Dead Voices (50 page)

“This makes — what? Four times you’ve been by here tonight. What the fuck do you think you’re gonna see, anyway?”

Frank eased the patrol car to a stop in front of the closed cemetery gate. He snapped the switch on his side-mounted spotlight and swung it in a wide arc across the graveyard. Thick shadows weaved dizzyingly as the light swept back and forth. The names on a few of the closest tombstones jumped out in high relief, but everything else about the place looked peaceful and quiet.

“Come on, man,” Norton said. “Kill the light! You’re gonna wake up the neighbors.” He laughed aloud at his own joke, then fell silent when he noticed that Frank wasn’t sharing his humor.

“Too many things have happened around here for my own comfort,” Frank said, still keeping his voice low as he squinted, following the trailing beam of the spotlight.

“Yeah, well, nothing else is gonna happen. D’you think anyone’d be stupid enough to come out here, just knowing how you’re hovering around the place. Christ!” He sniffed with laughter again. “If anyone sees us out here, they’ll probably call the cops on us!”

“I’m just doing my job, if that’s all right with you,” Frank said, snapping off the spotlight and shifting the cruiser into gear.

“Let’s go find ourselves some real action,” Norton said. “Like maybe we can catch a speeder out on Old County Road. It’s probably too late to catch ourselves any dope pushers hanging around the schoolyard, wouldn’t you say?”

As he eased the cruiser back onto the road, Frank glanced over at his partner and frowned. “Cut the shit, all right?” he said. “I’m just keeping an eye on things in case something happens.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen out here,” Norton said. He twisted around and looked back at the cemetery fence as it receded into the darkness. “Not tonight, anyway.”

4.

The hours plodded by slowly as Elizabeth lay on her bed, her mind a tumbling cascade of fear. Several times she had the unnerving sensation that someone was in the dark room with her. Every time she closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, she would feel — literally
feel
— cold, eerily glowing eyes glaring at her from the inky shadows in the comers of her room. Someone ...

Who? The old crone ... or someone else?

... was staring at her with — what? Malevolent hatred ... or something else?

She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was nearby, trying to contact her, wanting — but unable — to get through to her. She wasn’t sure how she knew or sensed this, because, whenever she opened her eyes and looked around, she never caught even a fleeting glimpse of anything unusual.

Remembering the dreams she had had over the past few weeks only made things worse, and several times she bolted upright in her bed, convinced that she had been — or still was — dreaming. Fear choked her, and she expected to look down and see the Ouija board on her lap. She would watch helplessly as her hands — or skeletal hands blending out of the darkness — moved the pointer and spelled out a message.

And what would the message say
? she wondered, fearing to the core of her soul that she would see the words spelled out, blazing in slashes of raging fire.

Help! ... Mommy!

... Or she would look up and see the old crone, standing there in the dark room, holding out to her the well-worn shopping bag, asking her — begging her — to look inside where she would see ... perhaps Caroline’s face, perhaps her own, surrounded by spiked tongues of flame. The blast furnace intensity would peel the flesh from her face, sear her to the bone, and then dissolve even her bones to nothing but glowing red coals and gray ash.

... Or maybe she would see her husband standing beside her bed. What if all along Doug had been doing this to her? What if, by planting seeds of fear and doubt deep in her mind, he was driving her slowly crazy? Could he be working directly with Graydon? Could the two of them be controlling her, forcing her closer and closer to the brink of madness out of revenge, simply because she had stopped Doug from trying to save Caroline that night?

Sometime around ten o’clock, her parents carne upstairs to bed. She heard her father’s shoes scuff down the hallway past her door without a pause. She heard her mother pass by, too, but she hesitated at the door, obviously considering whether or not she should check in on her daughter. Then she, too, went to her own bedroom. Lying on her bed, her body rigid with tension, Elizabeth realized she had been holding her breath and let it out in a long, whooshing sigh.

She glanced at the clock beside her bed and saw that it was only ten-thirty, still too early to leave. No longer able to lie there on her bed, she swung her feet to the floor and stood up. From the bathroom down the hallway, she heard the sound of water running and the toilet flushing as her parents got ready for bed. She didn’t want to chance turning on her light just yet, in case her mother walked by her room again and saw the light under the door. In darkness, she started pacing back and forth across her bedroom floor, still feeling as though every time her back was turned, glowing eyes materialized out of the pressing darkness and watched her.

She knew exactly how long she paced back and forth because she stared at the illuminated face of the clock every time she walked past the bed. At eleven fifteen, long after she had stopped hearing her parents moving around in their bedroom. she pulled on her socks and sneakers. Quietly approaching her bedroom door, she held her breath as she eased open the door and peeked out into the hallway.

Her parents bedroom door was closed tightly, and the house was deathly quiet. Only the low-wattage bulb at the foot of the stairs was on, casting a sickly yellow glow into the hallway. Elizabeth stepped out into the hallway, and eased her bedroom door shut, praying the old hinges wouldn’t squeak, then tiptoed down the hallway, moving quickly down the stairs. She froze every time one of the steps creaked under her weight, but after listening tensely for any sounds from her parents’ room, she continued down into the entryway. After grabbing her jacket from the front hallway coatrack, she patted her jeans pocket, making sure she had the house keys, then opened the back door and slipped out into the cool, moist night.

The full moon was high in the sky, casting thick, swirling shadows under the trees lining the driveway. A gentle breeze hissed in the leaves overhead, making the moonlight flicker. Elizabeth started down the driveway to the road, grateful-at least-that she no longer felt the presence of unseen eyes watching her. With barely a glance to the left or right, she walked briskly to the road and headed toward Oak Grove Cemetery.

As she walked along the road’s edge, beneath the streetlights, Elizabeth watched her shadow swing around under her feet and then stretch out in front of her. It eased the burden on her mind to remember the dozens, probably hundreds of times she had watched her shadow move like this on those nights she had snuck out of the house at night when she was younger, either to meet her friends or one of her boyfriends — usually Frank.

As soon as she thought of Frank, she cringed, unable to stop from wondering what could possibly have been so urgent for him to keep calling the house as he had. There was no denying the urgency in his voice. She tried to force this, along with any other thoughts about Frank, out of her mind. Just then, she saw headlights come around the bend in the road, aiming straight at her.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered, crouching for a moment on the roadside and wondering what to do. She was between streetlights, and the car was far enough away so that she knew she hadn’t been seen yet, but she had to act fast.

Her first thought was to say to hell with it — it didn’t matter
who
saw her walking down the road, even at this time of night. She had every right in the world to be out taking a walk. But even stronger was the impulse to duck off and hide in the woods before the headlights reached her and the driver — whoever it was — discovered her. It was more than a flashback to the caution she had used when she was a kid and had snuck out late at night. Considering the strange things that had been happening around town — especially in light of what she intended to do tonight with Graydon — it would be best if no one saw her out tonight. Some neighbors might consider even a late-night walk suspicious.

Turning quickly, Elizabeth scampered down the road embankment and into the brush. Unseen branches swished at her, snapping at her face and hands as she ran deep into the woods and then, turning, crouched low to the ground, held her breath, and waited. She heard the throaty rumble of the car’s engine, but it seemed to take forever for the car to come down the road.

A strangled little cry escaped her when the car was about fifty feet away from where she was hiding. A brilliant light suddenly blasted from the passenger’s window. At first, Elizabeth didn’t know what it was, but then she realized it was a spotlight. The car crept slowly closer, the cone of light lancing out into the darkness and weaving back and forth as it skimmed through the roadside brush.

Elizabeth wanted to drop down and hug the ground, but she feared that any motion now would give her away. The light swung closer, pushing like a laser through the underbrush. A cold sheen of sweat broke out over her forehead as it weaved ever closer to where she hid.

Elizabeth could see that the car was a police cruiser. The siren and lights on the car roof looked like dark bull’s horns. The car windows were open, and although she could hear the policemen talking, she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. The beam of the spotlight grew more intense, and Elizabeth fully expected to see the brush spontaneously burst into flames as it swung back and forth. Closer and closer it came, sweeping in a silent ripple through the trees, casting long shadows that weaved sickeningly. Elizabeth had to bite down on the tip of her tongue to keep from crying out.

“You realize this is fuckin’ ridiculous, don’t you?” the cop by the passenger’s window said.

The policeman driving — it
has
to be Frank, Elizabeth thought — said something just barely audible over the muffling rumble of the car’s engine; it sounded like: “I thought I saw someone walking alongside the road.”

“Just your imagination, ole buddy,” the policeman holding the spotlight said.

Finally, the cone of light swept over Elizabeth, blinding her for an instant. In her fear-induced state, she imagined it lingered on her for several seconds before moving on, tracing its way through the woods to her right. She was astounded when the light continued to sweep past her, plunging the surrounding woods into inky darkness.

As the cruiser moved slowly away from her, she heard the policeman by the open window say something else, but it was lost in the distance. With a slow, shuddering gasp, Elizabeth let out the breath she had been holding.

Are they looking for me
? she wondered, watching fearfully as the taillights disappeared around the bend in the road. She couldn’t help but wonder if Frank’s wanting so desperately to talk with her had anything to do with him and his partner carefully searching the side of the road. Had they been alerted, somehow, about what she and Graydon planned to do? Had her mother come down to her bedroom to talk and, discovering her missing, notified the police? Maybe the best thing to do, the safest thing, was to go home and forget all about this foolhardy episode.

But as silence and darkness dropped back down over her, Elizabeth became only more firmly resolved to go through with this midnight meeting with Graydon. She knew now, though, that she would have to be careful and keep an eye out for the police.

Deciding it would be safer to stay in the woods than to walk boldly down the street, Elizabeth made her best guess at direction and, trusting in the brightness of the full moon to light her way, struck out through the woods toward the cemetery.

As she thrashed through the thick undergrowth, she couldn’t stop the flood of scary thoughts and images that filled her mind. Not too far from here was where Henry Bishop’s dog had uncovered the body of Barney Fraser. She knew she was letting her imagination run away with her, but several times she stopped in her tracks and looked around, convinced she had heard a low, hollow moaning beneath the gentle sigh of the wind. And what did she think she’d see — a gauzy white fluttering thing that could be just a beam of moonlight falling onto a tree trunk ... or something else? Even in the warmth of her jacket, she felt goose bumps rise up on her arms.

Elizabeth plunged deeper into the woods, figuring she had to be nearing the cemetery. The sound of frogs in the lowland swamp grew steadily louder until they masked even the crunching sounds her sneakers made trampling the leaves on the forest floor. It seemed to be taking longer than it should have to get to the cemetery, but rather than assume she had missed her goal and was wandering far off the mark, she told herself it made sense that it would take longer to forge her way through the dark woods than it would to go along the road.

A tightness built in her chest when, after what seemed like more than half an hour, she still hadn’t broken through to the clearing of the cemetery. She couldn’t see the slightest break in the trees up ahead, and now she began to worry that she indeed might have wandered off course. She had no idea where the road was, whether it was beside or behind her, and before long she had to admit that she had gotten herself lost. Even telling herself that, no matter what, if she kept the full moon on her left, she would eventually have to hit on Old County Road, didn’t make her feel any better. It was embarrassing and slightly scary to think that she could get herself so confused so easily.

“Oh, great ... just great,” she muttered as she beat her way angrily through the dense brush. The sound of the frogs was even louder as she approached the lowland-so loud, in fact, that she shivered with fear as she wondered what other sounds the frogs might be masking. Waves of steadily rising panic made her ribs ache and her eyes sting. She started swatting at the branches that blocked her path. Her soft, muttered curses filled the closing darkness, but once she realized how heavily she was panting, she stopped to rest, leaning back against a tree and forcing herself to take deep, even breaths.