When the Wind Blows (27 page)

“I guess so.”

“Well, then, come on,” Jay-Jay urged. “They won’t even know you’re gone.”

Susan hesitated, torn. But then the door to her room opened. Jay-Jay ducked down into the shrubbery.

“Susan?” Florence Gillespie asked. “Are you talking to someone?”

“No,” Susan said, closing the window. “I just heard a cat or something. I was just looking.”

“Well, keep the window closed. I don’t want the wind filling the house with dust. Why don’t you come out and watch the movie with us for a while?”

Susan, knowing she was supposed to be in bed already, eagerly accepted.

“Can I watch the whole movie?”

“We’ll see,” her mother told her. She snapped off the light in her daughter’s room and pulled the door closed. As she led Susan into the living room Florence wondered how long Jay-Jay would wait in the shrubbery before going home.

But Jay-Jay, realizing that her friends had all chickened out, was already gone from the Gillespies’ yard and was hurrying along the street toward the road to the mine.

As she left the town behind, Jay-Jay veered off the road and cut across the big field. On the other side lay the Amber house. If Christie had chickened out, too, she might give up and go home. It wasn’t much fun, she decided, being brave all by yourself.

She approached the big old house slowly.

At night, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, it seemed even larger than it was. Lights glowed in windows on the ground floor, and on the third floor another window was lit. Jay-Jay decided that must be Christie’s room.

She picked up a rock and tossed it as high as she could against the side of the house.

She waited for a moment and then threw another.

Christie’s face appeared at the window.

“Christie!” Jay-Jay called softly. “It’s me! Jay-Jay!”

“Where’s everybody else?” Christie hissed back.

“They’re going to meet us up at the mine,” Jay-Jay lied. She was sure that if she told Christie no one else had come, Christie would back out of the adventure.

Christie thought about it. Would Aunt Diana have let her go?

No, she wouldn’t have.

Still, Aunt Diana wasn’t home.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Christie hissed. She closed the window and pulled her jeans back on. When she was dressed, she crept down the back stairs and listened from the kitchen. All she could hear was the droning of the television.

She opened the back door and slipped out into the night. Jay-Jay was waiting for her.

“Come on,” Jay-Jay said. “Let’s go before we get caught.”

The two girls scurried around behind the barn, then began walking parallel to the road that led up to the mine. The wind, growing stronger, was howling out of the hills like some strange bodiless monster. Christie suddenly reached out and took Jay-Jay by the hand.

“I don’t like this,” she whispered, but Jay-Jay knew the magic words.

“Don’t be chicken,” she said. “It’s only wind.”

Unhappily Christie kept going.

Twenty minutes later they stood outside the mine entrance, almost invisible in the shadow of the hill.

“Where’s everybody else?” Christie whispered.

Jay-Jay still didn’t want to tell her they were by themselves. “Maybe they went inside,” she suggested. She started toward the mouth of the shaft, but still Christie hung back.

“I don’t want to,” she whispered. “Jay-Jay, I want to go home.”

“Chicken,” Jay-Jay taunted her. “Chicken, chicken, chicken!”

Reluctantly Christie took a step forward, but Jay-Jay had disappeared into the darkness. “Jay-Jay? Where are you? Jay-Jay? Jeff?” She waited, but the only sound that came back to her was the moaning of the wind.

And then, in the dim light, something moved.

“Who is it?” she asked.

There was no answer, but again the shape moved. It seemed to be coming toward her.

Christie Lyons turned and fled down the hill.

   Diana waited until Bill had driven away from the house, then let herself in the front door. It was just before ten. At least her mother couldn’t criticize her for being late. She was beginning to feel a headache coming on, so she went to the kitchen, found an aspirin, and washed it down with a glass of water. Then she went to the living room, where Edna was asleep in front of the television. Diana started to wake her, then decided to leave her alone. Instead she’d go up to the nursery and spend some time with Christie.

She climbed the stairs to the third floor and listened to the wind shriek around the eaves. Tonight they would probably lose some shingles.

The nursery door was closed, but a light showed beneath it. Diana tapped softly, then pushed it open.

“Baby? I’m home.”

The room was empty.

“Christie? Christie, where are you?”

There was no answer, and Diana dashed down the stairs. “Mother? Mother! Where’s Christie?”

Edna awoke with a start and peered sleepily at her daughter. “Up in her room, of course. What time is it?”

“She’s not in her room. I was just up there.” Panic was building in her now, but she tried to be calm.

“Mama, where is she? Where’s my baby?”

Edna stood up and came toward Diana.

“Calm down, Diana,” she said. Outside, she could hear the wind still blowing, and in her daughter’s eyes she saw the familiar look of fear and confusion. “Calm down! She must be here.” Edna, fully awake now, remembered Joyce Crowley’s phone call. “Unless she went with her friends,” she added.

Diana’s eyes were wild. “Went? Went where?”

“Some of the children were going up to the mine—” Edna began, but before she could go on, Diana was screaming.

“The mine? She was going up to the mine? Why?”

“Diana!” Edna reached out to grasp her daughter’s arm, but Diana twisted away.

“No … she can’t go up there, Mama. It’s too dangerous. Mama, don’t let her … I’ve got to find her … got to stop her!”

As Edna watched helplessly Diana ran out into the howling winds of the night.

   Christie’s heart was pounding in her chest, and her breath was coming in gasps, but she kept running. Then, coming toward her, she recognized Diana. Her fear of the afternoon forgotten in the terror of the night, she stopped running.

She was safe. Whatever she’d seen, it couldn’t get her now.

“Aunt Diana? Aunt Diana, help!”

Diana paused, the wind lashing at her in the darkness. Had she heard something—someone—calling to her? She took a hesitant step forward. “Baby? Is that my baby? Mama’s coming, pretty baby. Mama’s coming for you.”

Christie froze. There was something in Diana’s voice, and in the way she moved, that frightened her even more than whatever she had left behind at the mine. Diana’s voice sounded the way it always did before she hit Christie. Panic swept over her, and she began to cry, but even in her fear, she remembered what happened to her when she cried.

“Good little girls don’t cry.”
The words echoed in her mind, and she fled from Diana.

“Baby,” Diana muttered. “Baby, where are you?” She looked around, but suddenly there was nothing for her but the darkness and the wind.

Once again she began plodding up the hill toward the mine.

   Jay-Jay Jennings giggled to herself. Christie, she decided, was a scaredy-cat, just like the others. But she, Jay-Jay, wasn’t. It was kind of fun, being in the mine alone, and if she stayed long enough, she would find out if the stories she had heard were true.

She felt in her pocket for the tiny flashlight she had brought along and ventured deeper into the mine.

The darkness closed around her, and she turned on the light. She flashed it around, then reached out to touch the wall of the tunnel. Feeling her way along, she moved toward the vertical shaft.

She listened carefully, but all she could hear was the sound of the wind.

Then, when it seemed as though she must be far from the entrance, she heard another sound.

It was like a baby, and it seemed to be crying.

Was it the wind? Jay-Jay couldn’t be sure.

And then, behind her, between her and the entrance, she heard a voice.

This time she knew it wasn’t the wind.

She could feel a presence in the mine, as an animal can sense approaching danger. She snapped off the light and waited.

She heard a voice, calling out in the darkness.

Cowering low to the floor of the mine, Jay-Jay didn’t answer.

And then there was only the wind, and the strange sound that was like a baby crying.

   Diana paused just inside the mine, listening to the howling wind.

She could hear her baby crying now, calling to her, as it always did when the wind blew.

The dark void in her mind opened, and she remembered.

There had been another night, many years ago. She had been carrying a baby that night, and it had been crying.

And then she had lost the baby.

Maybe tonight she would find it.

Find it, and make it stop crying.

She plunged ahead into the darkness, oblivious to the blackness that surrounded her, following only the voice that was guiding her.

“Baby?” she called. “Baby, where are you? It’s Mama, come to get you.”

There was a sound ahead, and then a tiny light glowed.

“Miss Diana?” Jay-Jay called softly. “Miss Diana, is that you?”

“I’m coming, baby.” Diana’s voice floated toward her in the darkness. “Mama’s come back for you. Mama wouldn’t leave you here.”

The light came nearer, and suddenly Diana could see the face.

It was the face of a child, and it was crying.

In her mind the old memories stirred once more.

“Good babies don’t cry.”

In the darkness Diana reached out, and soon there was silence.

With the baby’s crying blessedly stilled, Diana Amber left the mine and began walking home.

   Esperanza Rodriguez, in the tiny cabin, had heard nothing. Since she had stepped out of the cabin a little while ago and seen Christie Lyons running down the hill, she had been on her knees, praying for Juan.

Praying that soon they would realize that her son had done nothing and release him.

Perhaps, if God listened to her, it would even happen tomorrow…

18

Christie burst through the front door, tears streaming from her eyes, her face smudged with dirt. She stopped in the foyer, trying to catch her breath, and it was there that Edna Amber found her. She led the sobbing child into the living room and seated herself on the sofa, Christie beside her.

“What happened, child?” she asked. Christie shuddered and rubbed at her eyes with her fists.

“Aunt Diana,” she whispered. “I was running home, and I … I saw her.”

“Where?”

“Up the hill. On the way to the mine. She was talking, and at first I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t, Miss Edna. She wasn’t!”

“Who was she talking to?” Edna asked, her voice quavering with a growing fear.

“I don’t know,” Christie wailed. “A baby. It was like she was talking to a baby.”

Edna sighed heavily and patted Christie. “All right,” she said. “You go up and wash your face, then go to bed.”

Christie looked at her, her eyes wide. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “I’m so scared.”

“Do as I say,” Edna told her, and there was an edge to her voice that made Christie obey. But before Christie left the room, Edna spoke once more. “Christie?” The little girl turned to face her. “Christie,” Edna
repeated, her voice low and urgent. “You must never tell anybody what happened tonight. Do you understand me?”

Christie stared at the old woman for a long time, trying to decide what she meant. Not talk about what? Going to the mine? Seeing Aunt Diana? What? Finally she decided that Miss Edna must mean everything that had happened. Silently she nodded her head, then went upstairs. Fifteen minutes later she was in the crib, curled up with her knees against her chest, her thumb in her mouth, trying to understand what was happening to her. It was impossible.

   Edna was waiting for Diana in the foyer, and as her daughter came in, the old woman looked at her sharply. Her eyes, as they had been earlier that evening, were glazed and empty.

“Diana? Are you all right?”

Diana smiled peacefully. “I’m fine, Mama. Everything’s all right now, and I’m fine. My baby’s stopped crying.”

A chill passed through Edna, but she said nothing, sure that until the wind died down, Diana would remain lost in the depths of her own mind. Edna knew that when the spell was past, Diana would have no memory of it.

Diana kissed her mother’s cheek, then, her mind still peaceful with the knowledge that she had comforted her baby, she went upstairs to the nursery.

Christie lay huddled in the crib, a blanket wrapped around her, thumb in her mouth. As Diana approached her, she shrank deeper into the crib.

“Baby? Baby, is something wrong? It’s Mama.”

Christie’s eyes, wide and frightened, peered up at her. Diana reached down to stroke Christie’s cheek, but the little girl flinched away from her, her heart pounding. Quietly Christie began to cry.

Diana froze. As the crying sounds reached her ears, the dark side of her mind responded. Her eyes suddenly clouded over, and her hand knotted into a fist.