Nightmare Child (12 page)

"I'll be at your place around nine. If you'll go with me, that is."

"All right."

"I don't want to make this any nastier than it has to be. The
McCay's
may be decent people who went astray somehow. But the blood and the feces—" He shook his head. "That sounds pretty serious."

"Yes," she said, "it does."

But what about their eyes, their glowing eyes? Doesn't that sound serious, too?
But she knew, sitting there amid the clamor and the freezing wind that scooted up the aisle whenever anybody opened the side door—she knew that she could not tell him about their glowing eyes. It was her vanity. She did not want to put herself in the position of appearing…overwrought. And there's one more thing I should tell you, she could hear herself saying: Their eyes…they glow. Like…space creatures' or something.

How else to explain them? Had she in her panic simply imagined those terrifying, empty faces? Or were the faces real?

A little girl's laughter three booths away brought her back to reality. Arby's…Roast beef sandwiches…Little girls in pink parkas. These were the elements of reality…not people with empty faces and burning eyes.

"Am I allowed to tell you how pretty you look tonight?"

Coming back to the present, she said, "Now I know you must be interested in me. I'm a mess."

"Well, if you are, you're the best-looking mess I've ever seen."

This time, it was she who touched his hand. "I appreciate that, Robert, I really do."

"One promise, all right?"

Afraid he was going to say something that would make both of them uneasy, she said, "All right."

"Don't do anything crazy while I'm gone."

Relieved that he was talking about the situation with Jenny, she said, "I'm going home and locking my doors and waiting for you. Does that sound crazy?"

"Not at all. Just don't try to contact the
McCay's
in any way. Okay?"

"Okay."

"As I said, I shouldn't be any later than nine or so." He finished his coffee. "Maybe if we get lucky, there'll even be a good movie on the late show."

She created a pleasant fantasy. "Hot popcorn, apple cider, a cozy fire, and—"

"Clint Eastwood."

"You're kidding! I was thinking more of Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand."

Laughing, he got up, leaned over the table, and kissed her chastely on the forehead. "That's the only thing about you I don't like."

Standing up, she returned his chaste kiss, putting it on his cheek. "Oh, give me time." She smiled. "You'll find lots of other things to not like about me."

In cold turned bitter, she walked back to her car, wishing he were still by her side.

Home meant warmth, home meant comfort, home meant the snug feeling of looking out the front window and watching snow swirl and sprinkle in the silver moonlight.

On television Bob Newhart was cracking some funny lines with George the handyman. In the kitchen a pot of coffee was brewing and smelling wonderful in the process. Upstairs the electric blanket was already at work, preparing Diane's bed for her.

She wondered how Robert was coming with the search warrant. He'd said he'd need one before they could get into Jeff and Mindy's place. Just then, the phone rang.

Assuming it was Robert, she grabbed the receiver and let a smile make her voice rich with warmth. "Hello?"

A fierce crackling noise filled the receiver's earpiece. She held the phone away and stared at it, as if looking at it would do some good.

Putting the phone back to her ear, she said, "Hello? I've got a really bad connection on this end." An image came to her of phone lines downed in heavy snow.

If anything, the connection was worse than before, sounding like pieces of aluminum foil being crinkled.

"Hello? Why don't you hang up and call back? I can't hear a thing except static."

Hanging up, she touched her fingers to her face and realized she was trembling. It had been one of those days.

The phone rang, shrill even above the noise of the television.

"Hello?" She said.

The static again. This time it was not quite as bad, but still she could hear nothing.

Or could she? Faintly, a human voice muttered words hopelessly lost in the roar of the receiver.

"Hello?" she said again.

Almost about to hang up once more, the words coming from the other end became slightly more coherent. Goose bumps covered her arms when she was finally able to make sense of the syllables being spoken. "Aunt Diane. It's me, Jenny. I need your help." My God—Jenny!

"Jenny, listen to me. Where are you?"

Static.

"Jenny, can you hear me?" By now, Diane was shouting.

The static grew so bad that she had to jerk the receiver away from her ear and hold it away from her body.

She started biting her nails. Robert had been right. She always did that—tiny little nervous bites, like a cannibalistic version of the munchies—when she felt stressed out.

She lifted the receiver to her ear again. The static was back at its previously tolerable level.

"Jenny, can you hear me?"

Distantly, almost as if from another planet, a young girl's voice said, "Yes!"

"Are you in Mindy's house?"

Again distantly, the young girl's voice said "Yes!" for the second time.

"A policeman and I are going to come and get you in a little while. Did you understand what I said?"

At first there was no response, only the wave of static again. Then, Jenny said, even more distantly than before, "I understand."

"I love you, Jenny. I'm sorry I had to leave you this afternoon."

Diane's heart broke, thinking again of how she'd been frightened off by Mindy and Jeff, leaving little Jenny alone. Presently, she had an image of Jenny in some dark upstairs room, whispering into the telephone above the static. The room would probably be decorated in savage swaths of red blood and brown feces.

"Just say your prayers and everything will be all right, Jenny," Diane said. "Do you remember the special prayer I taught you that time? The one to Saint Christopher? He protects the unprotected, Jenny. Pray to him now."

Faintly, faintly: "I will, Aunt Diane. I will."

"I love you, Jenny."

"I love you, Aunt Diane."

And with that, the connection was broken.

For the next ten minutes, Diane paced, biting at her thumbnail as she did so.

She was overwhelmed by this sense of loss and vulnerability, imagining Jenny being held hostage somewhere in that dark and pagan house. She had still not been able to reconcile her impressions of Mindy and Jeff as the most upwardly mobile of yuppies with the two people who had defiled the house next door with satanic rites.

She had just gone out into the kitchen for a cup of coffee when the phone rang again.

Jenny?

Stepping quickly to the yellow wall phone, Diane lifted the receiver and said hello.

A breathless Robert said, "I got it."

"Oh?"

"You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? You've forgotten already, haven't you?"

"I'm afraid I'm a little spacey today, Robert. Sorry."

"That's all right. I'm spacey every day." He caught his breath. "I got the warrant. Judge Slocum hemmed and hawed, but he finally came through. I just wanted to tell you that I'm on my way out to your place."

Knowing she would soon have to go back among the fetid, rank smells of the
McCay
house, Diane said, "I just want to get Jenny and get out of there."

"I've even arranged that with the judge. We can take Jenny and you can keep her overnight until the caseworkers move in. Have you ever worked with caseworkers before?"

"No."

"Boy, do you have an experience ahead of you."

Thinking of Jenny's tiny voice on the other end of the phone, Diane said, "Oh, hurry, Robert. Let's go get her as soon as possible."

"Ten minutes. Fifteen at most."

"I'm getting scared."

He laughed. "Just bite your nails some more. That should keep you calm."

And with that, he hung up.

In the doorway, a red woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, Robert looked as if he were about to go caroling.

"Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee before we go over?"

"Still scared, huh?"

"Not so much scared as…I just feel awkward, I guess. I've known them for a few years and—"

"I know what you're talking about." He nodded to the cozy house inside. "You can always stay here and I can handle it alone. I'm sure it won't be a big deal."

"Well…" She thought about his invitation for a moment. "No. Jenny's well-being is at stake. That's what I've got to keep remembering."

"So you're going to go?"

"Yes. Just give me a minute."

He stepped inside, closing the door against the freezing night, while she took her coat, hat, gloves and snow boots from the closet. Within a minute, she was well bundled against tie cold.

"Ready?" he said.

"Ready."

They went out the door, locking it behind them, Diane dropping the key in her coat pocket. A golden half-moon perched on the tops of the scrub pines on the crest of the hill behind
Stoneridge
, and clouds the color of sterling silver raced across the black sky.

As they tramped through the heavy snow, Diane took Robert's hand. "Do you mind?"

"I'm flattered."

She laughed. "That was exactly the right thing to say."

They went the rest of the way in silence, their footsteps crunching frozen snow, a nearby dog sounding cold and lonely in the night.

Lights shined beyond the curtains in the downstairs of the
McCay's
house. Smoke twisted gray from the chimney up into the night sky. Soundtrack laughter from a television sitcom became louder, the closer they got.

Diane took in a very deep breath and held it. "You all right?"

"Breathing exercises," she explained. "They're supposed to calm me down."

At the door, he knocked with a big gloved hand. They stood back, waiting. Diane continued her breathing exercises.

There was no response.

"Hmm," Robert said, inclining his head toward the door. The TV sitcom played on. Behind the curtains, the lights continued to shine.

Robert knocked again, louder this time, the report of it sharp on the silent winter air.

After a minute, he knocked once more. This time the force of his fist was thunderous.

When there was still no response, he tried the knob. Locked.

"Is there a back door?"

"Yes," Diane said. "Do you think she's all right?"

"I hope so. Why don't you show me the back entrance?"

As they walked around the side of the huge house, she told him about the phone call from Jenny. "But the connection was so bad I couldn't tell if she was all right or not."

"I guess we'll find out soon enough."

The screened-in porch in the rear was draped in moonlight and shadow. Dust devils of snow sprayed against the screening. He went up the steps and tried the door. That, too, was locked.

Before Diane realized what he was doing, he pulled his service revolver. "Why don't you wait here?"

"Where are you going?"

"Inside. Through this door."

But he had barely finished speaking when the dark night was flooded with warm yellow light from the ceiling of the porch.

In the back door stood Jeff
McCay
, dressed in a robe, pajamas, and holding a cup of what Diane sensed would be hot chocolate.

"Hi, Diane. Is everything all right?" Jeff called in a pleasant voice. "We were all upstairs in bed. We kept thinking we heard somebody knock, but we couldn't be sure."

By now, he had come across the porch and unlocked the door for them. "Why don't you come in? Doesn't take long to get frozen on a night like this." For the first time, he looked curious about Robert—who he was and what he was doing there.

Glancing over his shoulder and shrugging, Robert gave Diane a w
hat-is-going-on-here?
look. His service revolver had disappeared back into his shoulder holster.

In the center of the kitchen stood Mindy and Jenny, both turned out in pajamas, robes, fuzzy slippers, and holding steaming mugs of hot chocolate with plump white marshmallows bobbing in them.

"Hi, Diane," Mindy said. "You out for a walk?"

Not knowing what to say, Diane leaned down and looked at Jenny. "And how are you doing, honey?"

"Fine, Aunt Diane," Jenny said, shaking her pigtails as she raised her glass for Diane to inspect. "I love marshmallows, don't you?"

Diane's first impression was that she'd wandered onto the set of
Saturday Night Live,
which was in the process of doing a scathing satire on bland suburbanites. At best, the
McCay's
had always been cordial, but never more than that—certainly never this beaming, nearly ecstatic trio.