Gallows Hill (15 page)

"There is no way in the world that I will ever get counseling from Misty Lamb's father!" Sarah shouted, shaking with fury. "Just the thought of being alone with that man makes me nauseated! I'm going to get some fresh air before I throw up!"

She grabbed her jacket and let herself out into the night. The little town of Pine Crest lay spread out all about her, dozing in the light of a huge white moon, as deceptively peaceful and friendly-looking as a Norman Rockwell painting. It struck her for the first time that it resembled old Salem Village. Of course, that village had been in New England, and this was in the Ozarks. But the size of the town and its isolation from the more progressive outside world were similar, as was the dogmatic narrow-mindedness of the residents. When she thought about what Charlie had told her about the bookstore being burned down simply because it contained books on subjects some people found objectionable, it gave her the sort of chill she had once heard described on a television talk show as "a goose walking over my grave."

She was shivering also because she was physically cold. The temperature had plummeted twenty degrees in the past week, and an early snowfall was predicted for the coming weekend. She couldn't just stand there and freeze, she needed to start moving, but she had no idea where to go. Back in California if she went for a stroll after dinner she would head straight for one of the hangouts where she and her school friends congregated. Here she didn't have that Option. In Pine Crest, of course, the young people got together also. They hung out at the Burger Barn and the bowling alley, they went to movies; they gathered at one another's houses; and all of them seemed to be involved in activities at the church. The difference was that in Ventura she had been a welcome part of things, while here she was considered an intruder, although what exactly she was intruding on she hadn't figured out yet.

Arbitrarily she turned left and began to walk briskly, stomping her feet down overly hard on the sidewalk to get her blood circulating. Ahead of her loomed Garrett Hill, a dark and brooding sentinel, standing guard over the town that had been placed in its keeping. Eric had wanted to drive her up to a parking area at the top, where he had said the moonlit town would look exactly like a chessboard. In retrospect Sarah realized that the metaphor said much about Eric, who had learned, perhaps from his father, to regard the people in his life as little more than game pieces.

Although their moonlit facades did make them appear to be replicas of each other, Sarah knew the identities of the houses on either side from the paper route. This was the one with the blue shutters; the next had a holly bush by the side of the front steps; and then came the one that she often forgot to throw to because by the time they reached it she and Charlie were deep in conversation.

It occurred to her that Charlie was the only friend she had here. She looked forward to seeing him each morning and actually missed him on the weekends when his mother took over the paper-throwing. This pudgy boy whom Kyra had dismissed so derisively as the "class clown" was proving to have a depth she had not expected. Who would have thought that he listened to New Age music and sent away for books about subjects like reincarnation?

She found herself wishing that Charlie were here with her now, plodding along beside her in the worn plaid jacket with the patches on the elbows. She wondered if that was the only jacket he owned. If he had another, he never wore it. With all the talking they had done, he had never once mentioned anything about his home life, except to say that his mother needed the station wagon to get to work. She wondered how his father got to work, or if he even had a father. Perhaps, like her, he came from a single-parent family. Kyra had undoubtedly fed her that information over the walkie-talkie, but at the time she hadn't been interested enough to make note of it. The fact that it seemed so important to Charlie to hang on to his paper route suggested that the family might not be well off.

She had walked only half a block when she became aware of the sound of a car engine coming to life behind her. Her first thought was that it might be Rosemary coming after her to apologize for the scene in the living room and assure her that she believed her, no matter what Ted said.

Sarah waited for the beams of the headlights to light up the road as the car came abreast of her, but that didn't happen. The engine continued to purr softly a short distance behind her like a cat that was idly watching a bird. The driver made no attempt either to pull up beside her or to pass her. Instead he seemed to be following her.

Following her? That was ridiculous. Why would anyone do that? But of course there were creeps who mugged women who went out walking alone at night. You read about such things happening all the time in big cities, but not in small towns like Pine Crest, where everybody in town knew everybody else. But then, Pine Crest was not what it appeared on the surface. This was a town where people kept ugly secrets hidden from view behind the closed doors of their neat little homes.

There was no sense taking a chance when you didn't have to. Spinning on her heel, Sarah abruptly broke into a run, cutting across the lawn to her left and dashing through the dark space between houses like a rabbit diving into its hole. Emerging into the moonlight, she raced across the sequence of adjoining backyards, grateful that it was winter and there were no sprinklers or lawn chairs to collide with, and within minutes was in the yard behind her own house.

Standing at the door to the kitchen with her hand on the knob, she waited for her heart to stop racing and her breath to' slow down before she went back inside. If she told Ted and Rosemary that she had panicked over something so innocuous, it would appear to be validation of her alleged paranoia. And with pretty good cause. Now that she thought about it, she did recall that there had been a car parked across the street from their house. It had not occurred to her to notice if there were people in it, but she couldn't say that there hadn't been. Why should she find it significant that their decision to drive off coincided with her leaving the house to take a walk? Two kids making out in the moonlight—what could be more natural? And now they were leaving, but driving away very slowly, possibly still wrapped in each other's arms. Why should she be so frightened by something so normal?

Maybe Rosemary was right, Sarah tried to tell herself. Maybe that sketch was a joke about "hanging loose" or a nasty response from somebody who wanted our reference books.

But in her heart Sarah knew it wasn't.

The occupants of that car had not been cuddling romantically in the moonlight. Maybe they were the ones who had left the gallows message. Maybe they had been stationed there to watch her house.

Three days later she found a dead crow in her locker.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I'm not going to scream, Sarah told herself. I will not scream.

She would handle this in an adult way. She would report this atrocity to somebody in authority. But who should that somebody be? Ted's classroom was right down the hall, and they were between class periods, but by now she had learned the hard way that it was useless to turn to Ted for anything.

I'll go over his bead, she thought. I'll go to the principal.

She had never met Mr. Prue, although she had seen him at assemblies—a short, balding man with wire-rimmed glasses who wore neckties with pictures on them. All she knew about him as a person were the things that Eric had told her, which had not sounded appealing. But whatever his failings, he was, after all, the principal.

With the thought that the person who had planted the crow might be there in the crowded hall watching her, she was careful to keep her face expressionless as she went to the rest room and brought back a large wad of paper towels. By the time she had wrapped up the feathered corpse, trying her best to avoid physical contact, the third-period bell had rung and the hall had emptied out.

Carrying the bundle at arm's length, she went down the hall to the principal's office.

"I need to see Mr. Prue," she told the secretary, whose desk bore a nameplate identifying her as Mrs. Ellis.

"Do you have an appointment?" the woman asked her.

"No," Sarah said. "But it's very important that I see him."

"I'll see if he's free," Mrs. Ellis said, glancing with obvious curiosity at the package in Sarah's hands. She lifted the receiver and punched in a number. "There's a student here to see you, Mr. Prue. She seems very upset." She turned to Sarah. "Your name, dear?"

"Sarah Zoltanne."

"Sarah Zoltanne," Mrs. Ellis repeated, and then nodded at Sarah and said, "Mr. Prue says he's busy, but he can spare a couple of minutes if it's really important."

Sarah opened the door to the inner office and went in. The principal was seated behind a wide desk that was covered with piles of papers and a lineup of coffee cups bearing cute slogans such as HAVE YOU HUGGED A TEACHER TODAY? and BE SURE TO UPHOLD FINE PRINCIPALS! A photograph of a plump blond woman with a plump blond child on her lap sat to the right of the telephone. To the left of the phone, in a matching frame, there was a hand-embroidered sampler bearing the garbled quotation SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME, FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

There was a chair across from the desk, but Sarah didn't sit down.

"So, Sarah, you have a problem?" the principal asked pleasantly.

"I think you could say that," Sarah said. She plunked the towel-wrapped carcass down in front of him. "I found this in my locker. It's a dead bird."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't place it on my desk," Mr. Prue said, shoving his chair back slightly and making no move to touch the package.

"It was in my locker," Sarah repeated, obligingly picking up the bundle. "Somebody got into my locker and put it there."

"Do you know who it was?" Mr. Prue asked her.

"Not specifically, no. It could have been any one of a lot of people."

"Does anybody know your locker combination?"

"Not that I know of, but I have a lower locker, so I guess somebody could have stood behind me without my realizing it and watched me while I dialed the combination."

"I can see why you're upset," Mr. Prue said. "Nobody would want to be greeted by something like that. If you knew who did it, I'd call them in and talk to them. But since you don't, there's not much I can do." He paused and then said, "You're a new student, aren't you? The one who just moved here recently from California? Your mother submitted an application to teach here."

"Yes," Sarah said.

"You were in the Halloween carnival. You had a Gypsy act, didn't you? A fortune-telling booth?"

"Yes," Sarah said again.

"I almost called you in to talk to you about that, Sarah," Mr. Prue said solemnly. "We have a very strict policy that our carnival not contain anything that involves the occult. That was one of the specifications agreed upon between the school board and the senior class when they first applied for permission to put on this annual fund-raiser. Eric Garrett explained to me that when you asked him if you could have a booth, he didn't realize what you were planning to do in it."

"What!" Sarah exclaimed, unable to believe what she was hearing. "I didn't approach Eric about it, it was Eric who approached me! He and Kyra Thompson—"

"As president of the class, Eric felt it was his duty to encourage a new student to participate in school events," Mr. Prue continued as if he had not heard her. "He thought you were going to be running an Apple on the String game. By the time he realized what you were actually doing, it was too late for him to stop you. The carnival was already in progress, and he didn't want to embarrass you in front of all your classmates.

"I considered calling you in to discuss the matter, but it was water under the bridge, so I decided to let it go. But since you've now come in to see me of your own accord, I feel I should take this opportunity to clarify our standards. I realize people are different out in California. They have a whole different mind-set out there—crime and violence, nude beaches, unusual religious sects, same-sex marriages, I don't know what all. But here in Pine Crest we are—I suppose some would call it—conservative in our attitudes and our practices. I call it moral. This is a Christian community with a Christian value system."

"There's nothing very Christian about this," Sarah said shakily, gesturing with the wad of towels, through which blood was now beginning to seep.

"A lot of high jinks go on among high-school students," Mr. Prue told her. "They're always playing pranks on each other. Just a matter of weeks ago somebody left a fish in another student's locker. He was a good sport about it and accepted it as a joke."

"This wasn't a joke," Sarah said. "Somebody killed a bird in order to do this. They did it out of hatred, not as a joke."

"Perhaps you should ask yourself what you might have done to arouse that sort of feeling in people," Mr. Prue said. "Did you arrive here in Pine Crest with a superior attitude that offends your new classmates? Have you hurt people's feelings by making them feel inferior? Have you wronged anyone, either intentionally or unintentionally? If this isn't a joke, then it's obviously the reaction of somebody who feels he or she has a strong and legitimate grievance. Could it be related to the fortune-telling? Something that you said to someone that hurt his or her feelings?"

"I don't know," Sarah said, averting her eyes. His off-the-cuff guess had jabbed her in a spot where she was vulnerable; she could not deny that she had told fortunes that had upset people.