Hear the Children Calling (3 page)

“B.B.,” Kate scolded. “Will you please stop this yanking?”

But Boston Blackie’s yelps grew more frantic.

“What is wrong with . . .”

As Kate stepped out of the woods, the crisp autumn air suddenly rose in temperature about thirty degrees. The multicolored trees that should have been across the road had disappeared, leaving only a long stretch of barren ground.

“What on earth?”

Kate gazed across the roadway, lined now with sagebrush instead of chrysanthemums and asters. Somehow, she was standing on a desert roadway, looking toward a row of flat-topped mountains. Mesas, her subconscious told her, pulling out a file from her school years.

Mesas, in New England?

Kate let Boston Blackie’s leash drop. The dog cowered next to her, its tail between its legs, making pathetic whining noises. Kate turned a complete circle, confusion contorting her face.

“I must be sleeping. That’s it. I fell asleep on the couch. I was so tired after raking leaves and . . .”

She bit her lip and felt pain.

You don’t feel pain in a dream, do you? And you don’t smell pumpkin pie and you don’t feel the hot wind on your neck . . .

“But there is no hot wind here,” Kate cried. “It’s autumn in New England.”

Suddenly hot, she tore off her sweater, letting it dangle at her side. She could feel the warm sand tossing against her face as she undid the top buttons of her blouse.

Then she heard the child’s voice.

“Momma!”

Kate looked all around.

“Momma, help me!”

A little girl stood far off in the distance, dressed in a green plaid smock with a white collar, and green twill shorts.

Dressed the way Kate’s daughter, Laura, had been on a class trip she’d taken with her nursery school six years ago, a trip from which she had never returned.

“Laura?” Kate’s voice was no match for the hot, whistling wind.

“Mommy? They want to hurt me. Make them stop.”

And then she could see the child clearly, a little girl with long dark braids standing stiffly, her arms opened.

“Laura,”
Kate screamed.

It wasn’t an illusion. It couldn’t be an illusion. Her daughter had come back to her. Everyone had said Laura must have drowned when the boat capsized, that the strong undercurrents of Great Gull Bay had dragged her out to sea. But Kate had never believed that, and here was her daughter now, calling to her. Laura was alive!

“Mommy?”

“Oh, Laura,” Kate squeaked, racing toward her daughter with tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Laura, you’re safe!”

Laura stood her ground, waiting. But Kate began to notice that no matter how much she ran, her daughter was always the same distance from her. Something was keeping her from getting to the child.

“Laura,” she shouted, stopping. “Come to me.”

Laura didn’t move.

“Laura,
please!”

But now the child turned around slowly and walked away from her mother. Kate ran after her, one arm reaching forward to grab the retreating child. She cried out her name, begging her to come back. Her feet wove themselves into a knot of tumbleweed, and she flew forward, smashing her head on a jagged rock. Kate burst into tears, pounding the desert floor angrily. Sand flew up, stinging her eyes.

Then the sand stopped flying and the desert floor seemed harder, and it was no longer so terribly hot.

Kate felt arms around her and turned to see her husband’s concerned face. She wasn’t outside anymore and she wasn’t dressed in her cable-knit sweater and corduroy pants. She was wearing a nightgown, and she was crouched down on the bathroom floor.

“Kate, you had a nightmare,” Danny said, hugging her. He touched her forehead and brought back a finger dotted with red. “You must have woke up when you fell against the tub.”

“I hit my head on a rock,” Kate choked.

Danny smiled reassuringly. “There aren’t any rocks in here. You had a dilly of a nightmare, that’s all.”

Kate stared at him. A nightmare. She had only dreamed her baby girl was alive.

Danny helped her to her feet. “Let me put a bandage on that,” he said. “Then I want you back in bed.”

Kate didn’t say a word as Danny gently dabbed at the wound to clean it, covered it with antiseptic cream, and bandaged it with gauze. Danny was so much like Laura, as if she’d only inherited her father’s genes. Dark eyes and hair, big bones. Even at three Laura had been an exotic child. But in the dream, she had appeared much older. As old as she might be today . . .

The dream had been so real Kate could still feel sand scratching the back of her neck. She reached back there and felt something gritty. Her hand came around so fast she almost struck her husband. Tiny brown crystals sparkled beneath her nails. Sand.

“I—I saw Laura,” Kate stammered. “She was in a desert, calling to me, and I couldn’t get to her. Danny, Laura is alive. She’s alive and she needs us.”

“No, Kate,” Danny said. “Laura was killed. She’s been gone for six years.”

Kate shook her head. “No, she’s alive,” she said. “She’s alive and she’s sending me messages to come for her. Danny, we have to find our daughter. She’s alive. I know she is.”

She threw herself in her husband’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Danny rubbed her back, staring at his reflection in the door mirror. His wife seemed so small against his massive football player’s chest. Kate’s nightmares had stopped about eighteen months after Laura’s death.

Why had they come back?

4

W
HEN THE SCHOOL BUS PULLED UP TO THE STONE
steps of the Thomas Jefferson Grade School, in the San Francisco suburb of Sandhaven, ten-year-old Elizabeth Morse was the first one out. She held her books close to her small frame and scurried through the drizzling rain, yards ahead of the next child.

“Good morning, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Bettany greeted.

Beth nodded and slipped into her seat. Usually, that would have been the extent of the attention Mrs. Bettany paid to the child. She was so unassuming it was easy to forget she was there. But because of the rain, the children would not be playing in the school yard, and Beth had come into the classroom before the others. It gave Mrs. Bettany a rare few minutes to wonder about her. Beth was so pretty. Her thick, wavy red hair could have been the envy of the other fifth-grade girls, if only Beth would do something with it. She had those kind of thick eyelashes that would never need mascara. And Mrs. Bettany had no doubt the child’s complexion would always remain peaches-and-creamy.

But there was a sadness about her that overshadowed her sweet loveliness. It wasn’t because of an abusive environment, the reason other children she’d met had that haunted look. Beth’s father was a prominent real-estate tycoon, and her mother an illustrator, Mrs. Bettany had met them and knew they were kind. She had been with Beth from the time she was a young child, when her twin brother, Peter, had died in a plane crash. Sick with the flu, Beth had missed the trip. And because she had survived when her twin hadn’t, she
carried an unfair burden of guilt on her small shoulders.

But the small desks had filled with children and it was time to get on with the business of teaching fifth grade. The morning went on, and Beth Morse simply blended into the background.

As Mrs. Bettany discussed the atmosphere of Jupiter during a science lesson, something made Beth turn her eyes toward the window. It had grown dark outside, storm clouds blocking the sun and bringing night to the morning. Rain pattered on the window, but Mrs. Bettany’s voice was louder.

Then Beth heard another voice. It was familiar, and yet she couldn’t quite place it. It seemed to be coming from outside, as if someone were calling her from the school yard down below. Slowly, she rose from her seat and walked toward the window. Mrs. Bettany, busy drawing on the board, did not see her. But one by one, the children began to notice. They exchanged glances and giggled behind their hands.

Beth stopped at the radiator, placing her hands gently on the frosty pane of glass. She gazed into the school yard, her eyes drawn toward the swings. There was a boy sitting there, looking up at the windows. He had thick red hair like her own. Even though it was raining, he wasn’t wearing a coat. He reached up toward her with both arms.

Help me, Bethie. Please help me. They’re going to kill me.

Beth began to scream.

Mrs. Bettany swung around from the board and gasped to see the little girl standing at the window, banging so hard on the glass that cut-outs of pumpkins worked loose and fell to the floor. “Elizabeth!”

The teacher hurried through the desks, reaching to take hold of the child. “Beth, what’s wrong?”

The class went wild, laughing and talking all at once.

“Stop this noise,” the teacher ordered, as much for
the other children as for the little girl in her arms. “Mary Swenson, get the nurse.”

Beth kept screaming.

“Elizabeth Morse, you stop this!” Mrs. Bettany turned her around and looked directly into the child’s wild green eyes.

“It’s Peter,” Beth cried. “It’s Peter. He’s down there and he needs me. Let me go! Let me go!”

The nurse appeared at that moment, and together the two women led the hysterical child from the room.

“It’s Peter!”

Mrs. Bettany gazed over the top of Beth’s red hair and shook her head at the nurse. In her office, nurse Dora Lamb sat the child down and gave her a drink of water. She spoke soothingly to her until at last she had calmed down.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Beth shook her head, staring at her lap. The animated child they had just seen was gone now, replaced by the quiet little girl Mrs. Bettany had always known.

She beckoned the nurse from the room, where Beth now lay quietly on a cot.

“I knew it would come to this someday,” Dora said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Mrs. Bettany described the earlier scene as she remembered it. “She kept crying out about someone named Peter,” she said.

Dora’s gray eyebrows went up. “That was her twin’s name,” she said.

“She said he was in the school yard,” Mrs. Bettany said. “What could have made her act like that?”

Dora shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. But losing a sibling, especially a twin, is an awful thing for a child to live with. Maybe something happened at home this morning to set the child off.”

“You call Mrs. Morse,” Mrs. Bettany said. “I’m going to the principal’s office to report this.” She left the room, wondering as she walked along the hallway why a little girl would suddenly begin crying out for the twin she had lost almost six years earlier.

5

K
ATE WATCHED
D
ANNY POUR HER MORNING CUP OF
coffee, staring at the steaming brown liquid as she rested her chin on her fist. Outside the French doors, the early-morning fog rolled thickly over the pine deck. She could hear the faint sound of a foghorn on Great Gull Bay, like some melancholy cry for help. Like Laura crying for help . . .

“I saw her,” she said, taking the cup and leaning back with it.

“You dreamt about her,” Danny said, buttering English muffins. “Although I don’t know why, after all these years.”

Kate looked around at him, blue eyes wide. “Don’t you think of her?”

“Most every day,” Danny said. “But I’ve accepted the fact that she’s gone, much as I hate it. Kate, you know what an exhaustive search took place after that boat capsized. Laura’s body was dragged out to the ocean by a strong undercurrent.”

Kate shuddered, the hot coffee not warming her. “I could never really accept that,” she said.

Danny sat down, too, and handed her a plate. “It’s been years since you had a nightmare.” A request for an explanation remained unspoken, and somehow that made it all the more obvious.

“If you’re worried about me having another breakdown,” Kate said, “that’s not the case. I’m perfectly fine.”

She was gazing at him in a way that seemed both innocent and defiant. Kate’s roundish face was childish,
and behind wire-framed glasses her large blue eyes gave her an almost angelic look. Though her shoulder-length, light-brown hair was usually impeccable, today it hung in limp strands.

“It’s such a strong feeling, Danny,” she said. “As if I actually did see Laura last night—as if I were actually standing in that desert.”

Danny’s brown eyes reflected the concern in her own. Before he could respond, the sound of a door opening signaled them to be quiet.

“The boys are coming down,” Danny said.

Four-year-old Chris and his two-year-old brother Joseph came running into the room, their little bare feet slapping the cold tile floor. With giggles and grins they jumped into their mother’s lap.

“Hi, Mommy,” Chris cried.

“I want cereal,” Joseph lisped.

“Don’t I get a good morning?” Danny asked, pretending to be insulted.

The boys giggled and shook their heads, cuddling deeper into their mother’s arms. With blonde hair cut Dutch Boy style, they both looked exactly like Kate.

“Go on, boys,” Kate said. “Say good morning to Daddy.”

In unison, they jumped down and went to hug their father. Danny still had the build of the linebacker he’d been in college, and the children seemed lost in his arms.

“Joseph, you’re wet,” Danny said.

Kate pushed her chair back. “I’ll take care of him,” she sighed.

“Let me,” Danny said. “This is why I love the weekends. I get to be a hundred-percent daddy.” He picked Joseph up and left the room.

Chris climbed into his booster seat and waited for breakfast. “Mommy, what day is it?”

“Saturday, Chris.”

“When’s Halloween?”

“About three more weeks.”

“How long is three weeks? How many days is it?”

“Finish your breakfast, Chris,” Kate said, standing up. The four-year-old never stopped asking questions. “I’ve got to get dressed for work.”

In the upstairs bathroom, she brushed her bangs aside and lowered her glasses to have a better look at the small cut on her head. It had a V shape, surrounded by a small purplish bruise. Kate looked over at the tub, wondering what could give her a cut in such a shape. It didn’t make sense.