SummerHill Secrets, Volume 2 (7 page)

Dad’s comments floated into the kitchen. “Sounds like a simple case of first-semester blues,” he was telling Skip. “You’ll survive it, son. Give it a few more months.”

Without help from Mom, I finished off the work in the kitchen, even the pots and pans. I was on my way upstairs, heading to my room to tackle homework, when I thought of Chelsea. I said a prayer for her and her family and then worked on history questions until I got stuck. Quickly, I went back downstairs to ask Dad about it.

In fifteen minutes, I had my answer and was scurrying to my room when I nearly collided with my brother. He was coming down the hall, waving his portable phone. “Was my little Merry hiding the phone?” he taunted.

I lunged at him. “Were you in my room? You know better! And don’t call me your little Merry!”

Playfully, he pushed me away. “Hey, relax, cat breath.” He shoved the phone into his back pocket. “Don’t freak out.”

“Stay out of my room, you hear?” I shouted, turning on my heel and slamming my bedroom door.

Mom came up in a few minutes, inquiring about the racket. “I want the two of you to stay away from each other,” she said as we stood in the hallway.

I glanced at Skip. “For the whole weekend?” I hoped she meant it.

“We’ll have to wait and see.” Before she said more, Skip, sporting a smirk, disappeared into his room. “Now, Merry,” Mom continued, “your brother’s home for a reason. He’s tired and was severely homesick, so I want you to ease up on him. Please?”

“Tell
him
that!”

“Merry? What’s bothering you?” She looked concerned.

I fought my anger over Skip’s coming home and barging back into my life. I struggled with feelings of helplessness over Chelsea’s mother. Where was she? How could she leave her family? I hated the lump in my throat.

Then I did an impulsive thing. I threw myself into Mom’s arms.

“Merry, honey, what’s wrong?” She held me close.

I cried as though my heart would break. Actually, it
was
breaking. Breaking for my friend Chelsea and the horrible thing she was going through.

Before too many more seconds passed, I broke free of Mom’s embrace without a word and made a beeline to my room. There, I finished crying my eyes out in private.

Thank goodness Mom didn’t hound me about being upset. She was smart that way. She’d learned not to push things with me when I was off-kilter. And it was a good thing, too, because there was no getting around it—I wouldn’t break my promise to Chelsea.

Later, when I settled down a bit and my voice didn’t sound all crackly from crying, I called Chelsea. “I’ve been thinking about you,” I said, curled up in Dad’s comfortable desk chair downstairs. The study was quiet—no chance of being disturbed here.

“I’m glad you called,” she said. “My dad and I talked for a long time after you left. And I told him that you knew everything.”

“Even about the missing money?”

“That too.”

“Is it a problem…my knowing?” I asked hesitantly.

“Not really. Dad’s so bummed out he couldn’t care less who knows anymore. But I’m not just gonna sit around and wait for him to wake up. I’d like to jolt him good.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Oh, Dad’s so into himself these days—won’t talk much. Withdrawn, I guess you’d say.”

“He’s mad, probably.”
I would be, too
, I thought.

“I’ve been thinking, Mer. What if we called the cops and reported a missing person?”

“That’s a jolt, all right.”

“So…what do you suggest? Got a better idea?” I could tell she was desperate.

“There
is
something,” I said, thinking about the phone call from Chelsea’s mom. “You know about your mom’s call to your dad today, right?”

“Uh-huh. Dad told me, and he’s mighty sick about her attitude.”

“Well, what if there’d been a tap on your line when she called? Then the phone company could’ve traced the call, and we might know where your mom is hiding out.”

“Hey, a genius idea, Mer! When could we get it done?”

“The sooner the better,” I suggested.

“But…wait a minute. Don’t we need to call the police about something like this?”

I gripped the phone. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to sound more confident. “I’ll call the police department tomorrow morning.”

“What about now?” It was a test. I wanted to see how serious she really was.

“Now?” came the raspy reply.

“Sure. Why not?”

There was an unusually long pause. “Well…okay, I guess.”

“Call me after you talk to the cops,” I said.

“Man, Dad’s gonna kill me,” she whispered.

“Wait till he goes to bed—then call.”

“Good idea.” She paused for a second. “Could you put the portable phone under your pillow again tonight?”

“I’ll see. I’ll have to smuggle it out of Skip’s room, you know. He’s home now and being a bear about it.”

“Try really hard. Please?”

“Okay, I’ll give it a shot, but knowing Skip, I can’t promise anything.” I sighed. “Oh, before I hang up, I’d better tell you that I accidentally brought your mom’s diary home with me.”

“Just bring it over tomorrow.”

“I will…and Chelsea?”

“Yeah?”

“I wanna go back to the hut again.”

“You do? Why?” There was fear in her voice.

“I wanna have another look around.”

“Didn’t you get enough pictures?” she asked.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Okay. Thanks for calling, Merry.”

“Take care. ’Bye.” I hung up feeling closer to Chelsea than ever. Something was different between us. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I sensed it strongly. I was pretty sure when things had begun to change—after the prayer on the stone walkway today. That was it! Chelsea actually seemed different after my prayer.

I fooled around, watching TV for a while. Skip kept to himself in his room the rest of the evening. Dad and Mom were kind of out of it, too. I didn’t blame them for hanging out upstairs in their master bedroom. They had a sitting area in one corner, and I could imagine Mom curled up with a book in her favorite overstuffed chair. Dad was probably already snoozing. He fit the old adage, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Around nine-thirty, I felt restless. Nothing good on TV, as usual. I retreated to my room, calling for my cats to follow but keeping my voice down. Skip was cat queasy, and the last thing I wanted to deal with tonight was a tongue-lashing about my precious babies.

Once inside my room, the cat quartet knew where to go. My blue comforter was their favorite indoor place to be.

I undressed for bed, looking forward to sleeping in. No school tomorrow—Saturday. I knew I’d have to get up at a fairly decent hour, though. I wanted to start scouting out the possibilities for good photography subjects. The contest deadline was one month away, but the way I liked to work, I needed every bit of that time to choose a subject, take various angles, have the film developed, and then select my best work.

All comfy in my long pajamas, I slipped into bed and pulled up the blanket and comforter. My Bible was within reach on the nightstand, but when I stretched out my arm, my fingers touched something else: Mrs. Davis’s diary.

I picked it up.
Do I dare read it?
I wondered.

Feeling a twinge of guilt, I opened to the first page. The name
Berta Jean Davis
was scrawled across the top. I looked for a phone number or an address but found nothing.

I studied the writing. Since I had no idea how Chelsea’s mother usually signed her name, I had no method of comparison. But looking at it now, her signature seemed hurried, almost frantic.

Mrs. Davis had never impressed me as someone in a hurry. She was the epitome of neatness and order. She was a nurse after all, and must’ve been a very good one to reach administrative levels.

I was about to close the diary and quit my snooping when a tiny set of symbols caught my eye. It was quite difficult to see them—if a person hadn’t been searching out clues as I was, there’d be no spotting them.

Anyway, there in the lower left-hand corner, I noticed the same mysterious marks as I’d seen on the long black box in the shanty hut. Only these had been written upside down.

I stared at them, fighting the urge to record the strange marks on a piece of paper. Hesitating, I wondered if they might be some sort of curse. I cringed at the thought of having the diary inside my house. At night, no less! I abandoned the idea of copying the marks and placed the diary back on my lamp table.

Stress had always triggered hunger pangs in me, so I got up and went to my walk-in closet. There, in several shoe boxes, I had stashed snack food. My own private food pantry. Although Mom thought it was downright silly, she didn’t mind. I found some apple-flavored fruit leather to munch on. After brushing my teeth the second time in less than an hour, I reached for my Bible and devotional book, allowing the Scriptures and thoughts for the day to wash over me.

I kept waiting for Chelsea to call. After all, I’d gone to great lengths to get back the portable phone—waiting until Skip was asleep to make my move. Into his room I’d crept, tiptoeing through enemy territory. Silently, I’d snatched the phone off the dresser and padded down the hallway, quiet as a cloud.

Now the phone lay innocently under my pillow. But it hadn’t rung yet, and I seriously doubted if Chelsea had called the police like she’d said she would.

Sleep played tag with me—I was ‘it’ and couldn’t catch her. I turned on my side, thinking of Chelsea Davis and the eerie feeling I’d had as my friend and I stepped gingerly toward the hut. Worse, I remembered Chelsea’s dad’s persistent pleadings when his wife had called.

The day’s images floated over me. I flipped on my back, staring up at the dark ceiling. “Oh, Lord, please do something,” I prayed. “Don’t let Mrs. Davis get sucked into this…this evil hole.”

More images. This time, the memory of Chelsea’s eyes darting away from mine, tears glistening after my prayer. I felt dizzy. Lying here in my own bed, I felt faint! Yet the more I pushed the images and words away, the more they persisted.
True light…resisting the true light. The woods…dark, snarling vines…the old hut. Black candles…incense…wine bottles…the possibly satanic book…

I rolled over onto my other side as the sights and the sounds of the day poured over me without stopping. At last, I got up and sat on the edge of my bed, longing for peace.

“Dear Jesus, I need your help. I can’t sleep because of what’s happened,” I prayed.

In the darkness, I slipped to my knees. “Please, Lord, take care of the Davis family. I can’t help them the way you can.”

I stopped pleading long enough to thank my heavenly Father. In turn, I was reminded of Psalm ninety-one—the one about the angels.
He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways…

I don’t know how or when it happened, but I must’ve crawled back into bed and fallen asleep. Either that or my guardian angels tucked me in. Anyway, I woke up the next morning in bed, having slept soundly, eager to see Chelsea again.

Maybe
today
we’d find her mother!

During Saturday brunch with my family, a phone call came from Ashley Horton. “Merry, guess what I found out?” she said almost before I could say hi. “The guy who won the photography contest last year—you know, that Randall Eastman? Well, he’s in Nikki Klein’s homeroom.”

I was flabbergasted. “You called
her
about this?”

“Last night,” she admitted, “after I talked to Jon.”

Why’d she have to talk to him?
I wondered.

She continued. “But the thing is, this guy Randall, he doesn’t go by his real name. He has a nickname, and it’s really different. Kind of odd.”

I wished she’d get to the point. “Yeah, so what’s his nickname?”

“Stiggy. His name’s Stiggy. Isn’t it corny?”

Nobody says corny anymore
, I thought, trying to smother my sarcastic thoughts.

“From what Nikki said, I guess Randall’s younger brother couldn’t pronounce his name when they were growing up.” She laughed. “It doesn’t figure—I mean, how do you get Stiggy out of Randall?”

“Maybe Randall was stingy growing up,” I offered. “Or stinky.”

She actually giggled at my remark. It made me wonder why she was acting like this. So jubilant. Unless…

“Oh, so you must’ve
called
Randall…er, Stiggy. Right?”

“How’d you guess?” Ashley asked. “Yes, I talked to him, and he says he’ll show me his trophy-winning photo sometime next week.” She was going way overboard with her enthusiasm.

“That’s nice,” I said, remembering that it originally had been my idea to meet him. But, not willing to get into a fuss with our pastor’s daughter, I let it drop. Who knows, maybe I’d run into Stiggy in the library on the same day he brought his work. And I would certainly know which day that would be. Ashley wasn’t very good at keeping things to herself.

“Well, Merry,” she was saying, “have you decided what you’re going to do for the contest? Or is it a big secret?”