The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (18 page)

"Besides," Bianca
added, "Marianna's got Rick back. I've got my own guy. You're
a bigger reason to be jealous of me now, but I don't think Marianna
will see it that way."

Bianca gave Harry a
big hug.

"You're real
special!" Harry could hardly keep his hands off her. "I can't
believe that creep Doc had you thinking you were chicken all those
years. You're the bravest, nicest, most generous girl I know."

It was almost dusk.
Bianca caught sight of a fallen magnolia blossom on the sidewalk.
"Please stop!" she said in a small voice, choked with emotion.

She got out of the
car and picked the flower up. It was white and fragrant with a heady,
musky odor. She climbed back into the car.

"Let's stop by
the cemetery first." She reached up and touched the turquoise
earrings still dangling from her ears, the ones that she wore for
good luck.

"You don't want
to miss the movie, do you?" Harry asked. He knew better than to
press Bianca on this sensitive point. He understood what she was
thinking without asking — as usual.

They parked the car
and got out. A police officer, who was directing traffic at a funeral
that was starting to break up, stopped to salute Bianca. She was the
heroine of the St. Simons Island police force now more than ever.
Everyone was grateful to her for helping to catch the mysterious
killer of Mrs. Ingersoll.

Harry saluted back.
Bianca didn't notice. She was preoccupied. She knew her way to the
freshly dug grave lying under a live oak tree near the front of the
cemetery. She had attended Doc's funeral when his urn of ashes had
been laid to rest. Since then she had started coming here all the
time, putting flowers on his grave and leaving little tokens of her
own.

She knelt down beside
the grave and placed the magnolia blossom next to the withered ones
that she had left there before. The fragrant white petals picked up
the dying light of day and shimmered in the growing darkness.

Doc had been her
worst enemy. Bianca didn't like to remember him that way. She tried
to recall him as a friend who'd made terrible mistakes and had paid
for them big time. Nor would she let him lie alone in the dark,
though Harry said he deserved it, though other people on the island
were saying he deserved it after his shocking part in Mrs.
Ingersoll's murder was revealed.

Bianca told herself
she would always remember Doc as the man he could have been if his
brilliant mind hadn't been corrupted by his lust for money — and
maybe even more by a lust to control the minds of other people. He
could have been a famous doctor. He could have helped people. His
life had been a tragic waste. He had tried to cheat other people,
yes. He had killed one. Doc had cheated himself most of all.

Bianca didn't
shiver at the darkness as she reached up to adjust her turquoise
earrings one last time. Harry gave her his hand and helped her up,
then led her back to the car in the gathering gloom. He opened the
door to the passenger's side and went around to the driver's side
to get in. They hugged each other as they took off toward the movie
theater.

Harry flicked the car
light on as darkness deepened. The live oak trees formed a tunnel
over the road.

"You don't have
to do that." Bianca flicked the light off and put her arm round his
shoulders.

With Harry next to
her, she would never have to ask herself that awful question again.
"Are you scared of the dark?" Now the dark was her friend as she
kissed him back.

Chapter 1

"Happy birthday to
you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Katie, happy
birthday to you!"

Everyone started to
clap as Bianca held Little Katie around the waist and hugged her. The
blond-haired, cherry-cheeked little girl leaned over the cake and
blew out the pink birthday candles. She was two years and two months
old today. They were getting around to having the birthday they
should have celebrated two months earlier.

Bianca helped serve
the cake to the hungry little kids gathered aboard the Shipleys'
yacht in St. Simons Island Harbor on this late afternoon of July 1st.
She glanced out the window and smiled at the policemen. She made sure
that they got cake, too. She also sent a piece of cake out to the man
that the Shipleys had hired to be Little Katie's temporary
bodyguard, Tom Jones — until Harry graduated from his police and
surveillance training course in Brunswick, Georgia.

Br-r-r-r-ring!
Br-r-r-r-ring!

"Bianca, it's for
you." Mrs. Shipley, Katie's mother, handed her favorite
babysitter and Little Katie's godmother the telephone.

Bianca had hardly
been able to hear the ringing over the voices of the excited little
children squealing, jumping up and down, and getting icing all over
their faces.

"Hello?"

"Hi, hon! Miss you
already."

"Harry!" she
exclaimed. "You haven't been gone one day. It seems like a
hundred years."

Harry's duty
called. He was going to school so that he could get a better job and
help support his mother. It was good news that Mrs. Fellini had her
old job back at the high school. It was good news that she had
regained her old pension and benefits. Still the Fellinis needed
every penny. There were people who pointed at Mrs. Fellini and said,
"You're Mike Fellini's mother, aren't you? You raise
convicts!"

Bianca winced at the
thought. Harry and his mother would have to suffer because of Mike
and his past convictions. They included kidnapping Little Katie back
in May and trying to hold her for ransom.

Bianca couldn't
wait until Harry had finished his training so that he could be Little
Katie's bodyguard. The Shipleys were paying for his education. They
had promised to hire him. Harry was learning all sorts of martial
arts and defensive techniques. Some of his training was the same that
the CIA and FBI officers went through.

"I've got a
surprise for you." Harry announced. "In addition to learning to
be a chauffeur and a bodyguard, I'm learning to fly a plane."

"What?"

"The Shipleys think
it would be a good idea."

She shook her head in
amazement. The Shipleys were certainly being thorough. That made
total sense. Little Katie might only be two years old, but already
there had been an attempt on her life. Already the little heiress to
the Shipleys' vast international business holdings had been
kidnapped.

"I'll be home
this weekend." Harry promised.

Bianca made kissing
sounds into the phone. She held the phone up. Little Katie babbled to
Harry.

"See you, hon."
Harry sounded like he was about ready to hang up.

"Harry. . ."
Bianca stopped him.

She bit her lip.
Bianca had had an uneasy sense since Harry had left here early this
morning. It must be her nerves. She hadn't been without him one
single day since Doc's death and funeral. She had leaned on Harry.
She had counted on being able to tell him her fears. He had made her
feel better and think that she could do anything, could survive
anything.

"Something wrong?"
Harry sounded concerned.

Bianca felt guilty.
She shouldn't spoil his day. After all, everything had gone
perfectly, perhaps too perfectly, with the party.

"No, ah. . ."

"I'll come right
back if there is. I'm not going to let anything happen to you,
Bianca, not while I have a breath left in my body. That's a
promise!"

Bianca couldn't
spoil Harry's education plans because of a case of the jitters.
After all, she was a big girl now, eighteen. She could deal with it.

"I miss you, that's
all, Harry."

"Say, just wait
until you see how Harry is going to kiss you the next time I see you.
Your lips will be so sore you won't be able to eat."

Bianca laughed and
said her final good-byes. Then she hung up.

The party was
breaking up. Little Katie had opened her gifts. The toddlers were
getting wild. Naps were needed. Parents were carting their children
back to their cars on shore in the parking lot in the Village, the
main shopping district on St. Simons Island off the southeast coast
of Georgia.

Soon it was dinner
time. Bianca fed Katie her supper while the Shipleys went ashore for
a late-night party. Katie and Bianca waved goodbye to Mommy and
Daddy.

Oddly enough, the
Shipleys were going to the house of the McColloughs, the oldest
family on the island. The McColloughs were Doc's parents. Their
oldest son's criminal behavior and death in May on the staircase at
the Shipleys' house had not been enough to sever close relations
with their even wealthier next-door neighbors.

It didn't matter
that Doc had put on a big show for the past two years, interning at
the hospital and acting as Bianca's medical advisor while he had
been a killer. It didn't matter that he had murdered the Shipleys'
maid, Mrs. Ingersoll, two years earlier, after making an attempt to
steal jewels from the Shipleys' house while Bianca had been
babysitting Little Katie. It didn't matter that he'd cornered
Bianca in the Shipleys' house two months ago, had almost murdered
Harry, and had fallen down the stairs and broken his own neck. The
McColloughs were not going to allow Doc to spoil their social life.

The McColloughs
always attended the Shipleys' parties and vice versa. They never
talked about Doc. The McColloughs had denied Doc, "Doc" Ernie
McCollough, a place in their new, marble family mausoleum. His ashes
had been interred in the paupers' section of the cemetery at
Christ's Church. The McColloughs had plenty of money — and plenty
of other children besides Doc.

Bianca and Little
Katie were not going back to the Shipleys' house tonight. After
all, it was Little Katie's birthday. Spending the night on the
yacht was supposed to be a special treat. For company they had only
the bodyguard, Tom Jones. He remained outside on the deck after the
police left.

Bianca put Katie to
bed, read her a story, and took a shower. After all, the Shipleys
frequently didn't come home until dawn. She and Katie would be on
the yacht until then.

Bianca took off the
turquoise earrings that Doc had given her for her seventeenth
birthday, more than a year ago. She put on her nightgown and climbed
into bed.

She was a
millionairess now that she had passed her eighteenth birthday and had
come into her two-million-dollar trust fund. The Shipleys had created
it for her when she had saved Little Katie's life two times —
first from Doc two years ago, and then from Mike Fellini in May. Yet
the money didn't drive away the shadows from her past. She was
afraid to go to sleep. She was afraid to turn out the lights.

Something was tapping
on her porthole. Could it be a prowler? She told herself to stop
imagining things. After all, that was the bodyguard's job. He had
been trained to stay up all night long to look and listen. He knew
how to use a gun.

Her heart beat faster
until she saw the rain drops. She relaxed and slumped back against
her pillow. She let her eyes close — that was, until she started to
dream about Doc. Her eyes popped open. She was trembling, clutching
her pillow.

Doc had been the most
brilliant person that she had known — smarter than her high school
teachers. He had won awards while in high school, including the
Westinghouse Science Talent Search. He had been the President of the
Future Doctors of America. He had graduated two years early at
sixteen. He had graduated early from college summa cum laude and had
attended medical school. Going on twenty-four, he had been an intern
with a promising future.

Bianca squeezed her
eyelids shut. Doc had dropped his own handgun after she had shot him
by mistake. She had been trying to save Harry's life — not kill
Doc. She saw Ernie McCollough reaching for his gun and losing his
balance. She relived him tumbling down those stairs in the moonlight
as she had every night since his death. She remembered herself
running over to him lying there in the foyer, his neck at an odd
angle. She had clutched him to her and wept.

Bianca had left Harry
tied at the top of the stairs and had fled out on to the street
screaming for help. Help had been too late. Doc had been pronounced
dead upon arrival at the hospital. She had attended his funeral. It
had felt to her as if she had killed him. It still felt like that,
though it was two months later.

Doc Ernie McCollough
had been everything to Bianca. He had been her medical adviser. He
had been her best friend. He had even — in the days before she had
met Harry — been her lover. They had been together always. Even
though she now knew it had all been a fraud and a fake, her heart
could not help grieving for the dead young man who had once lived
across the street from her.

"I've got to be
brave for Little Katie's sake. She's got nobody besides me to
depend upon," Bianca whispered aloud in the darkness.

The darkness had been
her enemy ever since the night of the murder of Mrs. Ingersoll two
years ago, when Bianca had been babysitting the newborn Little Katie
Shipley. The maid had taken her own tumble down the stairs, shot in
the back by a gun with a silencer wielded by Doc. When Bianca's
mind had repressed it all because it had been so horrible, forgetting
everything until only two months ago, she'd become fearful of the
dark. The murder had taken place in the dark. Bianca had grappled
with the killer in the dark. She had escaped from the house in the
dark, clutching Little Katie to her breast.

The darkness of the
night pressed in around Bianca and made her shiver. She smiled only a
little when she remembered how Harry had told her to keep her chin
up.

She rolled over on
her pillow and dozed off again. This time she went to sleep.