The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) Page 3

  She remembered what Doc had told her about deep breathing, about focusing her thoughts on some image to keep herself calm. But none of Doc's advice was working.

  Bianca started to run. It seemed that the aisle would never end. The little lights near the floor at the end of each row of seats formed a path. She focused on them, forcing all other thoughts out of her mind.

  She thought she heard footsteps behind her, coming faster. She couldn't be sure whether they were real or the beating of her own heart. Bianca stumbled and nearly fell to the floor. She clutched on to someone's armrest and toppled into his lap.

  A monstrous guy with big feet was sitting there by himself in the back of the theater. He obviously didn't want to be disturbed. He gave her a dirty stare.

  "Ex-excuse me!" she stuttered.

  "Beat it!" he hissed.

  She fled as if she'd seen Frankenstein himself.

  The lights surrounding the lobby doors beckoned. If only she could reach them. She was almost there, though she could swear she heard ragged breathing behind her. Was it her own, indrawn gasps or somebody else's? She imagined that she could feel someone breathing down her neck .

  Bianca fell with all her weight against the double doors. They swung wide open. Refreshments spilled all over the aisle. Gooey buttered popcorn landed everywhere. Coke puddled on the carpet. Crushed ice shimmered in the half-light of the lobby. A blonde girl with braids impaled Bianca with her stare.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry!" Bianca groaned.

  "This stuff cost me twenty dollars!" the girl hissed. "Watch where you're going. This isn't a jogging track. It's a movie theater."

  "I'm so clumsy. I don't know what came over me."

  Bianca fumbled with her purse. Doc told her to carry wipes at all times. They were vital if you were attacked by a case of the "cold sweats". She located her purse travel pack and tried to help the girl clean off the big Coke stain in the middle of her T-shirt with a moist towelette.

  The girl with the braids frowned. "This T-shirt is designer. I paid fifty dollars for it. The stain won't come out. I'll have to give it to the Goodwill."

  Bianca searched for her wallet, which was never where she wanted it. She felt herself flushing with embarrassment. She'd gladly pay the fifty dollars for her own clumsiness. But she didn't have the money in her purse. All she had was a twenty and a five. She offered the twenty to the girl.

  The girl grabbed it and glowered at Bianca.

  Harry appeared from nowhere in his gray-and-red usher's uniform. "They don't send you up the river for spilling a Coke." He shoved the girl with the braids inside the swinging doors of the theater.

  Bianca smiled shyly at Harry. This was the second time tonight that he'd come to her rescue.

  He met her eyes briefly. He knelt down with a dustpan and broom to clean up the buttered popcorn.

  "Over here, Fellini!" The theater manager bellowed. "You're not supposed to flirt with girls. Just patrol the lobby."

  The fat manager sat in a folding chair in the front of the lobby. His red-and-white Hawaiian shirt gapped open halfway down his chest. He was chatting with the ticket taker.

  Harry stalked off, patrolling the lobby as he'd been ordered to do.

  On her way to the ladies' lounge Bianca spotted the brightly lighted section of the lobby around the refreshments stand. The girl in the red-and-white striped cap behind the counter was popping heaping mounds of popcorn, piling them up into what looked like mountains behind the glass front.

  The overhead lights were vaguely comforting to Bianca, soothing her nerves. They made her feel a little more relaxed, more like her old self. She could breathe more easily here than in the darkened theater.

  Bianca couldn't help but stroll over to the brightly lighted glass counter to examine the different kinds of candy bars and mints illuminated under lights of their own. She studied the silver foil wrappers with blue letters on the peppermint candies, the bright orange wrappers with yellow letters on the peanut butter cups, and the dark brown wrappers with the inner silver foils on the Hershey's chocolate almond bars. There were multi-colored packages of fruity-flavored chewing gum. She hadn't seen a display like this in a long time — two years, in fact.

  "What do you want?"

  Bianca looked up, startled.

  Marianna Haynes stood there in her white apron and red-and-white striped cap. She had her hands on her waist, tapping her foot.

  "Just looking."

  "Hurry up! We're closing in forty minutes as soon as the last show's over. I want to clear out. I've been standing here for eight hours. My feet hurt." .

  Bianca had done it again. She couldn't stop acting so stupid that people despised her. Marianna obviously held her in utter contempt.

  "I guess genteel folks like you with big bank accounts don't have to worry about stepping on other people's toes, do you? You don't care if you make me stand here all night!"

  Bianca gaped at the girl in confusion. Big bank accounts? Bianca wasn't rich! At least not yet.

  "Don't give me that innocent look!" The girl leered at Bianca. "You've got that nice, big, juicy trust fund from the Shipleys. That's plenty rich enough for somebody like me who earns minimum wage and has to work my guts out for it. I've got to sweat at this job forty hours a week, mostly nights. It's pretty hot back here with the oven for the hot dogs, the stove for the coffee, and the popcorn-maker. Pretty Miss Bianca Winters doesn't have to sweat like that, does she?"

  St. Simons was a small island just off the Georgia coast. Everybody knew everybody else's business. Bianca couldn't deny that the million dollar trust fund existed, that she was about to come into it any week. She didn't like to be reminded of it. She didn't deserve it.

  "I'll — I'll take a pack of the Juicy Fruit gum," she replied apologetically. She got out her wallet.

  Marianna glared at her knowingly as if she figured that Bianca wouldn't have anything smaller than a five when the gum cost only twenty-five cents a pack. She forced Bianca to sweat every second as she counted out the change into her palm, dollar by dollar, quarter by quarter.

  Bianca hurried across the lobby, trying not to pay attention to that other girl's eyes boring a hole through her back.

  She pushed open the door to the ladies' lounge with a loud creak. She hurried through the small sitting area, then opened the second door to the lavatory. For a panicky instant, she was alone in the dark, except for the lights from the street outside filtering through the one open window.

  She held her breath as she groped along the wall for the light switch. She breathed a sigh of relief to see the room flooded with the garish yellow light from the single bulb overhead. It was enough to keep the darkness away.

  Why didn't the theater manager leave the light on all the time? Bianca reminded herself that everyone would be inside the theater for the big, climactic scene of The Black Widow Strikes Again, which she didn't care to see.

  Bianca plopped her purse down on the sink. She reached way down inside and felt around for her pack of Juicy Fruit gum. She fumbled with the wrapper and popped a stick of gum inside her mouth. The burst of flavor gave her a shot of adrenaline. Doc had advised her to carry candy or gum in her purse. He said it was a good source of sudden energy as well as something to calm her nerves.

  She turned on the water full force. She made sure it was nice and cool, none of that lukewarm stuff. It was late May. In the late spring in coastal Georgia it was pretty hot and humid with temperatures in the nineties. The water in taps turned tepid. It took for ever to get it cool. Tonight Bianca was willing to wait. Anything so she didn't have to go back into the darkened theater!

  Bianca took her time washing her face thoroughly and splashing it with the tap water to rinse it off. Then she turned off the water and dried her face very hard on the brown paper towels. She rubbed her skin raw and red.

  The rubbing woke her up, invigorated her. It was something she did when she was feeling low. Doc had suggested it. She supposed ideas like that were why he
was so brilliant and why everybody on the island called him just "Doc", though Ernie McCollough was his real name.

  She powdered herself with her compact and smeared blusher on to her cheeks. She applied her mascara and eyeshadow. She put on a new coat of cherry lipstick. Bianca felt human again. To make sure of it, she sprayed rose cologne behind her ears and combed her hair vigorously.

  She got out two little turquoise earrings that she'd found in the bottom of her purse and fastened them to her earlobes. Doc had given them to her for her last birthday. They made her feel like a new girl.

  Doc had promised she'd have all the boys on the island on her doorstep if she got out more and gave herself a chance. She smiled at the memory of his words, knowing that he must have been exaggerating to make her feel more confident. Her hair was plain brown. Her eyes, too. But it was nice the way her eyelashes curled upward. Doc had said so. Then lots of girls must have eyelashes like that and maybe a whole lot nicer — that nurse, for instance.

  She felt a sharp pang. She hadn't liked it when Doc had told her that she ought to start dating other guys. She'd protested that she needed only him. He'd insisted that the doctors at Brunswick Memorial Hospital had noticed them together around the island at restaurants and beaches, and had commented unfavorably about it. They'd lectured Doc that if he expected to complete his residency and become a psychiatrist, he had to act more professional and keep more of a distance from his patients. It wasn't supposed to be too ethical to get stuck on them.

  Mostly their relationship was rather one-sided. Doc advised. She obeyed. She didn't resent that. Doc was smart, so much smarter than she was. It seemed only natural.

  If he wanted her to see other guys, she'd do it. She'd do anything for Doc. She didn't want to ruin his medical career. She wanted him to get a chance to help others the way he had helped her. Still she had to confess that she lived only for those moments that Doc forgot about his professional duties and stole a kiss or two.

  Bianca pulled her T-shirt tight against her body. She put her hands on her waist, turning from one side to the other examining her figure in the mirror. Pretty average in every way. Not much in the bust line. Not much in the hips. She could wear boys' pants, she was so straight up and down.

  She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. She remembered what it had been like those times when she'd been scared and nervous and had gone to Doc's carrel in the medical school library next to the hospital. She'd gone to find him, as he'd told her to do if she needed help.

  Once he'd kissed her right then and there. He'd taken her back into the stacks where it was dark and nobody ever came. He'd kissed her again and again. She'd felt so good after that afternoon that she'd forgotten to be afraid when the lights on the bus had blinked off on the way home.

  Bianca could walk back inside that theater and sit down beside Rick. With these turquoise earrings on and that memory of Doc kissing her fresh in her brain, she could do anything. After all, the movie was supposed to end in less than forty minutes. Marianna had said so. Bianca could survive forty more minutes in the dark.

  Bianca put her make-up back into her purse. She took her time about it, wasting as much of the remaining forty minutes of the movie as possible. She snapped her handbag shut, thinking about how she could persuade Doc to forget about that nurse with the shapely legs.

  Just then the lights went out.

  Were the theater staff locking up? Maybe it was much later than Bianca imagined, and the movie was over. After all, Marianna had been desperate to get out of the place. Nobody wanted to work a minute longer than they had to. Perhaps Rick had left without Bianca, thinking that she'd run out of the theater and had gone home by herself. It was her own fault. She'd taken too long about coming back. Probably even Doc was gone.

  When the slow, methodical, heavy footsteps started toward her, her stomach sank. This wasn't any casual visitor to the ladies' lounge. This person knew that she was here and knew what he was about.

  Suddenly she heard them again — the footsteps on that night two years ago. They echoed through her mind — slow, heavy, and loud. They had sounded like this, right above her head.

  Bianca's hands spasmed. She dropped her handbag. Thoughts of the off-duty policemen inside the theater flashed through her head. There was no way she could call them now.

  "Clumsy of you, wasn't it?" a falsetto whisper hissed. It didn't sound like anybody's real voice. She couldn't tell whether it was male or female, old or young, someone from Georgia or elsewhere.

  The person was so close he was almost touching her. He stooped down and retrieved her purse. He shoved it into her hands.

  "I was watching you inside the theater. Your face was like an open book for anybody to read."

  She didn't say a word. She was too scared.

  "You were so pathetic. So obvious. When you watched that murder on the screen you remembered me, didn't you?

  He had come back. This had been her worst nightmare over the past two years, wondering when the murderer of Mrs. Ingersoll would show up, knowing he could do so at any time. Bianca's knees knocked together.

  "Maybe you didn't remember much. Just a hint, a clue. The bad thing is that you're starting to remember. One thing will lead to another, won't it, especially since it's almost two years to the day of the killing?"

  He was walking around her in a circle, sizing her up as if he could see in the dark and she couldn't. The darkness pressed around her, crushing down on her shoulders until they hurt.

  "No — no, I don't remember a thing. Honestly I don't," she pleaded. "I was afraid of the dark back there. That's what you saw."

  Pretty soon her legs would collapse. She would fall to the floor. The darkness swirled around her. It was getting hard to breathe.

  A cold finger brushed against her neck. She cringed and moved away, trying not to cry out. That hand! There had been hands like that on that night two years ago. . . But no! She didn't want to remember.

  A dark laugh escaped the murderer's lips, a laugh so distorted that it didn't sound human.

  "I didn't plan to murder Mrs. Ingersoll, you know. She was a big, fat tub of a woman who didn't know how to mind her own business and got in the way. Now you're getting in my way. So guess what could happen to you?"

  She groaned.

  "I'm up for murder one if anybody catches me. One more victim would hardly make much difference, would it? The jury would find me just as guilty either way."

  Dear Lord! How much longer could this go on? If he was going to kill her, why didn't he do so and get it over with? Why this prolonged torture?

  Those huge monster hands tightened about her windpipe. They were pressing down until her breath came in short, little gasps.

  "You'll do anything to save your life, won't you?" he purred.

  She nodded her head vigorously. "Yes!"

  "Nobody can catch me as long as you keep your trap shut. Right?"

  She nodded.

  "You won't rat about me cornering you in the rest room tonight, not even to those policemen in the audience? It'll be between you and me. Deal?"

  She moaned.

  "Remember, if one little hint gets out to those policemen, I'll know where it had to come from."

  She repressed a sob.

  "Then I'll have to waste you. Got it?"

  She sniffled.

  "It won't be pretty. I had to rush when I killed Mrs. Ingersoll. I won't have to rush with you. I can take my time and enjoy every moment of your slow, lingering death."

  They suddenly seemed so familiar — the hands, the voice, the darkness, the struggling. She kept on thinking, Deja vu.

  The assailant shoved her into one of the bathroom stalls and shut the door behind her. "Now don't you dare leave there, or I'll know."

  She didn't dare to make a sound.

  She heard the heavy footsteps retreating. He didn't flick on the light. She was left in the pitch blackness.

  She cowered in the stall, hardly daring to move. The
darkness reached out with little hands and grasped her neck where the killer's fingers had been. She gasped. Her chest was tight. It hurt bad.

  She could hardly remember the girl who had stood in front of the bathroom mirror and fancied she might be pretty because Doc had said so. She was a shadow of that confident self. Doc would be ashamed if he could see her cringing.

  The bathroom light flicked on. The stall was flooded with a garish, yellow glow. Her heart thundered against her chest with such force that it almost knocked her over.

  Was it the murderer coming back to finish her off? Should she have climbed out the window? The footsteps stopped in front of her stall. Hands were grappling with the lock — impatient, angry hands.

  The stall door flew open. Light poured in.

  Chapter 4

  There stood Marianna Haynes. Her frizzy, curly dark brown hair toppled over her shoulders. Marianna put her hand to her waist and tapped her sandaled foot. She tossed her head and smirked as she chewed her bubble gum.

  "If it isn't Miss Goody Two Shoes, the heroine of St. Simons Island! My, aren't we brave tonight cowering in the bathroom stall!"

  Marianna stepped forward in her white-sandaled heels with her toenails on display, painted fire-engine red. "If only my Ricky could see you, he'd be so proud."

  Bianca had no illusions who Marianna meant by "Ricky". Marianna was Rick Roscoe's ex-girlfriend.

  Her violet eyes glared at Bianca. Her plucked eyebrows stood up like pointed, black arches.

  Her eyelashes were lengthened with mascara until each looked like a long and pointed weapon, maybe poisonous, certainly lethal. She sneered. Her teeth were short and pointy like a cat's.

  Was Marianna the killer? Bianca was so rattled she could believe anything. What would Doc want her to do? He'd tell her to brazen it out and keep her cool: That was hard to do as Bianca climbed down from the toilet seat. She'd been perched on top of it so her feet wouldn't show underneath the stall. It wasn't a dignified position to get caught in.