Second Child (18 page)

Brett’s voice trailed off. For several seconds no one said anything at all. And then, at last, Teri spoke. “But what happened to her?”

Brett shrugged. “No one knows,” he said. “No one ever saw her again. Or the hand, either. After the panic died down at the dance, the hand was gone, and so was she. She just disappeared. But they say she’s still around. They say that sometimes she walks on the beach, or in the woods, hunting for her hand. And this year, she’s supposed to come back.”

Teri smiled. “Come back?” she asked. “But you just said she never left.”

“But this year is different,” Brett said slyly. “The Cove Club opened exactly one hundred years ago. This year’s August Moon Ball is the centennial.”

“So?” Teri smirked. “What’s supposed to happen?”

Brett leaned forward and once more his voice dropped. “She’s supposed to come back,” he said. “She’s supposed to come back and get her revenge.”

Teri glanced around at the rest of the kids, trying to decide if any of them believed it. “What’s she supposed to do?” she asked. “And who was she? What was her name?”

“D’Arcy,” Brett told her. “D’Arcy Malloy. She was a maid in your house.”

“D’Arcy?” Teri repeated. She turned to Melissa, who was sitting very still, staring into the fire. “But that’s the name of your friend, isn’t it?” she asked.

Melissa’s head turned, and her eyes, large and hurt, met Teri’s. “You weren’t supposed to tell,” she said, her voice trembling. Then, before Teri could say anything else, Melissa jumped up and darted off down the beach, instantly disappearing into the darkness.

When she was gone, Ellen Stevens looked over at Teri. “What do you mean, her friend?” she asked.

Teri was silent for a moment, but then her lips curved into a faint smile. “Melissa has an imaginary friend,” she said. “She told me about her last night. Her name is D’Arcy.”

Melissa stumbled along the beach, determined not to give in to the sob that lurked in her throat. At last, when the bonfire was only a spot of orange light in the distance, she came to a stop and sat down on the sand, staring out to sea.

It’s no big deal, she told herself. So what if Teri told them about her friend? It was she herself who had behaved stupidly. If she’d just taken a second to think about it, she could have laughed it off—even made the story Brett had told better by admitting that her friend
was
the ghost. After all, in a way it was true—ever since she’d first heard the story of D’Arcy Malloy when she was only six or seven years old, she’d thought about D’Arcy, even gone up to the attic to the little room where she was certain D’Arcy must have lived.

And then, as she’d gotten older and found it harder and harder to make friends with the rest of the kids, she’d started talking to D’Arcy, and imagined that D’Arcy was talking back to her.

Except her friend wasn’t the real D’Arcy, of course. Her
friend was just someone she’d made up, someone the same age as she was.

Someone she could talk to about all the things she couldn’t talk to anyone else about.

But now, after she’d been dumb enough to run away, everyone was going to think she was nuts. Why had she done it? Why hadn’t she just made a joke of it? After all, when she’d been the last one on the volleyball court, fighting it out with Jerry Chalmers, she’d thought the whole thing was as funny as everyone else had. It hadn’t been a joke on
her.
It had just been a
joke,
and for once she’d been a part of it.

But now she’d wrecked it by being stupid again.

All she’d had to do was go along with it. There were all kinds of stories she could have made up.

She could have told them she knew who D’Arcy was going to come for at the August Moon Ball.

Then she thought of something even better—maybe she should have told them that D’Arcy had found her hand and was going to leave it on the bed of her victim the night before the ball.

The sob that had threatened to overwhelm her only a few minutes earlier suddenly gave way to a giggle and then a sigh.

If the kids were going to laugh at her again, it was her own fault, not Teri’s. And there wasn’t anything she could do about it tonight.

As she got up and started home, she almost wished that D’Arcy
were
real. And if she were …

She tried to put the thought out of her mind, but as she neared the house she found herself giggling again. What would the kids do if they actually
saw
D’Arcy? she wondered.

But they wouldn’t, of course, for there was no D’Arcy, except for the friend who existed only in her own mind.

She paused as she neared the house. In the library all the lights were on, and she could see her mother sitting in front of the television set. If she went in the front door, Phyllis would surely hear her, and then the questions would start.

“Why are you home so early?”

“Why didn’t Teri come with you?”

“Is the bonfire over?”

She glanced back. In the distance the fire was burning brighter now. Someone must have thrown more wood on it, and even from here she could see the silhouettes of the rest of the kids, some of them sitting on logs, some of them standing near the fire, toasting marshmallows.

Her mother would see them, too, and the questions would get worse.

“What did you do?”

“Were you rude to your friends again?”

“Did you do something stupid?”

“Did you?”

She backed away from the front of the house, then skirted around it, losing herself in the deep shadows. From the back the house was dark, and as she approached the kitchen door she began to relax. If she could just slip inside without her mother hearing her.

And then, out of the darkness, a great shadow leaped at her, and a moment later Blackie, his tail wagging furiously, rose up to put his big forepaws on her chest as his tongue licked eagerly at her face.

“Blackie!” Melissa said, doing her best to keep her voice as soft as possible. “Will you get
down?”

Obediently, the dog dropped back to the ground, and Melissa knelt next to him for a moment, scratching his ears and rubbing his back. Wriggling with pleasure, the big Labrador pressed against her, his tongue lapping affectionately at her arms.

“All right,” she whispered, rising once more to her feet and glancing nervously toward the house to be sure no new lights had come on. “Now go home. Do you hear me? Go home!”

She moved up the steps to the back door. The dog, after hesitating only a moment, scrambled after her.

“No!” she hissed. “You can’t come in!”

She felt around for the key that Cora always kept hidden in the large terra-cotta planter to the right of the door, found it and slipped it into the lock.

There was a loud click as the bolt slid free, and Melissa froze for a moment. But then, hearing nothing, she returned the key to its hiding place and slipped through the door.

As soon as she closed it behind her. Blackie began anxiously scratching at it, a disappointed whine issuing from his throat.

As the whine grew louder, Melissa uttered a silent prayer that he wouldn’t actually bark.

As she held her breath, Blackie uttered a single sharp yelp.

Instantly, Melissa opened the door again, grasping the dog’s collar as he slipped eagerly through the gap. “All
right,”
Melissa whispered. “You can come in, but you have to be quiet, and you can’t stay all night.”

The big dog cocked his head and peered up at her exactly as if he’d understood every word she’d said.

Her hand still clamped on to Blackie’s thick leather collar, Melissa scuttled across the kitchen to the seldom-used servants’ stairs. Opening the door to the stairwell slowly, praying that there would be no creak, she led the dog through.

A minute later she was finally safe in her room. She’d paused at the top of the stairs, peeping down into the foyer beneath, half expecting to see her mother’s accusing eyes glaring back at her, but the foyer had been empty, and she could only dimly hear the sound of the television drifting up from the library. Closing the door to her room, she released Blackie, who promptly bounded onto the bed and curled up on her pillows. She glared at the dog. “Isn’t it bad enough that you managed to get in here?” she asked. “If you mess up my bed, Mama will kill us both.”

Blackie’s tail thumped happily against the headboard, and he made no movement to get off the bed. Instead he rolled over, his legs in the air, then stared at her, his huge brown eyes pleading to have his belly rubbed.

Feigning a lot more exasperation with the dog than she really felt, Melissa flopped onto the bed herself and began scratching Blackie’s belly. Then, from the open window, she heard Tag’s voice.

“Blackie! Blackie, come!”

Instantly, the big dog rolled over, scrambled off the bed and ran to the window. As Tag called out again, Blackie reared up, placed his forepaws on the windowsill and began barking loudly.

Melissa rolled off the bed and scuttled over to the dog.
“No!” she said sharply, trying to clamp her hands around the dog’s mouth. Blackie wriggled free of her hands and once more began baying loudly as Tag called to him yet again.

“Tag!” Melissa called out the window as loudly as she dared. “He’s up here! Stop calling him!”

And then, behind her, Melissa heard her mother’s voice, and the lights in her room suddenly went on.

“Melissa? What on earth?” Phyllis fell silent when she saw Blackie, who had spun around and was now crouched at Melissa’s feet, a warning growl rumbling up from his throat. Instinctively, Phyllis took a step backward, but her eyes flashed with anger. “What is that dog doing in here?” she demanded.

“I—I’m sorry, Mama,” Melissa stammered. “I—He—When I opened the back door, he just sort of came in.”

Phyllis’s eyes narrowed. “Came in?” she repeated. “Dogs do not simply come into houses. People let them in.”

Melissa nodded. “I’ll put him out,” she said quickly. “Right now.”

Grasping Blackie’s collar again, she attempted to slip past her mother, but Phyllis’s hand closed around her arm.

“And why are you home?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you still at the bonfire with your friends?”

“I—I didn’t feel very good,” Melissa lied.

“But you felt good enough to bring that dog up here so you could play with it, didn’t you?”

Melissa, trapped, nodded glumly. “Y-Yes.”

Her eyes still blazing with anger, Phyllis marched Melissa down the back stairs and watched in silence as her daughter opened the kitchen door and sent Blackie out into the night. But as Melissa started back toward the stairs, Phyllis stopped her.

“Look,” she commanded.

Melissa stared at the floor at which her mother was pointing, and her heart sank.

Across the linoleum, leading from the kitchen door to the foot of the servants’ stairs, were Blackie’s muddy pawprints. Gasping, Melissa looked at her shirt.

It, too, was covered with brown smudges. Fearfully, she looked once more at her mother.

“Scrub the floor,” Phyllis said, her tone of voice leaving
no room for argument. “And while you scrub it, think about why you left the party early. And don’t tell me you felt sick—I can see perfectly well that you aren’t. I’ll want you to tell me the truth, and then I’ll decide what needs to be done.”

Phyllis turned and walked out of the kitchen. This time, as Melissa filled a bucket with soapy water and fished the mop out of the depths of the broom closet, she didn’t fight the sob that rose in her throat. As she began scrubbing the kitchen floor clean of every trace of dirt that Blackie had tracked in, she knew that this was the best part of what was likely to happen tonight.

The worst would be upstairs, where her mother would be waiting for her in her room.

A cool breeze wafted in from the sea, and the dying flames of the bonfire leaped back to life, orange fingers reaching upward into the darkness as if seeking something to feed on. Teri, sitting next to Brett Van Arsdale now, his arm resting gently across her shoulders, gazed into the blaze. An image of another fire briefly rose out of her memory, and for a few seconds she could hear once more the crackling roar and the screams of her mother.

She shivered slightly and put the memory out of her mind, snuggling closer to Brett. Then, as the moon began to drop below the horizon, she glanced at the watch on her wrist.

It was nearly midnight.

“I guess maybe I’d better be going home,” she said, reluctantly getting to her feet.

“Want me to walk you?” Brett asked, scrambling up from the sand.

Teri shrugged. “You don’t need to.”

“Oh, I don’t know—you wouldn’t want D’Arcy to catch you out alone at night, would you?”

Teri said nothing until they’d started down the beach, when she slipped her hand into his. “No one really believes that story, do they?”

“Which part?” Brett countered.

Teri glanced sideways at him in the dark. “Well, all of it.”

“I don’t know if anyone really believes D’Arcy’s still around,” he replied, then snickered softly. “Except maybe Melissa.” Then his voice turned serious. “But most of the story’s true. My great-grandparents were at the dance when it happened. Half the people around here used to keep diaries. And they all wrote the same thing. There must have been fifty people who saw what happened.”

“Maybe they made it up,” Teri suggested.

Brett peered at her in the darkness. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know, but it just seems like maybe they all got together and decided it would be fun to start a ghost story.”

Brett chuckled. “You’d better come over to my house sometime and take a look at the portraits. One look at my great-grandfather and you know he never made up a story in his life. I mean, he was a lawyer, and some kind of big deal in the church we go to in New York. And my grandma says she can’t remember either of her parents ever laughing. Besides, I’ll bet if you ask your dad, he’ll tell you all about it.”

Teri shrugged. “Well, even if it’s true, I can’t believe anyone really thinks she’s still around. I mean, it’s just an old story, isn’t it? And I’ll bet it’s always someone
else
who saw her.” She turned to face Brett. “I mean, did you ever see D’Arcy? Or did anyone you know?”