The Third Evil (14 page)

Around and around, like a carousel, the boat spun. Picking up speed, it sent up a high wall of water around it.

Dizzy and terrified, her heart thudding, Sarah reached for the mast. She grabbed it to pull herself up.

The boat reared up violently then, and dipped low into the tossing water. Sarah's hand slipped off the mast, and she fell hard to the deck once again.

The sky was black now, as black as night.

The ring of water tossed up by the spinning boat encircled the boat and threatened to roll over it.

“You cannot drown me!” the evil voice screamed inside Sarah's head. “My evil lives forever!”

As the boat spun faster and faster, Sarah heard the terrified cries of her little niece and nephew.

“You will not get to them,” she said out loud through gritted teeth. This time she pulled herself to her feet.

Water crashed down heavily and washed over the deck like a tidal wave. The boat heaved as it twirled, and the waters tossed up high, frothing eerily in a circle around it.

“You will not get the children!” Sarah Fear declared, shouting at the evil inside her.

She shut her eyes tightly and lunged blindly to the rail.

“Aunt Sarah!” She heard the children's shrill voices, distant now, as if miles away. “Aunt Sarah! Come back!”

“You cannot drown me!”

But I must!

“You haven't the courage to drown yourself!”

Was the ancient evil right?

Did she have the courage?

Could she sacrifice her life, her young life, for Michael and Margaret?

“There will be more evil to come, Sarah. There will be much more evil.”

“Noooooooo!”

And Sarah Fear dived under the rail. Into the dark, tossing waters under the black sky.

Down into the cold water. Churning and bubbling.

Down she plunged, gulping in water.

Inhaling the heavy water.

Taking in mouthfuls as she descended, her hair loose and floating gracefully above her head like a kind of sea creature, her arms pulling her deeper into the darkness.

Her lungs filling with the heavy water.

Choking. Sputtering.

No longer breathing.

No longer seeing.

I'm drowning, she thought. I'm not breathing now. Soon I will be gone. Soon, I hope.

And as Sarah drowned, the evil thrashed inside her, fighting desperately. As the water invaded her lungs, the spirit struggled to free itself.

She felt it try to thrust itself out from her throat. The water bubbled as a stream of green gas erupted from her mouth.

The eruption was so powerful that it forced Sarah to the surface. She saw the sailboat overturned, upside down.

The children, she thought.

And then she was underwater again.

The water was hot. Boiling. Scalding hot.

Burning her skin. So unbearably hot.

And the green gas poured into the tossing, boiling water.

“Up. Rise up,” the voice told her.
“Rise up and save us both!”

But Sarah plunged lower, forcing herself down.

Now she could feel two fears at once. Her own and that of the ancient spirit.

Both frightened now. Both about to die.

Both dying.

Both.

The boiling, bubbling water churned around her. The flowing green gas encircled her, shutting out all light. The spirit was trapped in Sarah's drowning body.

The evil voice cried out. “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A wail of rage, of disbelief.

The cry was strong at first. Then weak. Then a whimper of faint protest. The green gas bubbled away.

Sarah Fear's eyes were bulging wide. But she saw nothing now.

Not even the still, still blackness.

For she—and the evil—were dead.

Then—more darkness. Rapidly swirling darkness. Black moving against black.

Corky slept without moving, as if in a coma, her breathing slow and silent.

Deeper, she sank. Deeper into old memories.

Shadows formed, twisting and bending in the darkness.

Deeper.

Deeper.

No longer in Sarah Fear's memory.

Sinking deeper inside the mind of the ancient evil.

Deeper.

Until she entered the memory of the evil spirit itself.

Now Corky looked out through the evil spirit's eyes.

And stared in bitter horror at the velvet-lined walls of a coffin.

She was inside the coffin. Six feet under the ground. Trapped inside. Hunkered low against the closed lid.

Inside the rotting corpse of Sarah Fear.

Yes. Sarah Fear was dead. Drowned in Fear Lake. And up above, poking up through the loamy cemetery ground, stood Sarah's gravestone.

Surrounded by four other stones. Stones for Michael, for Margaret, for their father, and for Jason Hardy. All dead. All drowned in the boiling waters of the lake.

And now the evil spirit shared Sarah's grave. Imprisoned beside the foul, decaying body it once possessed.

Defeated by Sarah's courage. Trapped by Sarah's final sacrifice.

It waited.

Waited eagerly for a live body to come along and free it.

Waited. Waited.

Staring at the worms that invaded Sarah's grinning skull.

*   *   *

Corky woke.

She sat up, alert, wide awake. Trembling. Her sheets were tangled, hot, and damp from perspiration.

She could still see Sarah Fear's corpse, the decaying walls of the small coffin. She could still hear the roar of the churning lake in her mind, still hear the hiss of the escaping green gas, still hear the hideous howl of the evil spirit dying.

Corky swallowed hard. She realized she was crying. Hot tears rolled down her even hotter cheeks. Sarah Fear has told me all I need to know, she thought, letting the tears fall.

To kill the evil, I have to kill…myself.

Hot Water

C
orky drifted back into a troubled sleep. When she awoke again, sunlight was streaming in through her bedroom windows, the curtains fluttering in a soft breeze.

She sat up, stretching, and stared down at the foot of her bed into the bulging eyes of a hideous orange-fleshed face covered with stitched-up scars.

Corky opened her mouth to scream. But then recognized the intruder as Sean's rubber mask from Halloween.

Sean must have placed it on the bedpost while she slept.

“Way to go, Sean,” she said out loud, shaking her head. Reaching over, she pulled the disgusting mask off its perch and tossed it into the corner.

My little brother is a real monster, she thought.

As she lowered her feet to the floor and stretched again, the images of her dream, the images from Sarah Fear's memory, came back, forced themselves vividly into her mind, as vividly as if she had lived them herself.

But how can I kill myself? she asked herself, staring at the rubber mask she had tossed to the floor.

Never see Sean again? Never see my parents again? Never go out? Never fall in love? Never get married? Have a family? Have a
life?

I'm only sixteen, Corky thought miserably. Sixteen. Too young to die.

“No!” she declared aloud. “No way!”

She thought of Bobbi. Poor Bobbi—she never lived long enough to…to
do anything!

I owe it to Bobbi, Corky thought, standing up unsteadily, her mind racing. I owe it to my poor dead sister to go on living. To have a full life—a full, happy life.

But how?

She could sense the evil stirring inside her. Waking, it started to dull her thoughts and she began to fade into the background.

She began to drift away—inside her own body.

I'm going to ignore it, Corky decided.

That's how I'll deal with it. I'll ignore it, and it'll go away.

If it tries to do something terrible, I can deal with it. I know I can. I just won't cooperate.

If I ignore it. Or if I fight it. I mean, I'll ignore it. And then…

She knew she wasn't thinking clearly. But how could she? Her room was so far away…the windows so tiny and distant…the light so dim.

“No!” she cried, struggling to resist the force taking over her mind. “No! I'm ignoring you!”

She heard cruel laughter. Then her bedroom walls began to quake.

“No!”

The flowers—the red carnations, the blue gardenias—all the flowers on the wallpaper started to spin.

“No!”

The flowers spun wildly, then flew off the wallpaper, spinning up to the ceiling.

“No! Please—no!”

Corky heard the laughter again, loud laughter inside her head as the red and blue flowers rained down on her. Another peal of cruel laughter.

Turning away from the wall, Corky quickly pulled on a pair of gray sweat pants and a wrinkled blue T-shirt. Then, she ran out onto the landing and started down the stairs. But as she stepped onto the first one, a row of razor blades popped up from the carpet.

“Ow!” She cried out as her bare foot nearly missed getting sliced.

Leaning on the banister, she stared down as razor blades popped up with a loud snap on each step.

She flung herself onto the banister and slid down on her stomach. The banister was burning hot by the time she leapt off at the bottom.

“Corky—what on earth?!” her mother exclaimed.
She was standing in the hallway, a bundle of dirty clothes in her arms.

“Oh. Sorry, Mom,” Corky said, swallowing hard. She looked up at the stairs. The razor blades were gone.

“You slept so late,” Mrs. Corcoran said, dropping the clothing by the basement steps. “It's almost noon.”

Corky opened her mouth to speak. But what could she say? No words came out. She followed her mother into the kitchen.

“I'm going to fry up a couple of eggs for you,” Corky's mom said, gazing fretfully at her daughter. “You look hungry.”

“Yes,” Corky said weakly. She hoped her mother didn't see how hard she was breathing, how her entire body was trembling. Trying to steady herself, to appear calm, Corky climbed onto a stool at the kitchen counter and watched as Mrs. Corcoran made two eggs.

“Toast? Juice?” her mother asked.

“I guess,” Corky replied, struggling to keep her voice low and steady, struggling against the wild, swirling thoughts in her head.

Her mother stared at her, as if examining her. “You feeling okay, Corky?”

“No, Mom. I'm inhabited by an evil spirit. It's inside me, controlling me, and I can't do anything about it.”

“Very funny,” Mrs. Corcoran said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. She tapped her metal spatula beside the frying pan. “Do all teenagers develop such
gross senses of humor, or is it just a specialty of yours?”

I'm telling the truth, Mom! But you don't want to hear it,
do
you? You don't want to believe it.

“Where is Sean?” Corky asked. The words weren't hers. The evil spirit was forcing her to change the subject.

“He and your dad are at his baseball game,” Mrs. Corcoran replied. She scraped the eggs from the pan. “You haven't spent much time with your brother lately.”

“He left me a little reminder of himself this morning,” Corky said, picturing the gruesome rubber mask.

Her mother deposited the two fried eggs on a plate and set it down in front of Corky. “Get your toast when it's ready,” she said, and disappeared to deal with the laundry.

Corky stared down at the eggs, then reluctantly picked up her fork.

As she gazed at the plate, the eggs shimmered, then transformed themselves. Corky's mouth dropped open as she now stared at two enormous wet eyeballs.

“No!”

The eyeballs stared back at her. Their color darkened to gray. Then the gray became a sickening green, the green of decay, and a foul odor rose up from the plate. As the putrid aroma filled the air and the eyeballs shriveled and wrinkled, Corky gagged and leapt off the stool.

The laughter, the cruel, cold laughter, followed her as she ran blindly back up to her room.