The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) Page 22

  Bianca paused four stairs shy of the top. She turned and gaped at Ronnie. "Is she going with us?"

  "We have to have a crew, don't we? It's customary to have a flight attendant to serve you even aboard a chartered aircraft."

  "But—"

  "Don't tell me you're starting to have paranoid delusions about the stewardess! On top of hearing voices and all your phobias, this represents a decline in your mental state. I guess the excitement of travel can bring that on, too."

  Ronnie escorted Bianca inside the cabin. Marianna slammed the hatch behind them and fastened the lock firmly in place. Bianca swallowed hard.

  Chapter 10

  Ronnie seated Bianca in the first row in first class. She occupied the window seat. He took his place beside her. She craned her neck to gawk over her shoulder. There appeared to be other passengers behind them in the first-class seats. She and Ronnie were not alone.

  "Ronnie. . . I — I thought you said this was a chartered aircraft for us only."

  "Just a few friends of mine that we'll have need of during the flight. I want to consult with them before we reach our final destination."

  What could Ronnie want with a man dressed in a conservative black suit carrying a Bible? She could make out that the man had a minister's rounded collar. Beside him sat another man in a three-piece suit that looked expensive. He had a swarthy complexion and looked Latin American. He was carrying a leather briefcase that was open on his lap. Shuffling through reams of papers and making notes, he was assembling, stapling together and stamping some sort of important-looking, official documents.

  Why did Ronnie need these men on their trip to London? Why couldn't he wait until after they had landed and arrived at their hotel?

  "Are we ready?" Marianna asked Ronnie.

  "We're waiting for one more passenger, if I'm not mistaken." Ronnie replied.

  Marianna wheeled up a cart with soft drinks and snacks. Little Katie reached for a candy bar and gobbled it up. She offered a bite to TR and Lou. The only bright spot was that the child was feeling much better than she had in days.

  Ronnie turned up his nose at the snacks. "Bring on the wine instead," he ordered Marianna.

  "I thought that was being saved for later," she answered cryptically.

  "No, no! You mean the champagne. The wine's for now," Ronnie replied.

  Marianna returned with several wine bottles along with frosted glasses.

  "That's better!" Ronnie smiled. "Much more appropriate for a day like today."

  He poured Bianca a glass of wine. He took the other glass and tapped it against hers as if toasting.

  Marianna opened the hatch one last time and locked it. This must be the other passenger that they had been waiting for. Bianca's mouth fell open.

  "Harry!" she exclaimed. He was the last person she expected to see here today.

  A dark-haired young man shuffled into the first-class section and took a seat across from them.

  "Surely not another delusion, dear! This is getting to be a nasty habit." Ronnie eyed Bianca as he sipped his wine.

  Bianca studied the young man who acted as if he didn't know her. He wasn't waving at her or making any attempt to talk to her. It was odd indeed. He boasted Harry's flyaway black hair that was thin, fine and straight. His eyes were big and dark. He was slim like Harry. If it wasn't him, Bianca had never seen anybody else who reminded her of him more!

  The newcomer got up, fished something out of his pocket, and handed the small package wrapped in brown paper to Ronnie.

  "Thank you, thank you," Ronnie said effusively with more emotion than was common with him. "It's about time. Now we can get under way."

  He tore open the package. He popped open the ring box. There were two rings. One was a plain gold band. The other was a diamond. Ronnie examined the diamond from every angle.

  Bianca had only seen a diamond as big as this once in her entire life. This ring resembled the antique diamond ring that Mrs. Shipley had once owned, the one in her jewelry box that Doc had been trying to steal two years ago when he had killed Mrs. Ingersoll. It looked like that same ring that Doc had tried to steal again in May when he had died on the stairs.

  Bianca could swear that it was the same ring! It was every bit as brilliant and as scintillating. It was cut in the same way as Mrs. Shipley's old ring. It had to be the one that had made Bianca remember Doc's face as the murderer's when she'd stepped on it in the hallway two months ago.

  But it couldn't be the same diamond! Mrs. Shipley had sold it after Doc's death. She had complained that no jewel was worth people's lives. Where would Ronnie get hold of such a rare find? Some millionaire had probably bought Mrs. Shipley's old ring by now! Nor would Ronnie be able to afford it on a hospital intern's income.

  "Job well done." Ronnie got out a one-hundred-dollar bill and slapped it down into the palm of the stranger who looked like Harry. "Of course, there will be a lot more of that where we're headed tomorrow. Then I'll pay you in full, as we agreed."

  The guy flashed a smile. When he smiled, he showed his teeth. Bianca noticed that his front incisors were chipped. Harry's front teeth were not. Close-up observation highlighted several other differences. His skin was a shade paler. His hair looked almost the same color but not quite. His facial expressions did not seem the same as Harry's. Again, he showed no signs of recognizing her.

  "Tell the pilot I want to speak to him," Ronnie barked the order at Marianna. "It's getting late. It's almost dark."

  Marianna knocked on the cockpit door. Was Bianca to assume that Rick Roscoe was inside as the pilot or copilot? She didn't see him anywhere else. She'd clearly seen him board the plane.

  "Hello, hello, this is the pilot." A heavily accented voice came on over the loud speaker.

  "We're ready to get underway," Ronnie told him.

  "Right away, sir," the pilot concluded in what sounded like the accent of one of those Latin American interns that Bianca had met at the Cloister.

  The plane started down the paved runway in the middle of the grass-covered field. It taxied out to a place where it turned, then stopped. The plane charged forward with a new earnestness, going faster and faster. Suddenly the wheels weren't making contact with the pavement. They were airborne.

  They climbed over water as they turned out to sea. Remembering her dream from last night, Bianca did not much like the idea that there was only the Atlantic Ocean beneath them. She turned away from the window toward Ronnie.

  Ronnie put down his glass of wine, which he had finished. He started to clap. Everyone in the first-class section began to applaud, including Marianna. Marianna had buckled herself into the hostess seat in front of first class during take-off. She unbuckled herself and leaped up cheering.

  "This calls for a celebration! Bring on the champagne." Ronnie's voice sounded more carefree and party-like than Bianca could ever remember before.

  Marianna uncorked several champagne bottles, which bubbled over. She got out the chilled champagne glasses. She poured the expensive stuff and started passing out the filled glasses to all of the passengers in the first-class section.

  Ronnie tapped his glass against the startled Bianca's glass. "Let's toast to us."

  "To — to us?" Bianca hesitated to raised the glass to her lips. "What do you mean, to us? Shouldn't we be toasting to Little Katie's welfare? She's the reason we're taking our trip to London."

  The child's rash looked as if it had subsided more than a little. Little Katie was scratching herself hardly at all. She was playing with TR Bear and Lou contentedly in Bianca's lap. Perhaps it was because they were now away from St. Simons Island. No doubt something there had been reacting with her skin.

  "Yes, I guess you could say Little Katie's the reason we're taking our trip. Certainly she's paying for it — or at least her parents are. They're dishing out top dollar."

  Ronnie spoke in a rather disrespectful tone. He snickered. Up to now he had always sounded deferential and polite when he had talked about the Ship
leys.

  Bianca was stunned. "Of course they're 'dishing out top dollar'. They'd do anything to help their daughter. They love her more than anything in the world — just as I do."

  "My dear, you'd better learn to spread your adoration around." Ronnie took hold of her chin and caressed it. "Little Katie might have golden-blond hair and curly locks. She might look as pretty as a princess in a fairy tale. She's certainly as rich. But I'm far more brilliant and well educated. And after all, I'm to be your new husband."

  "My — my husband? Is this a proposal?"

  "You can take it as a proposal if you like. Reverend!" He turned around and called to the man with the rounded, white collar. "We're ready for the ceremony. We have no reason to wait."

  Marianna rushed back into the empty passenger-class section of the airliner. She hurried up to Ronnie's and Bianca's seats with her arms full of flowers. Bianca could smell them before she could see them. Their heavy, musky scent reminded Bianca of magnolias.

  Were these the flowers that Ronnie had been buying from the florist yesterday? Florists even in Georgia didn't usually sell the big, showy white blooms that grew in everyone's yards this time of year. But these were particularly fancy blossoms, much finer than roses, with perfect, waxy green leaves surrounding them. They looked as if they might have been cultivated by a florist.

  Marianna held the blossoms out to Ronnie. He studied them and selected the finest one in the center. "Yes, that one will do nicely."

  Marianna took the other blossoms away. She returned to fasten the blossom that Ronnie had chosen in Bianca's hair. She attached it with a hair comb.

  Magnolia blooms grew in profusion in Christ's Church Cemetery. Bianca had been gathering them for the past two months to leave as remembrances on Doc's grave. Doc had always loved magnolia blossoms. A true Georgian, they had been his favorite flower. Her hair-piece could not help but remind her of Doc. Bianca fidgeted in her seat.

  She wondered, Why would Ronnie choose a magnolia bloom over roses or some other flower? Magnolias don't grow in London!

  In a flash the reverend appeared before them. He read the words of the wedding ceremony aloud. Bianca listened in total confusion, not able to understand what was happening. Finally the reverend reached the part where she had to respond.

  "Do you, Bianca Winters, take this man, Dr.

  Byron Kingsley, to have and to hold, to honor and obey, from this day forth as long as you both shall live?"

  "I ... ah. . ."

  "She does," Ronnie answered for her. "She's not herself today. Too much stress, you understand. Now, Bianca, answer the reverend."

  "Ah ... I. . ."

  "Say you do."

  "I do."

  "Do you, Dr. Byron Kingsley, take this woman, Bianca Winters, to have and to hold, to honor and cherish, from this day forth as long as you both shall live?"

  "I do. Let's get on with it, Reverend. Don't dawdle."

  "It's time to exchange rings." The reverend hardly needed to remind Ronnie.

  Ronnie slipped that big diamond ring, as well as the matching gold band, on to Bianca's left ring finger.

  "I now pronounce you man and wife." The minister concluded the ceremony, "You may kiss the bride."

  Ronnie leaned over and gave Bianca a big smack on the lips.

  "Now for the important part," Ronnie called back to the lawyer. "Bring those papers up here. I assume you have them ready."

  "Ronnie," Bianca squeezed his hand, "why — why did you want to marry me on an airplane? Why so fast? Why couldn't we have waited until we got to London and the Shipleys could be there? Why couldn't we have waited for my parents to get back from their Alaska cruise? I've been dull-witted lately, but I don't get it."

  "You are a little bit slow catching on, my dearest darling." He took hold of Bianca's chin and brought her face up to his. "Or rather I'm devilishly clever. I planned to marry you from the first moment it was my privilege to really become acquainted with you. That was a little over two years ago."

  "But — but you met me only a few weeks ago when summer school started. It was the beginning of July. You never saw me before that."

  "We've known each other at least a little bit all of our lives. We used to be next-door neighbors, if I remember correctly."

  "We did?"

  In her mental condition, she didn't have much of a mind left. Ronnie liked to remind her of that all the time. She couldn't imagine forgetting an important fact like this.

  "Granted, this summer I've had to live in an apartment. Rather cramped and inconvenient. That's about to change when we arrive in Rio de Janeiro. You should see the mansion that the Shipleys' money and that one hundred thousand dollars that you loaned me rented for us. That is until we can find more permanent quarters — perhaps something by the beach overlooking the sea."

  "The sea?"

  "We'll pay for that with the rest of the money that you had transferred to a bank in Rio yesterday. Not that I don't have money of my own. I had the foresight to transfer it into Swiss bank accounts months ago, long before I took on my new name and identity."

  This must be a nightmare. She must be ready to wake up at any second. No one could sleep long with their heart pounding as hard as Bianca's.

  "What do you mean by Rio? We're headed to London, aren't we? I don't remember loaning you one hundred thousand dollars. Not that I'd begrudge it to you. Did I loan it to you, and I don't remember? Is that it?" she asked anxiously. "I can't recall a thing about having my money transferred to a bank in Rio." She grabbed the seat with the free hand that wasn't convulsively clutching Little Katie around the waist.

  "Look deep into my eyes. Tell me that you don't know me." He touched his nose to hers. "I used to live across the street, Bianca dear, when you lived in your old house near the Shipleys. That was before you came into that delightful two million dollars that enabled your parents to move into more opulent quarters."

  Bianca knew that she MUST be dreaming. She wanted to pinch herself. Ronnie had never lived across the street from her before she and her parents moved into their new house. Only the Shipleys had — the Shipleys and the McColloughs, Doc's parents.

  A cold fear clutched at the pit of her stomach. She looked into his eyes as he had commanded. Her head whirled around. He was drawing her deep down into a whirlpool. She was holding her breath the whole time. She felt as if she might drown. Only one other person had that power over her before . . .

  "Some glimmer of consciousness inside you has recognized me all along." Ronnie still spoke in his English accent. "It felt the same when you were with me. In the middle of the night when you woke me and clutched on to me because you'd had a nightmare, because you were afraid of the dark, your arms went around me in exactly the same way as mine went around you. Every time I kissed you, your lips parted in the same way as before."

  She shook her head and groaned. The moan welled up from deep within her being.

  "You can't be him. He's dead. He died in May when he fell down the stairs at the Shipleys' house."

  "You mean when you shot me, my dear. We mustn't forget an important detail like that. You were wearing those turquoise earrings that I gave you for your seventeenth birthday, as you are now." He reached across the seat and tugged at one of them.

  "Doc!" she gasped. No one knew about the earrings except Doc himself.

  "Yes, I'm Doc Ernie McCollough all right. That's who I've been all along. That's the man you married. Look at the name I'm signing on the marriage certificate." He pointed at the paper that the lawyer had slipped on to his lap.

  Bianca watched in horror. He signed the name she had been so familiar with in his dark, bold, cursive hand. It was hard for her to make a sound. He pushed the pen into her hand and then, when she couldn't hold it, forced her hand to close around it.

  "Sign the marriage certificate right under mine on the dotted line. Remember that you are now Mrs. 'Doc' Ernie McCollough."

  Her hand spasmed. She dropped the pen. He forced her hand
around it again.

  "Sign!" he commanded her.

  She was so spellbound by shock that she couldn't move an inch to save her own life.

  "You're going to have to get used to taking orders from me. I'm your husband now —" he dropped the English accent in favor of the old Georgia accent that she had associated with Doc — "and I'm still your doctor. You're in no fit mental condition to make your own decisions."

  His southern accent was the same voice that she had heard when she had been kneeling in the cemetery in the rain. She had thought that Doc's voice had been speaking to her from beyond the grave. On the basis of that impression about her own mental condition — that and Rick showing up in the window well — Bianca had stopped going to school or just about anywhere else that Dr. Byron Kingsley couldn't accompany her. She had ceased to have any free will. Now he was sitting here telling her that it had been a cruel hoax.

  "Don't gape at me as if I were some vampire returned from the grave!" he snorted. "I never died, despite the melodramatic piece in the cemetery. It was very sentimental no doubt, worthy of a Shakespearean drama. You were clutching my gravestone, tears streaming down your face, listening to me as I hid behind a tree and mimicked my own voice."

  "But—"

  "Oh yes, I pretended that my neck was broken in May as you clutched me to your breast and then ran shrieking down the street. When the ambulance drivers took me to the hospital, I bribed them to act as if I were dead. A doctor in my pay dragged out an unidentified body from the hospital morgue. He declared that anonymous body dead in my name. He had the other body cremated for my funeral. You never saw my corpse lying in the church in state, now did you? No one did, not even my parents."

  She groaned.

  "The whole while, I was lying low, making plans for Doc Ernie McCollough's reincarnation."

  Chapter 11

  "Doc had dark hair. He had dark eyes. You have blond hair and blue eyes." Bianca found her tongue.

  "After I supposedly died, I flew to Rio using a new, fake British passport that I had purchased for a hefty price on the black market. It told me that my new name was Byron Kingsley. Byron Kingsley might have been a British dentist who just passed away. I didn't mind."