The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (120 page)

“Who?” Reggie asked.

“Old Scratch.”

Reggie stiffened, eyes focused on the doorway where the smoke reached out, beckoning her, daring her to come inside. “I don’t think so, Mom. But I’m gonna go check it out.”

Lorraine was giving the address to the 911 dispatcher. She held the phone in front of her face and away from her mouth like she was using a walkie-talkie.

Reggie took a deep breath of clean air and headed up the stone steps, looked through the open door and into the smoke. She couldn’t see flames or even tell where the fire was.

You have one minute to grab what you can. What do you choose?

Had her early morning dream been trying to warn her, to prepare her for this very moment?

And if she got inside and discovered the house was burning and that there was no way to stop it, what would she choose to save? She wasn’t at all sure there was anything of hers left inside.

One way to find out.

She reached up and touched the hourglass necklace hidden under her shirt for luck, then pulled the pin on the extinguisher. She put the nozzle in her left hand and held the lever with her right, then stepped through the door. Behind her, sirens had started in the distance.

Hurry
, she heard Tara say in her ear.
You’re running out of time.

Even through the thick haze of smoke, Reggie could see the entryway and hall were exactly the same as they had been the day she’d left for college. There was a worn Oriental rug, coat hooks, a simple Shaker-style bench with a mirror above, and the grandfather clock, which seemed to have stopped altogether. To her left, against the wall, was the stairway leading up to the bedrooms. Straight ahead was the hallway that led to the living room, dining room, and kitchen. The source of the smoke was somewhere back there.

She blinked and coughed as she moved forward, but the smoke played tricks on her. She walked into a wall, sure the hall was right in front of her. She turned and looked at her image in the mirror above the bench—it wavered, seeming to grow large, then small; then she disappeared altogether. It was as if she’d stepped into a nightmare fun house.

Maybe, she thought, for half an irrational second, it was just Monique’s Wish getting back at her, punishing her for abandoning it so easily. If buildings held memories, had souls, didn’t it stand to reason that they could get angry, too?

She felt her way along the wall in front of her until she got to the hallway and caught a hint of movement up ahead.

Was there someone in the house with her? A wispy body moving through the smoke, beckoning,
This way
.

“Hello?” she called out, feeling silly when she heard her own voice. Of course there was no one there.

She heard her mother’s voice in her head:
Did he beat us here? Old Scratch
.

Holding the fire extinguisher in front of her, Reggie headed down the hallway. The smoke stung her eyes and burned her throat, but she continued on, promising herself she’d turn back if things got too bad.

She turned left into the kitchen, where the teasing lick of flames caught her eye.

Compared to the smoke, the actual fire wasn’t all that impressive. A pan on the back burner of the stove was lit up, the flames shooting up the wall. Reggie aimed the fire extinguisher and squeezed the lever, sweeping over the flames. The fire sputtered and sighed; in less than a minute the flames were gone.

The big cast-iron pan was full of white foam and oil. Reggie could just make out three blackened trout peeking through the mess. Their heads and tails were still attached, the way Lorraine always liked to cook them, no part wasted. Reggie pulled the chain to start the vent fan on the wall near the stove and threw open the window above the sink. The sirens were louder now—a ladder truck and police car were coming up the driveway.

She stumbled through the kitchen, bumping against the old round table and chairs, and into the dining room to open those windows. They were the original wooden sash windows her grandfather had installed, and they had always stuck terribly. She had to pound one with her fist to get it to budge at all. The glazing didn’t hold—an entire pane of glass fell out, breaking against her arm, giving her a good gash just above her wrist, before shattering on the pine-board floor.

“Shit,” she hissed, inspecting the damage.

“Hello?” a voice called from the open front door.

Reggie got to the front hall just as a group of firemen were coming in.

“Fire’s out,” she said.

“Mind if we take a look?” said a young man who looked like a little kid playing dress-up in his oversize coat, hat, and boots.

Reggie led them into the kitchen, where they inspected the charred remains of fish and the blackened wall. Satisfied, the little parade made their way back out of the house where an older fireman was talking with the police officer in the yard.

“Fire’s out, Chief,” reported one of the men. “Flare-up from a pan of oil on the stove. The lady got it with an extinguisher.”

“Oil gets hot like that, it’s gonna ignite,” the chief said to Reggie sagely. She nodded and caught him looking at her arm. Blood had seeped through her shirtsleeve.

“I’m fine,” she told him before he could say anything. “Just a little scratch. We’ll be more careful while we’re cooking. Thanks for coming out.”

“Was it Old Scratch?” Vera had let herself out of the truck and now stood just behind Reggie. The fire chief glanced over at her, and then his gaze seemed to catch on her, going from her face to the spot where her hand should have been, and back again.

“Dear God,” he said, “Vera Dufrane?”

Reggie’s skin prickled. She looked at the circle of volunteer firefighters—seven men altogether, along with a cop.

“No,” Reggie said, stepping in front of her mother. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

Vera immediately maneuvered out from behind Reggie.

“Did you know,” asked Vera dramatically “that I was the Aphrodite Cold Cream girl?” The men all stared. Vera smiled flirtatiously at them, showing brown teeth.

“Yes, I know,” the chief said. He took off his hat. “It’s Paul, Vera. Paul LaRouche. We went to school together?” Vera continued to look at him blankly, smile glued on. “My God,” Chief LaRouche said. “I’m seeing it with my own eyes, but I can’t believe it.”

“Wait a minute,” said the young police officer, stepping forward to give Vera a closer look. “Vera Dufrane? Neptune’s last victim?”

Reggie got between her mother and the group again. “The police have already interviewed my mother. Now please, I need to get her inside. She’s not well.”

She guided her mother gently toward the house, but Vera resisted. She kept turning, pulling back toward the circle of men. They were talking quietly, excitedly among themselves. Reggie only caught bits and pieces:
hand; the only body never found; where in God’s name’s she been all this time?

“It happened so fast,” Lorraine was saying at the edge of the circle, wringing her hands, talking to everyone and no one. “I fry fish all the time. I’ve never had a problem. But today . . . today everything went to hell.”

“Come on, Mom,” Reggie cooed softly in her mother’s ear. “Let’s go in and see the clock.”

“Ticky tocky, ticky tocky,” her mother said.

The young cop was on his radio now. One of the volunteer firefighters got out a cell phone and made a call. Shit. So much for slipping back into town without being noticed.

Reggie led her mother into the smoke-scented hallway.

“Welcome home,” Reggie said, inhaling the acrid, smoke-tinged air. It smelled like ruin.

Chapter 12

June 8 and June 12, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

T
WO DAYS AFTER THE
waitress’s disappearance, on the first official day of summer vacation, a package arrived on the granite steps of the police station. The officer who was assigned to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity near the front steps had somehow missed the drop-off. There were a lot of people coming and going—press, citizens coming in to argue about parking tickets, and it was the start of the day shift, so even the cops were flowing in and out of the building. The officer went to hold the door for an elderly gentleman, and then stepped inside to direct him to the window where he could report a lost cat. When the officer returned to his post, he noticed the package.

Like the first, this one was a red and white milk carton stapled closed at the top, wrapped in brown butcher’s paper, tied neatly with thin string.

Inside was Candace Jacques’s right hand.

It was identified by the bubblegum-pink nail polish and the little gold and amethyst pinkie ring she’d been wearing.

Candy’s mother appeared on Eyewitness News at noon sobbing, begging for the killer to let Candace go. “She’s all I’ve got,” the old woman said into the camera. “Please, please, have mercy.”

“Kind of pathetic,” Tara said, rolling her eyes. She was sitting with Charlie and Reggie in Reggie’s living room. Lorraine had gone out back to the brook dressed in her huge rubber waders, carrying a fly rod and net. Tara had taken a bottle of blue polish out of her ratty drawstring purse and was painting her short, ragged nails.

“It’s her daughter,” Charlie snapped. He was fingering a plastic tortoiseshell guitar pick he’d pulled from his pocket. “What’s she supposed to do?” He was wearing his most beat-up jeans with a hole in the knee. Reggie could see the tiny hairs on his leg poking through and wondered what it would feel like to touch them.

“I just don’t think they should have let her go on like that. It makes things seem . . . I don’t know, more out of control than they should. Like everyone knows the cops haven’t got a clue, so they’re hoping to appeal to whatever sad little scrap of humanity is left in this guy or something by having her beg for her daughter’s life. It just seems so . . . desperate.” Tara began flapping her left hand in the air, trying to dry her nails. She turned to Charlie. “And
anyways,
the dude’s obviously a psycho. Like he’s going to be turned from his evil ways by a crying old lady.”

“What do you mean, everybody knows the cops haven’t got a clue?” Charlie asked. “My dad’s practically living at the station! They’re gonna solve this. I know they will.”

Tara snorted. “The killer is taunting them. Leaving the hands on the steps of the police station like that . . . he’s pissing on their territory. No way the cops are going to solve this. They don’t even know where to get started.”

“Oh, and you do?” Charlie said, stuffing the pick back in the pocket of his jeans. “Why don’t you get your bad-ass psychic Nancy Drew self out there and catch the killer then, Tara?”

Tara scowled at him. “You’re just all pissed off at me because I said no to going to the stupid junior high dance with you tonight. I won’t hold your hand in the dark or pin an ugly-ass flower to my dress or dance to some cheesy Journey song with my head on your shoulder, so now you’re gonna be a total asshole? Way to win a girl’s heart, Romeo.”

Reggie sank back into the couch. She suddenly felt breathless.

Charlie’s face turned red, and he opened his mouth to say something, but then thought better of it and snapped it closed. He stomped out of the living room, slamming the front door.

Reggie wasn’t surprised that Charlie had asked Tara to the dance, and she was glad that Tara had refused. But still, she couldn’t help feeling this sort of sickly green resentment for Tara bubble up from the pit of her stomach.

“Jerkwad,” Tara mumbled, staring at the door Charlie had just slammed. She finished her nails, screwed the top on the bottle of polish, and dropped it into her purse. Then she blew on her fingertips, inspected her handiwork, and turned to Reggie and asked, “Any word from your mom yet?”

Reggie shook her head.

“I don’t like it. Your mom disappearing right now like this. Maybe we should go, like, look for her or something.”

“She’s down in New Haven,” Reggie said. “She’s probably hanging out with her theater friends.”

“Probably,” Tara said, fiddling with her hourglass necklace.

“Is it true?” Reggie asked. “Did Charlie really ask you to the dance?” She knew she should let it go, that hearing more about it would just add to the torture, but since she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it, she figured asking wouldn’t make it much worse.

Tara gave a quick nod. “Can you believe it?” she asked.

Yes
, Reggie thought.
Yes, I can
. The dance was that night, and practically the whole school was going. They’d had their stupid graduation ceremony in the auditorium the day before, all of them lined up while parents clapped and fanned themselves with programs because there was no air-conditioning and it was airless and hot as hell. Reggie’s mom hadn’t shown, but Lorraine and George had been there, sitting in the front row, fidgeting like their clothes didn’t fit them right. George had brought Reggie a bouquet of really ugly carnations that had been dyed orange. Tara’s mom hadn’t shown up either. Charlie’s dad came at the last minute, once the ceremony was over, and gave Charlie a congratulatory thump on the back that nearly knocked Charlie off his feet.

“Are you gonna go?” Reggie asked. “Not with him, I mean, but at all?”

Tara shook her head. “No way. It’s for losers.”

“Yeah,” Reggie agreed. “I’m not going either.”

So that was it. She would never set foot in Brighton Falls Junior High again. Somehow she’d expected a more dramatic ending to that part of her life. She’d expected to feel different in some way, like the eighth-grade diploma that sat rolled on top of her desk actually symbolized something.

Stupid.

“Hey, can I tell you something?” Tara asked.

Reggie nodded.

Tara’s eyes looked big and owlish. “I went to her house.”

“Whose house?” Reggie asked.

“Andrea McFerlin’s,” she whispered excitedly. “His first victim.”

“Wait, what?” Reggie stammered. “Why would you go to her house?”

Tara’s eyes glistened. She licked her lips. “I don’t know, Reg. After that day with the Ouija board, in the tree house? I just couldn’t stop thinking about her, you know? So I looked her up in the phone book. She lived over on Kemp, way out at the end. A little yellow house with a kiddie pool in the yard. I rode my bike. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. So I went around back. And I peeked in the windows.”