The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) Page 7

  Her eyes started to close. She might have drifted off for a second. The next thing she knew Harry had stopped the car. She felt for him, and he was gone. Now very much awake, she peered into the darkness behind her. There stood Harry, next to the bumper, staring down the road the way they'd come. He seemed alert, listening for the smallest sounds.

  Finally he climbed back into the car.

  "Harry, is somebody following us?" she asked straight out.

  He started the car up. "Those owls must be going crazy tonight making that racket. A few alligators are swimming around in the swamp near the edge of the road. This time of year they sleep during the day and come out at night."

  Bianca felt uneasy. She wondered if Harry was trying to conceal something from her.

  Br-r-r-r-ring!

  "Don't answer!" Harry warned. "It's that Doc pest again. I can smell him the way I can smell a skunk."

  She didn't want to displease Harry. But the shrill ringing sound was getting to her. She fiddled nervously with Doc's turquoise earrings.

  "Maybe it's my parents. I'm out late, you know." Bianca couldn't keep herself from answering. "Hello?"

  "Ditch Fellini as quickly as possible," Doc hissed very low. "I've just heard the most dreadful news."

  The blood drained from Bianca's face. "What — what do you mean?"

  Harry was slowing down, pulling up along one side of the road. He scooted across the seat and put his ear up close to the phone. Her heart was thudding against his chest. Harry's heart was thudding against hers. They were in this thing together.

  "It's Mike. The news is worse this time — much worse," Doc informed her.

  Bianca could feel Harry's muscles tensing. Her hand found his and squeezed it. This was too much all in one day — losing his job at the Island Theater, then having his brother break out. Now — what?

  "What — what is it?" she croaked.

  "Mike escaped from the state penitentiary this afternoon."

  "We heard about that from the police chief at the theater."

  "Yes, well now he's broken into the Shipleys' house. Your parents called me over. I'm with them now in your living room. The Shipleys are here along with the police chief and the rest of the police department."

  Bianca could make out her parents' voices in the background. Worse, Bianca's hair stood up on end hearing Mrs. Shipley's sobs. It reminded her of that time two years ago. It was part of the memory that had come back to her this evening.

  It was very odd that Mrs. Shipley should be weeping over a lost crystal vase or a silver candlestick that was insured twice over. She was such a rich woman that she could buy another.

  "You're — you're not telling me everything, are you?" Bianca guessed.

  "I didn't want to have to tell you all the details over the phone — and in the presence of certain people," Doc said with emphasis.

  Harry grabbed the phone. "You'd love nothing better than to scare the wits out of Bianca. You don't care who's listening. You'd like the National Enquirer to be on the other end of the line. Maybe CNN so they could put it on as breaking news. Shooting your mouth off makes you feel important."

  "Jump out of the car and run, Bianca! I could get in my car and meet you out on the road. Harry Fellini's not safe company," Doc shouted.

  "But — but you said it was Mike. Harry hasn't done anything. Harry hasn't broken into any houses." Bianca took the phone back.

  "All right, Bianca. Have it your own way." Doc sounded displeased. "I wanted to be with you when you found out what really happened tonight. There might be certain . . . serious complications. I might have to administer certain . . . ah . . . first-aid treatments."

  Harry snatched the phone. "You should see Bianca's face. Even in the dark she looks like a ghost. What are you trying to do — kill her off on the spot?"

  Doc explained. "Mike didn't take the TV sets or the stereo system. If that had been all he'd done, the police wouldn't have dropped every other petty robbery or larceny on their dockets tonight. The Shipleys wouldn't have canceled their big trip."

  Bianca's heart came to a dead stop as she took the phone with her trembling hands. "You — you said that the Shipleys were at my parents' house. Where — where is Little Katie?"

  "Where indeed? It looks as if Mike's kidnapped her. He's left a ransom note for one million dollars."

  "Oh my God, no!" Bianca dropped the phone and burst into tears. Not Little Katie all over again! She couldn't stand it.

  Harry forgot his own pain about his brother to take Bianca into his arms and comfort her. He stroked her hair and whispered soothing words. He rocked her back and forth.

  "I didn't want to have to tell you about it this way." Doc's voice was clearly audible from the phone lying on the floor. He had one of the loudest voices that Bianca knew. "Now you'll have to get back here quickly. I need to give you one of your sedative pills."

  Harry picked up the phone. "I figured you for a selfish, heartless bastard who likes to hear yourself talk. I didn't figure you for an absolute sadist. You like to make Bianca suffer? Go to hell!"

  Harry hurled the cell phone out the window. He kissed Bianca's head as he cradled her in his arms until she couldn't cry any more.

  "Remember what I said? Don't let them get to you! Don't give in like this, no matter what."

  "Why do they always pick on Little Katie?"

  "Because she's a rich little girl, I guess, the richest on the island. But you're the one who's suffering the most, getting so strung out about her. Be kind to yourself. Tell yourself you can tough it out. I know you can. I'll help you."

  "I saw your face when Doc said it was Mike. You looked crushed. How will your family ever live this one down?"

  "I — I don't know, to tell you the truth." He hugged her fiercely. "But I know you'll help me, just as I'll help you. Together we'll make it somehow."

  Only the thought that Harry needed her as much as she needed him kept Bianca from going totally to pieces. She needed to be needed. It was the only thing that kept her sane. The raw desperation she felt in his hug made her wipe her eyes.

  "I'll get you home." Harry flicked on the car radio. "We're almost to your house. All we have to do is take the next left."

  The local announcer broke in:

  St. Simons Island reels with shock late tonight with the kidnapping of the Shipley heiress, two-year-old Little Katie. A neighbor from across the street in the Churchyard Oaks Subdivision immediately called the police and reported seeing the notorious Mike Fellini drive up in a blue van. She watched in horror as he shinnied up a tall live oak tree in the front yard right outside Little Katie's bedroom window. The window was wide open. It was a hot night. With her parents still downstairs on the telephone (the neighbor tried to call them to warn them, but she couldn't get through), Katie was taken from her crib by the nineteen-year-old who has a crime record miles long, stretching back to when he was ten. The neighbor observed that Fellini had tied a gag around Little Katie's mouth. He climbed back down the tree with the child in his arms. The neighbor would have run outside screaming, but she could see a glint of metal in Fellini's hand and feared that he was armed with a knife.

  The parents didn't find out what had happened to their only child until the same neighbor ran screeching across the street as soon as Fellini had left. She woke up all the neighbors in the Churchyard Oaks Subdivision, the scene two years ago of the brutal unsolved slaying that still has our tight-knit community up in arms. The Shipleys raced upstairs to find their child missing and a ransom note for one million dollars pinned to her mattress.

  The police are asking anyone who has information leading to the arrest of Mike Fellini to call them. As everyone knows, he's a brute of a guy, nearly seven feet tall and built like a football player with big, broad shoulders and a big chest. He weighs over two hundred pounds. He has dark brown hair and brown eyes and is believed to be armed with a knife, and very dangerous. Approach him only with extreme caution. He is desperate and capable of anything
. He's already kidnapped a little girl. He's willing to attack you next.

  The Shipleys are offering a one million dollar reward to anyone who can bring their daughter back alive.

  Harry flicked off the radio. He drove on without saying a word. In the darkness of the front seat he looked heartbroken. All the life had been sucked out of him.

  He had been trying so hard for so long, but one person could only take so much. If no one wanted to hire the brother of a bank-robber, surely no one would want to hire the brother of a kidnapper. Mike had sunk as low as he could possibly go, and had taken his family with him.

  Harry was staring straight ahead, clutching the steering wheel so hard that Bianca could hear his knuckles crack. He didn't trust himself to speak, or he might break down. She could feel what he was feeling. It made her body tremble and her own fingers ache.

  Every so often Harry would sniff and rub his eyes. Then he bit his lip. Harry was trying hard to be brave! He thought that if he acted sad, he would make Bianca even sadder. Every so often he would dart little glances in her direction, then look back at the road.

  Against his will, a moan escaped his lips. "They'd" gotten to Harry Fellini no matter how brave he tried to be. He stopped the car and collapsed against the steering wheel. His whole body shook with sobs.

  Bianca took him into her arms. "It's all right!" She hugged him. She felt a little bit stronger. It had been the same way she'd felt two years ago when she'd had Little Katie in her arms and she'd been fleeing from the murderer.

  "It's strange," Harry groaned hoarsely. "I know we never talked to each other before tonight. But I think I'm in love with you, Bianca."

  She answered with a kiss.

  He put his finger under her chin. "This whole thing proves my point. You're one brave girl."

  "We keep each other brave."

  He was about to kiss her. Suddenly a big black car rammed into their back bumper. The impact knocked them both hard against the dashboard.

  Harry spun around. He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. The Rambler took off with a lurch.

  Bianca barely had time to clutch on to the seat to keep herself from being knocked about. "What's — what's happening?"

  Gone was the hurt look. Harry was biting down on his lip in concentration as he tried to make the old Rambler speed up.

  She glanced over her shoulder. The other car was following them all too closely. She remembered thinking that she'd heard a car behind them a long way back.

  "Harry, I've got to tell you something." She was overwhelmed by a panicky feeling as he passed the turn off to her house on the left in his attempt to escape. "Maybe you'd better let me out. That car is after me, not you." There were certain things that she hadn't gotten around to telling Harry during their true confessions.

  "What on earth are you talking about?" He kept his eyes fixed on the road.

  "The killer cornered me in the ladies' lounge at the theater and turned the lights out. He threatened to kill me if I told anybody. He thinks I'm starting to remember that night two years ago. It's true. I am." She swallowed hard. "He says it would be easy to kill me now that he's already killed Mrs. Ingersoll."

  Harry gaped at her in shock. "I knew that Marianna was after you, teasing and harassing. I saw her walking through the lobby, going into the ladies' room. That's what I meant when I told the theater manager that his joint wasn't safe to work in any more. I had no idea that there might be somebody else. I didn't see anybody. They might have climbed through the ladies' room window from the outside. But—"

  "You don't have to get involved. It's between the killer and me," she confessed. "He's probably been watching me for the past two years, just waiting. And yes, it could be Marianna."

  "You and I are a team now. There's no way I'm not involved." He gave her a reassuring pat on the thigh.

  The road was so narrow that they were having a hard time staying on it. Harry was driving straight down the middle. Overhanging branches of the live oak trees were brushing against the roof. Spanish moss covered the windshield and blocked their view without warning. The ends of the longest branches scraped against the sides of the car, like long arms with claws reaching out for them.

  Branches draped with green leaves and gray-green, prickly Spanish moss, laden with nasty, crawling bugs, thrust themselves in the windows. Bianca had to duck. Harry hunkered down against the steering wheel. Bugs landed in her hair and crawled down her neck. Prickly stuff scratched her face.

  The other vehicle kept on playing bumper cars and trying to push them off the road.

  "They put in a V-8 engine when they built this baby. They don't make cars like that any more. Hold on to your seat. I'm going to rip!"

  Harry floored it. Branches were hitting them hard. It was as if they were under attack, and bombs were falling from the skies. A branch whacked the windshield. It shattered. Harry barely kept his wheels on the road. He turned into curves at the last minute.

  Lining both sides of Old Church Road were black swamps. The green muck growing on top appeared in their headlights, only to disappear right away. The swamps were filled with insects that could eat you alive and cottonmouth snakes that swam silently through the dark water until they bit you. In unpredictable places, there was quicksand. It was impossible to see where you might land if you veered off the road in the dark.

  The dark . . . yes, the dark. . . It was swirling around, reaching out its arms to wrap around her and suffocate her to death. The night air was blowing through the windows, smacking Bianca's face. The night mists were closing in, forming an impenetrable, gray-black fog.

  Harry's high beams were hardly illuminating the road several yards in front of him. He was heading into the blackness and the void. His high beams lighted up a sign: Danger! Dead end. Road ends 500 feet ahead.

  Harry lurched sharply to the left. His car left the road. It hit a wrought iron fence and rolled over on its side.

  Everything was still . . . dead still.

  Chapter 8

  "C'mon, we've got to get out of here!" Harry was barely able to force his driver's side door open and yank her out.

  They were standing in the cemetery at Christ's Church. They wouldn't have been able to recognize it in the dense fog, except that it was the only church on the island, the only cemetery. They couldn't be any place else.

  Little breaks appeared in the mists that had rolled in from the sea. Bianca caught glimpses of the white, wooden frame structure of Christ's Church. She made out part of the roof. She could see the pointed steeple with the cross on top rising above all. At other times she could see only the cross, looking disembodied, as if it were floating in a sea of fog, isolated like a wreck on some lonely, forgotten shore.

  Fog floated by in thick clumps and patches. Breaks in the fog revealed a tombstone here and there in wavering shafts of moonlight. The tombstone disappeared. Bianca noticed a stone lady, covered with lichen. Moss grew out of her nose and around her eyes. Now the lady seemed to be on top of her century-old mausoleum. Now she floated on her back suspended in mid-air.

  A stone hand with long, tapering fingers floated about in the graveyard. Bianca swallowed hard and reminded herself that the hand was attached to some crypt.

  She caught glimpses of the inscription on a tombstone. The word DEATH written large loomed before her eyes. It made her step back, as if the tombstone were speaking to her and DEATH was a warning.

  The fog not only distorted the shapes of things, it obscured distances. Everything seemed strangely jumbled together. She couldn't tell if the gray stone cross was in front of the moss-covered lady or if the tombstone with the word DEATH was in front of that. Everything appeared only feet away instead of yards. The crosses, tombs and the dead were pressing in upon her.

  Something seemed to be reaching out of the fog, grabbing for Bianca. It was only the branch of one of those live oak trees with the long, twisted, gnarled, crooked arms brushing against her leg.

  The fog was alive, pregnant with
awful possibilities. It was breathing, waiting out there to devour her if she ventured into it.

  She shook herself. Everything was eerie and out of joint tonight. Nothing was quite right — not since her memory had started to come back. Her memory seemed like a bad omen.

  "C'mon!" Harry was tugging at Bianca's hand. "Let's run. We can make it. Your house is the next subdivision behind the fence at the back of the churchyard."

  That was like saying her house was on the far side of hell. All they had to do was take a journey through it to reach safety. She couldn't go any farther. Her feet were frozen in place.

  "N-no! I — I can't!" Bianca put her hand to her throat.

  "Look!" Harry reasoned with her. "Somebody's after us. We've got to get moving. You're a brave girl. You can lick this fear of the dark.

  I've seen you do it back in the car when I was about ready to give up myself."

  Harry was like nobody else. She could do things for him that she couldn't do for anybody else.

  "All right. But don't let go of my hand."

  She took a big breath and plunged after him into the graveyard. She'd go with Harry anywhere, even if he told her they were walking into the real hell itself.

  The ground was soft and squishy. It wanted to go back to being a swamp. She pictured herself sinking down into the ooze, into the dark chambers and graves beneath the ground, some of which were so old they didn't have markers any more.

  They hadn't gone far when they heard footsteps. At first the footsteps were only wet, slapping sounds. Then they got louder.

  Harry catapulted her forward.

  "Hurry!" he hissed.

  Bianca heard a toddler wailing. The wail became very clear. Then it sounded muffled, as if someone were clapping his hand over the child's mouth.

  To Bianca it wasn't just any baby's wail. It was Little Katie!