was clear about what he wanted to say, but sometimes it was hard to get the words out. ‘‘I love you.’’

‘‘I love you, too.’’

It was as simple as that.

When they reached the top of the steps, Chloe and Sara came running toward them, with Martha in hot pursuit. Seth wasn’t clear on the time, but it had to be about four A.M.

‘‘Mom!’’

‘‘Olivia!’’

Both girls flung themselves at Olivia. She hugged them, then wrapped an arm around each as they all headed toward the house, the girls chattering incessantly about their thoughts, feelings, and actions during the night’s adventures as they went. Seth didn’t really listen, and he didn’t think Olivia was listening, either, because all she did was nod and smile.

When they reached the house, Chloe stopped suddenly, which halted the whole group, and looked around, waving.

‘‘What are you doing?’’ Sara asked, looking around, too.

‘‘Waving to my nana,’’ Chloe said. ‘‘See? She’s that blinky star there.’’

Sara squinted up into the star-studded sky. ‘‘There’s two of them, blinking together.’’

Seth looked, and Sara was right. There was a binary star winking and blinking at them from high in the western sky.

Olivia was looking, too. ‘‘Wave, Sara,’’ she instructed with a smile. ‘‘I think one of those stars is Chloe’s grandmother, and the other one is yours.’’

Both little girls waved madly.

‘‘Is it okay to wish on Nana-star?’’ Chloe asked Seth, a slight frown wrinkling her brow.

‘‘Sure,’’ Seth said. He figured if his mother was now a star, she wouldn’t mind being wished on.

‘‘Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.’’ Then Chloe closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, apparently wishing very hard.

‘‘What did you wish for?’’ Seth asked curiously when she opened her eyes again.

‘‘I wished that the four of us could be a real family,’’ Chloe said, taking his hand. ‘‘Could we, Daddy?’’

Seth looked at Olivia over the children’s heads. ‘‘We could,’’ he said slowly. ‘‘If Sara’s mom will marry me. Will you, Livvy?’’

Olivia met his gaze. Her expression was very solemn for a moment, and Seth wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Then her face broke into a wide smile.

‘‘I will absolutely marry you,’’ she said, and walked right into his outstretched arms. As he kissed her, his daughter, and hers, danced around them, cheering. And two bright stars, bound together for eternity, winked and blinked in the night-dark sky.