The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) Read online

  The Dark: A Collection

  by Linda Cargill

  Published by Cheops Books

  Tucson, AZ

  Copyright © 2013 by Linda Cargill.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Dark 1

  The Dark 2

  The Dark 1

  Chapter 1

  Bianca sat on the living-room sofa watching TV. She turned the sound way up. The murderer was sneaking up on his victim who was lying in bed with the window open. The killer was climbing a tree. He inched his way across a branch. He had almost made it to the window.

  Tap! Tap! Tap!

  She spun around.

  A branch from the biggest live oak tree in the front yard hit the window. The gnarled limb blew in the breeze. For a ghostly second the limb resembled a person with long hair because of all that Spanish moss hanging from it.

  Bianca switched to a different channel. It was the same old thing: reruns, reruns and more reruns of old murder-mystery and horror movies.

  On one channel she was watching The Mummy, on the next Dracula, and then Frankenstein. Her nerves were too on end to be entertained by this sort of thing tonight. She pushed the "off "button on the remote.

  She searched through her purse for the paperback novel, The Werewolf Cop, that she'd stuffed into it before rushing out to baby-sit. Her mind wandered off. The novel couldn't keep her attention.

  She didn't know what was wrong. She kept on looking nervously toward the window as if the tapping sound might return.

  She tossed the book aside and looked down at her math homework with a shudder. She gaped at her English essay on the coffee table. She'd been playing at doing homework all night. She hadn't been able to concentrate.

  Bianca stared at the dinner cart that she'd wheeled in from the kitchen. Her half-finished TV dinner, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, was getting cold. The chicken grease had congealed into a wad. The gravy had puddled. The peach cobbler had managed to change color. It didn't look like the sort of thing that someone would want to eat. Even her Coke had fizzed out. She pushed the cart away.

  Bianca's attention shifted to the phone. It hadn't rung all evening. She thought of calling everybody she knew to tell them that she was going nuts.

  Dong! Dong! Dong!

  Bianca dropped the receiver. The big grandfather clock in the living room was starting to chime midnight. She couldn't call anybody this late.

  She heard a car and spun around. It wasn't the Shipleys arriving home early. It looked like a police car going past in the dark. The Shipleys had mentioned something about a new police patrol around the neighborhood late in the evening.

  Before they'd left for the dinner dance at the Cloister Hotel, Mr. and Mrs. Shipley had tried to explain their new system of locks to Bianca. The locks had been installed during the past week. They hadn't been here when she'd come to baby-sit Little Katie last Friday.

  Mr. Shipley had given Bianca the keys and told her to lock up as soon as it got dark. Mrs. Ingersoll, the live-in maid, had been complaining lately. She'd thought that she'd seen someone lurking about the yard during the past few weeks. The Shipleys had a lot of valuable antiques, silver, china, paintings and furs.

  Mr. Shipley had told Bianca not to worry. It had probably been Mrs. Ingersoll's imagination. The blackwater swamps on this barrier island off the coast of southeast Georgia generated gases and miasmas. Thick fogs blew in from the sea. The combination was often conducive to people thinking they saw things that weren't there, especially in the dark. Sometimes, of course, all they saw were the weird shapes of the live oak trees, which had an uncanny way of looking human. They were gnarled, twisted, bent over, and had many limbs going in every direction. The Spanish moss that clung to them in gray-green clumps had the texture of an old person's hair.

  After all, this was St. Simons Island, a little coastal island, not New York City! Crime was hardly a big thing here.

  Bianca had been worrying about the locks ever since. The Shipleys owned an enormous house with lots of doors and windows. She was afraid that she might have forgotten to lock one. She kept on reviewing the list in her mind and ticking them off on her fingers: the front door, the kitchen door, the pantry door, the garage door, the back porch door, the sliding glass doors in the dining room, the French doors into the living room, the windows upstairs. . .

  Suddenly Bianca remembered. She hadn't locked the sliding glass door on to the balcony just off Mr. and Mrs. Shipley's upstairs bedroom!

  Bianca leaped up. Just as she did, the lights blinked out and she was left in pitch darkness. She stood stock still. She heard floorboards creaking overhead. It sounded like footsteps.

  Impossible! The newborn baby, Little Katie, was sleeping in her crib upstairs. Bianca had put Little Katie to bed five hours ago, as soon as Mr. and Mrs. Shipley had left the house for the dinner dance. The baby couldn't walk yet. She couldn't even crawl. When she was awake, she always made burbling noises.

  The maid had retired an hour ago, groaning about her aching feet. She had started snoring right away. Besides, Mrs. Ingersoll had short, light steps. These steps had force behind them.

  The sound of footsteps got louder until it drowned out the whine of the cicadas from the marshes.

  Bianca's knees knocked together as she headed for the stairway in the dark. It was a gray, cloudy night outside. Even the gas street lamps were obscured by the huge live oaks in the front yard.

  "Help!" Mrs. Ingersoll suddenly wailed at the top of her lungs. The baby was bawling her eyes out, making the little choking sounds that she always made when she was upset.

  "Mrs. Ingersoll, Little Katie, what's wrong?" Bianca tried to make herself heard.

  The steps got louder. They were getting closer. Was someone coming out into the upstairs hallway from one of the bedrooms?

  "Help me!" Mrs. Ingersoll sounded hysterical. "I don't want to die!"

  "Mrs. Ingersoll, are you ill? What's happened?" Bianca shouted up the stairs in the dark.

  Little Katie squealed. She made more noise than Bianca had imagined that a baby could make. The newborn must be flailing about wildly in her crib, knocking against the wooden railings.

  Was somebody murdering the child? Bianca forced herself to visualize the layout of the inside of the house where she baby-sat on Friday nights. Katie's room was up the stairs to the right, next to the portrait gallery. Mrs. Ingersoll's room was all the way down the hall to the left, the very last door.

  Bianca raced upstairs as fast as her legs would carry her. She was trying not to think about the footsteps, though they sounded as if they were almost upon her. She crouched down closer to the floor to protect herself as she crept along the upstairs hallway. Somehow she made it to Katie's room despite the fact that she couldn't see anything.

  The baby was still in her crib, though her flailing about with her little fists had knocked down some of the toys on the mobile suspended overhead. Bianca snatched the baby up in her arms. The child's tiny hands slapped at her. She turned and raced back in the other direction, trying to remember where the stairs were so she wouldn't trip and fall in the darkened house.

  Mrs. Ingersoll wailed. The child cried. In a panic Bianca wondered if she should go to Mrs. Ingersoll's room and see how the maid was. Some instinct told her she didn't have time. She had to keep her arms around Little Katie. She had to get her out of the house befor
e anything else happened. She had to call the police.

  Some intruder continued to roam around the upstairs hallway doing something that he shouldn't. It sounded as if he might be checking out the bedrooms.

  At the top of the stairs Bianca ran smack into that very intruder. Arms went out and tried to grab Little Katie. Bianca kicked and fought, not even thinking of her own safety. She wouldn't let Little Katie go, no matter what.

  The hands felt big and strong. It was almost impossible to fight back, they were so powerful. She summoned the strength from somewhere deep inside herself, where she had never before realized that it existed.

  The creep hissed something in a low voice close to her ear. She could hardly make out his words over the pounding of her own heart, thundering in her ears.

  Bianca heard other footsteps rapidly approaching. Mrs. Ingersoll screamed near Bianca's other ear. "Bianca, where are you? Bianca! Bian—"

  Mrs. Ingersoll tripped and fell heavily against the wooden banister. A whooshing sound shot through the air. She gasped as if struck. The maid lost her balance in the dark and tumbled down the stairs. Bianca didn't think. She raced down the stairs after her. She tripped and fell over something lying at the bottom. She rolled so that she could shield Katie with her body.

  Bianca was living only to make it through that front door. The closer she got, the farther away the door seemed. She kept on running into things that she could barely identify. They were objects from another life: the coffee table with her school books; her dinner tray; the TV set.

  She wouldn't have been able to see where she was going except that there was a thin thread of silver light coming from the slit at the bottom of the door. It illuminated the whole door in a pale sort of way.

  Bianca reached the front door and threw it wide open as she looked back over her shoulder. A single ray of moonlight shot out from behind the clouds. It streamed through the open door and hit the body at the bottom of the stairs. On her stomach lay Mrs. Ingersoll in her nightgown and big, black slippers. Her crooked nose was sticking out. She was staring straight at Bianca. She wasn't moving. She wasn't breathing. She was dead.

  There was a bullet hole in the middle of the maid's back. She was lying in a puddle of blood.

  The light illuminated someone else on the stairs. It was the killer. Bianca was looking directly into his face.

  "Help!" Bianca screamed as she raced out into the front yard with Little Katie still clutched in her arms. "Help! Help! Murder! Help!"

  "Help!" Bianca moaned faintly once again.

  Bianca opened her eyes. She was in a darkened room. It was so dark that she couldn't see who these people sitting around her were supposed to be. For a minute she couldn't even remember where she was. She broke out into a cold sweat and trembled.

  Was somebody chasing her? Was somebody going to murder her? Should she run? Bianca was gripping her seat, ready to flee.

  "Here, have a sip of my Coke!" Rick shoved a super-sized, red-and-white paper cup jangling with ice cubes into her face. When Bianca acted as if she didn't know what to do with it, he raised it to her lips and made her drink.

  The cold Coke hit her like a brick. It perked her up. She looked up at the wide silver screen and blinked. A larger than life-size lady was screaming as a man shot her with a gun. She fell to the floor dead.

  It was Friday night. But it was two years later, in late May. Bianca was now almost eighteen, about to graduate from St. Simons High School in a few weeks. She wasn't baby-sitting. She was at the Island Theater with Rick Roscoe, her date, and his friends. They were watching a murder thriller, The Black Widow Strikes Again.

  Rick had asked her to go to the movies just yesterday in school. She hardly knew him. Certainly she didn't run with his crowd. His invitation had amazed her. Rick was one of the most popular boys in the senior class. She was a loner. She had stuttered her acceptance.

  Now here she was. Bianca couldn't help it. It was always like this. She was terrified of the dark.

  Her fear gave her cold sweats and panicky feelings. It muddled her thoughts, making it impossible to think straight. It made her feel closed in, as if she'd been forced down into a tiny little black box. The darkness reached out like hands creeping along her neck, making it hard to breathe.

  She must have dozed off in her seat in this warm, musty, humid place. The horrible nightmare she'd just had seemed like a memory of what had happened that awful night two years ago, when Mrs. Ingersoll had been murdered. Bianca hadn't been able to remember a thing until now. Her first thought was that she had to hurry up and tell Doc about it. He would be thrilled.

  Already the nightmare was beginning to fade. She saw only bits and flashes here and there.

  It made her feel excited and terrified at the same time.

  Bianca started to scramble out of her seat. Then she sat back down. She had to wait until the movie was over. It wouldn't be polite to desert Rick. After all, he'd paid for her ticket, as well as the refreshments.

  Bianca tapped her foot and glanced down at the luminescent dial on her wristwatch. Doc had warned her to expect her memory to return at some point. He'd advised her that she ought to get out and start to see more kids her own age, too — lead a normal life. That might help her to remember.

  Still, to have her memory return on the very first night that she'd gone to a movie in two whole years, on her very first real date! That was weird!

  Now all the kids in the theater were putting their hands over their mouths. They were screeching as if they loved to be scared to death by the movie.

  Suddenly Mrs. Ingersoll's voice ripped across Bianca's mind: "Help! Help!"

  Bianca screamed aloud. She didn't know how to handle this — a memory here and there, like some sort of loose cannon rolling across her mind.

  "Isn't this fun?" Rick stuck a box of popcorn in Bianca's face as everyone else screamed. The popcorn, gooey with butter, came in a tub so big that Bianca couldn't hold it without spilling it. Her date's face was flushed with enthusiasm, illuminated in the weird, white light coming from the big screen until it looked garish.

  "Sure thing!" Bianca managed a sick smile.

  Bianca had made a habit of avoiding movie theaters and other dark places over the past two years since the slaying. She didn't know what had gotten into her to act so impulsively. She should have said that she wanted to go to a restaurant, a dance, a bowling alley, or another bright, well-lit place.

  She had wanted to impress Rick by going to a movie. She had wanted to convince him that she was like other girls, not some geek. Now look what had happened!

  Marianna Haynes was leaning over the seat on the aisle in front of Bianca. She worked at the concessions stand and was bringing popcorn to some kids. She turned in Bianca's direction as she made change and hissed, "Sh-h-h-h-h!" right into Bianca's face.

  Marianna was wearing a thin cotton pinstriped uniform, complete with apron and cap. She managed to brush flirtatiously against the arm of the customer who had ordered the popcorn. She glared at Bianca. Even in this dim light Marianna's dark eyes flashed.

  Everybody was sitting on the edge of their seats, their mouths wide open. They were pausing, frozen in place, with their hands in their popcorn boxes, silver candy wrappers half open, their lips halfway to their straws. In the movie the killer was confessing his reasons for murdering the lady, bragging how clever he'd been.

  Bianca gripped the armrests of her seat. She couldn't stand this talk of murder. If she'd wanted to be brave and go to a movie, she should have made certain that it was a comedy and not a murder thriller! She moaned aloud.

  Everybody went, "Sh-h-h-h!" at Bianca — or so it seemed. They stared at her with faces glowing in the weird light from the silver screen.

  All those faces. . . They reminded her of that day, two years ago, when the whole St. Simons Island Police Department had been standing there in her hospital room, looking at her just like that.

  Chapter 2

  Until tonight, May 27 two years
ago had been the one night that Bianca could not remember. She recalled coming home late that Friday afternoon when she'd been only sixteen and a sophomore in high school. She'd changed out of her gym clothes to put on jeans and a T-shirt. She was going to be late for her babysitting job at the Shipleys.

  Until tonight Bianca hadn't been able to recall walking up to the Shipleys' front door. The next thing she'd remembered, after changing out of her gym clothes in her own bedroom, was sitting in the middle of a hospital bed with bars on the sides that went up and down.

  She'd been propped up by pillows, a white sheet pulled up to her waist. Nurses had been rushing in and out to take her temperature and her pulse. She'd been wearing a hospital gown that tied in the back and gapped open the rest of the way.

  Where had her gym clothes gone? Her T-shirt? Her jeans?

  It had looked like the next morning with light filtering through the window. Her parents and Mr. and Mrs. Shipley had been sitting by her side. The Shipleys had been holding their baby daughter, Little Katie, who'd been noisily sucking on her bottle.

  "How are you feeling?" Mrs. Shipley had asked, beaming at Bianca. Her smile had seemed nervous, exaggerated. "That nasty sedative that the doctors gave you last night has finally worn off!"

  Bianca had been so dumbfounded that she hadn't been able to speak. Was she dreaming?

  Mr. Shipley had rushed up and placed a strawberry soda with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on the tray beside Bianca's bed.

  "Feeling hungry?" he had asked. "If you want a six-course dinner delivered from the Cloister Hotel on a silver platter, it's yours."

  "Yes!" Mrs. Shipley had looked serious. "Name anything you want. It's yours." Then she'd broken down crying. She'd hugged Bianca fiercely and kissed her on the forehead. "Nothing's too good for you, honey. Nothing!"

  Bianca had stared with an open mouth at everybody.

  The florist had raced into Bianca's private room and had thrust into her face the biggest, prettiest bouquet of flowers — mixed carnations, roses, daisies and pussy willow. The card had said: As a reward for saving our daughter's life, we're setting up a trust fund in the name of Bianca Winters, for the amount of one million dollars, to be drawn upon by the time she is eighteen.