Nebulon Horror (9 page)

He motioned Willard to sit too, and found a chair for himself. "All right. What's been going on?"

Lois told him about the marble game in the school yard and Raymond Hostetter's behavior in her office. About the boy's flight from school and his subsequent
disappearance. Willard took over and told of their visit to the Hostetter residence. "Then we turned on the local news at six and heard about the baby," he said. "And Lois insists it wouldn't have happened if—"

"I haven't heard about the baby," Doc reminded him. "What happened?"

"A two-month-old infant was taken from its carriage and thrown into the park lake. The mother says she went to get a drink of water and came back to find the carriage empty. Raymond Hostetter was there and accused her of throwing the child in herself."

"Good Lord! Did she?"

"She denies it, of course. But Raymond says he saw her."

Doc looked at Lois Ellstrom. "And you think what? That Raymond may have done it himself?"

She nodded. "Of course he did. No mother would drown her own baby—certainly not in a public place like that. And it's my fault for letting him run away from school. He's sick, Norman.
Sick.
And if I'd held him there in my office until his parents could have come for him, that baby wouldn't be dead!"

Doc made a pretense of giving the matter grave thought, and then shook his head. "You don't know. There's no way to be sure."

"I'm sure, Norman! If you'd heard him talking to me . . . If you'd seen his eyes when he defied me . . ."

Again Doc shook his head. "If the Hostetters thought anything was wrong with him, they'd call me. I'm their doctor."

"Perhaps they don't realize," Willard said.

Doc could see no point in prolonging the discussion. "Anyway," he said, "even if the boy is behaving strangely and did drown the baby—a premise I just don't buy, believe me—it can't in any way be your
fault, Lois. Stop blaming yourself. I'm going to give you some medication and pack you off to bed." He went to the kitchen for a glass of water, brought it back, and gave her a tranquilizer. Then while her husband took her upstairs to bed, he sat and thought about what he had just been told.

Something strange was going on in Nebulon, it seemed. First that puzzling business of Jerri Jansen's turning on Vin Otto like a little tigress at the Sunday night band concert. Then the nasty affair of the sharpened nail and the captive frog. Then this curious business of the door that wasn't a door and was opened but not passed through. Now this about the mayor's boy, Raymond. Children, all. All the same age, too. All in the same second grade at Lois Ellstrom's school. The second-grade teacher was a Miss Aube, wasn't she? Yes. Quite an attractive young woman. She had come to see him a couple of weeks ago, complaining of recurring headaches.

Willard Ellstrom came back into the room and sat down. "What do you think, Norman?"

"About what's going on? I haven't a clue."

"No, I meant Lois."

"She's overwrought. Just too much happening in one day. I think she'll snap out of it after a good night's sleep."

Willard was obviously relieved. "What did you want to see me about? You said on the phone—"

"Yes. I'd been talking to the little Jansen girl about her frequent visits to old Gustave's house. It seems she plays there a lot. She told me some things about the place that made me downright curious, and I suddenly remembered you'd taken some pictures there." For months Willard Ellstrom had been photographing Nebulon's places of interest for a book his wife was doing on the history of the town. "You did get inside, didn't you?" Doc asked.

"I did, finally."

"Elizabeth wasn't cooperative?"

"Elizabeth was adamantly uncooperative until I happened to touch a weak spot. She had a photo of her sister Ellyn, the one who died in that hardware store fire. It hung on a wall in the living room. On one of my visits I just happened to remark that she ought to have it enlarged and properly framed, and when I said I'd be glad to do it for her, I was in."

"She let you take any pictures you wanted? Even in those locked rooms I've been hearing about?"

"No, not those. Are they locked? I thought they were just closed up. I did take some shots in that part of the house, however."

"You mean there's a whole section of the place she doesn't use?"

"The whole back of the house upstairs. Yes. I wanted a shot of the staircase from above. It was made by hand, each baluster separately carved. So she took me up there, and while I was there I managed a shot in the master bedroom at the front, the one she uses. But she said the rooms at the rear were empty."

"Do you have those pictures here, Will?"

"Yes, I do." Crossing the room to a low bookcase that ran along two thirds of the opposite wall, Willard returned with a thick folder of prints, which he placed in Doc's hands. They were large prints, nine by eleven at least. "Wonderful," Doc said as he took his time over them, studying every detail.

"I got a bit carried away," Willard said. "We won't use more than one or two in the book, of course. But that's a fascinating old house."

"I can see." What Doc was seeing was a huge living room—or was it called a parlor?—filled with old, dark
furniture, a dining room with furnishings of the same vintage, a kitchen that appeared to be a blend of two eras, a staircase with a remarkable balustrade, a bedroom almost as vast as the living room, and finally one photo that appeared to have gone wrong somehow. "What happened to this one?" he asked.

"The negative appears to be light-struck. I don't know how it happened. The rest of the roll was all right, as you can see."

"This is that upstairs hall?"

"Yes. Looking back from the doorway of her bedroom. I wanted the doors of those shut-up rooms, if only for a conversation piece."

It had to be the upstairs hall, Doc realized. The top of the staircase was visible at one side. Beyond the stairs on the same side he could just make out two closed doors. On the other side he thought he could distinguish two or even three more, but could not be sure because of the defect. The latter was a misty blur in the middle of the print. It gave Doc an idea, and he chuckled.

"You should use this in the book. Say the old house is spooked and you have a photo to prove it."

"It does look like a person, doesn't it? I think what happened, I took these on a Saturday afternoon and by the time I got through it was really too late to go to the studio and develop the film. At the same time, I was really hyped on seeing what I'd got, so I did it at home that night in a small tank I have here, an old one that should have been discarded long ago. I probably jarred the cover."

Doc returned the photos to their folder and handed it back. "They're great." Which of those doors in the blurred picture was the one Jerri Jansen habitually opened, he wondered. Or didn't open. Or whatever. "Did you get any shots of the outside?"

"Not then. I got one a few days ago, but it won't do."

"Another one light-struck?"

"No, I was driving by about four thirty. We'd had a thunderstorm to wash everything clean, and the light was just remarkable, shining through that big live oak in the yard. I was really excited. But there were half a dozen kids playing on the veranda, and when I got out of my car with the camera they lined up at the rail to watch me and wouldn't budge. Here, I'll show you." With a wry grin Willard went to the bookcase again. "The light was great, as you can see," he said, handing Doc a single print. "But . . . what's that song about ten little Indians on a fence?"

Doc had to smile too, looking at the picture. His smile became a frown, though, as he studied the lineup of juvenile faces. "Hey," he said softly. "Isn't this Raymond Hostetter?"

Willard bent his lanky body to look, and seemed startled. "Why, so it is. I hadn't realized."

"Jerri Jansen, Teresa Crosser, Raymond Hostetter. All here," Doc said, scowling. "I know this one, too. Debbie Voight. I look after her. Who are the other two?"

"I have no idea, Norman."

"How the hell many kids play at that house, anyway? The whole second grade?"

I
t was Stephanie Aube who discovered the diagram. On duty in the school yard again at recess, she mingled with the children for a time to make sure nothing like the disruption of the day before was likely to happen. Then, tired from all the tension at school following Raymond Hostetter's disappearance, she went to the bench at the end of the yard and sat down.

At once she noticed the scratches in the reddish earth at her feet, and leaned forward to study them.

Rising, she hurried across the yard to the open window of the principal's office and tapped on the screen. "Mrs. Ellstrom!"

"Yes?" Lois Ellstrom said, getting up from her desk. "Can you come out here for a minute, please? There's something I want to show you."

Lois came at once, and Stephanie led her to the bench. "Look at this. Raymond was sitting here, you remember, before he broke up the marble game. He had a stick."

"What in the world . . ."

"I saw something like this when I went to Haiti last summer. We were taken to a voodoo service. It was only for tourists, I'm sure, but the houngan drew designs something like
this—vèvès
he called them—in cornmeal on the ground."

Lois Ellstrom studied the scratches and was aston
ished that a second-grader could have drawn them. It appeared to be just one diagram with rectangles, circles, triangles or pyramids, straight and curved lines all intricately interwoven. "Wait here, please. Don't let anyone trouble it," she said, and hurried back to her office.

Returning with a pad of paper and a pencil, she stood there by the bench for the next few minutes carefully copying Raymond Hostetter's art work. "There," she said with satisfaction when the task was done. "Have I got it right, do you think?"

"Yes, I think so. Mrs. Ellstrom, how could a seven-year-old do anything as elaborate as this? And with only a stick!"

"I've been wondering the same thing."

"Will you ask him what it means?"

Lois frowned. The Hostetter boy had been found, of course, but was not in school today. She had not expected he would be. "I don't believe we ought to mention it to him or anyone. Now that I've copied it, let's rub it out."

Stephanie obediently obliterated the design by running her foot over it.

Several times that day Lois Ellstrom paused in her work as principal of the school to study her copy of the diagram. A number of definitions ran through her mind: sign, symbol, diagram, character. She jotted these down.

On her way home she stopped at the library. For a town the size of Nebulon it was an excellent one, competently supervised by Miss Elizabeth Peckham. This afternoon it was nearly empty. With a nod to Elizabeth, Lois went past the desk and began searching for a book or books that might contain some answers,

"May I help you, Mrs. Ellstrom?"

Startled, she rose from a squatting survey of some
lower-shelf volumes to find Elizabeth standing ramrod-straight at her side. "Oh," she said. Then, "I don't know. I'm not sure what I want. Do you have anything on . . . symbols?"

"What kind of symbols are you interested in, Mrs. Ellstrom?"

"I'm not sure of that, either." None of the words on her mental list would really do, would they? Another one occurred to her, so alien to any previous thought process of hers that she was not even sure how to pronounce or spell it. "Are there such things as . . . cabalic or cabalistic symbols? Would you have a book on that?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Symbols like this, then." Reluctantly, because she did not want to be questioned about it, Lois produced the copy she had made of Raymond's scratches. "I
ah . . . came across it recently under somewhat odd circumstances and feel it may mean something." Her wry smile indicated embarrassment. "Frankly, I don't believe I know what a cabalistic symbol is. I suppose I've just come across the word somewhere."

Elizabeth Peckham did not smile back. She said with a slight shrug, "I believe the word refers to secret or esoteric rituals, occultism, that sort of thing." She studied the paper for a moment. Her face revealed nothing. She shrugged again. "We haven't any book that would contain such symbols. But I hardly believe this is cabalistic. Why do you think it's anything more than elaborate doodling?"