Darkness Falls (4 page)

Sarah was still just a baby, according to Mary. But she wouldn’t be when her tooth came out. And then she’d be able to get Lady Lighthouse to make her a cake or a cookie or a pie or something even better!

Days passed. Sarah’s mouth still hurt, and her tooth got looser. But it wouldn’t come out.

One day, she even asked Mary to try to pull it out, but that hurt even more, and Sarah cried for the rest of the day. Mother spanked Mary for trying to hurt her sister, and Sarah was too busy crying to tell Mother that it wasn’t Mary’s fault, that Sarah had asked her.

It was a warm, sunny Sunday in June when the tooth finally came out. It was funny, because Sarah had given up on the tooth. She had decided that it would never come out and she was going to be a baby forever. Her mouth had even stopped hurting. The creepy man at church that morning had talked about how important babies were, so maybe God was telling her that she was meant to be a baby so she could always be important.

And then, when she was walking home from church with the rest of her family, it suddenly just fell out.

“My tooth!” Sarah reached down to the cobblestone and grabbed it.

“Sarah!” Mother said in that voice she always used when Sarah did something bad.

“It’s okay, Mother!” Mary said. “She’s gonna take the tooth to the Lady!”

“Oh, no,” Mother said, still using that voice. “No, I don’t want you going to that—that woman.”

“But Mo-o-o-other!” Sarah cried. How could she stop being a baby if she didn’t get a sweet for her tooth?

“Edna got to go to the Tooth Lady,” Mary said.

Sarah smiled, glad that her sister was helping. Mother listened to her more because she was older.

“But—”

“And so did Matthew and Lucas and Freddie and—”

Mother turned to Father. “John, please, tell them they can’t go.”

Father just laughed. “Oh, don’t be such a fussbudget, Mildred.”

“But, John, that—that woman is so—so—”

“So
what,
darling?”

“Have you ever
met
her?”

Father scratched his chin. “Can’t say as I have. Met her husband once, before that awful storm. Damn shame, that. Seemed a good fellow, all things considered. Solid, Christian man. Good head on his shoulders. Thought the world of her, I can tell you that. And if Captain Dixon thought his wife was a good woman, then that’s a good enough testimonial for me.”

Sarah hated when adults went on like this, because she had no idea what they were talking about. She clutched the tooth in her small hand. It didn’t look anything like it did when it was in her mouth. It had these weird spiky things at the end of it. Sarah wondered if growing those spiky things were why it fell out of her mouth.

“John, I swear to you, sometimes—oh!” Mother got that look on her face that she usually got whenever Sarah or Mary did something wrong. “Very well, you can go see the Tooth Lady, but only if you go before it gets dark!”

“Yay!”

Sarah started skipping her way down the road. She was going to get her sweet! She wasn’t a baby anymore!

Later that afternoon, Mary and Sarah went up to Lighthouse Point. It had gotten cloudy, which Sarah didn’t like, but at least they were nice fluffy clouds. Mother had wrapped Sarah’s tooth in a handkerchief and tied it with a nice ribbon. “If you
must
go, you shouldn’t lose the tooth,” Mother had said.

Before Sarah could even see the Tooth Lady’s house, she could smell the gingerbread. She and Mary had already been practically skipping, but as soon as they smelled the gingerbread, they started running.

Gingerbread was Sarah’s favorite thing in the whole world.

Mother had always made good gingerbread, but this was much, much better smelling. It was the best gingerbread Sarah had ever smelled.

She just hoped it tasted as good.

Mary had longer legs, so she made it to the front door first. Usually, this close to the water, Sarah could smell the ocean, but all she had in her nose was the gingerbread. She decided that she really liked not being a baby anymore if it meant all this gingerbread!

By the time Sarah caught up to Mary at the front door, yelling, “Wait for me, wait for me!” the whole way, the big wooden door started to open.

Sarah had been worried, after all the stories Mary had told about how the Tooth Lady was an old woman who’d lost her husband and didn’t have any children, that she was going to be a crazy old lady like Auntie Margie.

Instead, the door opened to a beautiful woman. She had long blond hair that was tied back and looked as if the sun were coming out of her head.

She smiled down at the girls. “Yes?”

Sarah couldn’t make her mouth work. She could talk just fine when her mouth hurt because she wasn’t going to be a baby anymore, but now she couldn’t say anything. The Lady was just too beautiful. She looked like the faerie, like in the stories that Grandmama used to tell her before she went to sleep at night. Didn’t the faerie used to have sweet food, too?

Mary, as usual, came to her rescue. “My baby sister lost a tooth.”

“I’m
not
a baby no more!” Sarah found her voice again. She held up the bundle Mother had made. “I lost my baby tooth!”

“Well, good for you,” the Fairy Lady said. “It’s so good to see children growing up.”

The Fairy Lady sounded sad about that. “Is something wrong?” Sarah asked.

“No,” the Lady said, smiling again. “Nothing at all, you dear, sweet child. You’re John and Mildred Orne’s girls, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mary said.

“Why don’t you come in, and I’ll give you some nice gingerbread? Do you like gingerbread?”

“Oh,
yes!”
Sarah could hardly stop herself from running into the house. But she remembered how Mother always said that she shouldn’t run in the house. And she should behave well in other people’s houses. So she walked very slowly into the house.

The house was a lot like Sarah’s house, except there weren’t any toys or playthings. Mary had said that the Tooth Lady didn’t have any children, so she wouldn’t have any of that kind of thing, Sarah remembered.

And there were also all the white things.

They looked kind of like Sarah’s tooth, only much bigger, and with pictures on them. Sarah tried to imagine someone putting a picture on her tooth.

“I like the pictures,” Sarah said.

“What was that, dear?” the Lady asked.

“I said I like the pictures.”

“Oh, thank you.” The Lady walked over to one of them and ran her hand over it. “They’re—well, thank you.”

The lady seemed sad again. Sarah was scared that the Fairy Lady wouldn’t like her anymore and not give her gingerbread. “I’m sorry, Fairy Lady.”

To Sarah’s surprise, that brought the Lady’s smile back. “What did you call me?”

“Don’t pay her any heed, ma’am,” Mary said. Sarah thought she sounded just like Mother. “She thinks you’re a fairy. Just like a
baby
would think.”

“I’m
not
a baby!”

“Of course you’re not, dear,” the Fairy Lady said. “Come along, let’s go to the kitchen and get you some of that gingerbread.”

“Yay!”

It was the best gingerbread Sarah had ever had.

For the rest of the week, Sarah told everyone who’d listen—and plenty of people who wouldn’t—about how she went to the Fairy Tooth Lady and had the best treats and she wasn’t a baby anymore because she lost her baby tooth.

Mother kept saying what a bad idea it had been to let Sarah go up there, but Sarah just thought Mother was mad because Sarah didn’t like Mother’s gingerbread as much as the Fairy Tooth Lady’s.

The happiest day of Sarah’s four-year-old life was when her mouth started hurting again. She did everything she could to force the tooth to come out sooner, especially when she found out that the Fairy Tooth Lady might be baking a Queen cake . . .

five

1990

Kyle Walsh really hated it when his mother tucked him in. It made him feel like a baby.

Still, he let her do it because he knew it made her happy. And today, especially, after what he did, he wanted to do whatever he could to make her happy.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the blood.

Sometimes it was his blood in the boys’ room. Sometimes it was Ray’s blood. Sometimes it was just blood, flowing like a river.

What scared Kyle the most was that these constant images of blood
didn’t
scare him.

Going to bed, though, that scared him. Going to bed hadn’t been a good thing in a very long time.

Mom looked down at him as she pulled the blanket up to his neck. “I know things have been hard since your father left.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. He hated when Mom got like this. “Dad didn’t leave, he
died.”

As usual when this subject came up, Mom changed it. “Why’d you hurt that boy?”

“I don’t know,” Kyle muttered, looking away. The sad thing was, it was the total truth. Looking back on it, he really didn’t know why he had stabbed Ray. Sure, Ray was a jerk, but Ray had
always
been a jerk. That didn’t mean he deserved to be stabbed. Made fun of, sure. Maybe even beat up. But not
stabbed.
That was nuts.

And so Kyle wondered if
he
was nuts.

“Kyle, look at me,” Mom said.

Kyle did so.

“Why?”

“I really don’t know. I wish I hadn’t, though.” He took a breath. “Mom? What’s wrong with me?”

Grabbing Kyle in a hug, Mom said, “Nothing’s wrong with you, baby.”

The hug made Kyle feel better. Unfortunately, better wasn’t the same as good. “Then why do I keep having those dreams?”

“The doctor said sometimes they just happen to people.”

Mom had been saying that all week. “But why
me?
It’s almost every night now.” For the first time all day, he let himself actually remember the dreams—the nightmares—he’d been having, and he shivered under the blanket. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I know you don’t, baby.”

Of course, it was easy for Mom to say that.
She
knew he didn’t want to hurt anyone, that he didn’t want to do those things he did in his dreams.

But nobody else knew it. And obviously, since they had expelled him from school today, nobody else really cared, either.

Mom took Kyle’s hand in hers. “I’ll make you a promise. Whatever’s going on with you, we’ll figure it out together, okay?”

Kyle was about to say that it wasn’t as if they had a choice, but he didn’t say that. That wasn’t fair to Mom. This was hard on her, too, especially on top of Dad dying and all.

“Okay,” he said. He even managed to smile.

So did she. “Now get some sleep.” She got up, gave him a final smile, turned out the light, and left.

Kyle sat alone for a while, staring at the ceiling. He certainly had no interest in going to sleep. The room was dark, lit only by a clown night-light that he’d had for as long as he could remember. Kyle had never liked total darkness, and he liked it even less lately. Shadows could be scary, but total darkness was a lot worse.

He waited until he was sure he heard his mother close the door to her room—she always went to bed at the same time he did, even though she was a grown-up and could stay up later if she wanted to—then got up and went to the hamper. Reaching in, he felt around for the pants he had worn today and then into the front right pocket.

At some point when he was sitting on that stupid bench outside Principal O’Malley’s office, Kyle’s last baby tooth had finally fallen out. It had been kind of a relief, really. For one thing, it gave him something to do: he sucked all the blood down into his throat, since he wasn’t about to be allowed to go to the bathroom.

Besides, then he’d
see
the blood. A part of him desperately wanted to see the blood. Another part wanted to throw up at the very idea. Since the part that wanted to see it was also the part that wanted to stab Ray, Kyle figured it was best not to give that part of him any help.

He wasn’t sure why he had kept the tooth. Probably, he just didn’t know what to do with it. So he had shoved it into his pocket.

Now he didn’t want anything to do with it. Maybe if it hadn’t come loose like it did, he wouldn’t have been bleeding in the bathroom that morning, and maybe he wouldn’t have gone all crazy staring at the blood, and maybe he wouldn’t have stabbed Ray, and maybe he wouldn’t be expelled.

Kyle threw the tooth onto the floor and headed back to the bed.

He was startled by a scratching noise.

Stopping dead in his tracks, Kyle gazed around the room.

The sound had come from the window.

Slowly, very slowly, Kyle walked toward the window.

He pushed aside the drapes but saw nothing there. He opened the glass, which let the cool night air in. Shivering a bit from a breeze, he stuck his head out.

Figuring he probably had just imagined it, he was about to go back inside and close the window when a huge face suddenly appeared out of nowhere and cried,
“Boo!”

Startled, Kyle jumped, almost hitting his head on the windowpane.

His heart beating like crazy, he thought for sure that some kind of creature
—like the thing in his dreams
—was going to kill him, and he almost screamed himself.

Then he got a good look at the face, which was
not
huge; it just looked it because it was so close. Though it did belong to someone who, despite being the same age and being a girl, was bigger than Kyle.

It was Cat Greene.

Whose arms were pinwheeling, as Kyle’s startled jump had knocked her off balance, and she was about to fall into Mom’s privet bush.

“Damn!”

He reached out and grabbed her arm, which kept her from falling, and she clambered into his room.

They stared at each other for a minute. Cat was breathing heavy, probably because she almost fell. Kyle was breathing heavy, too, mainly because he’d been scared. His heart was still beating like crazy.

“That was stupid,” he said to her.

She grinned. “Yeah, you’re probably right. How are you?”

“Okay, I guess,” he lied. “How’s Ray?” He asked out of habit more than anything else. He honestly didn’t care much how Ray was, as long as he wasn’t dead.