Nightmare Child (11 page)

Panting, she went into the half-bath beneath the staircase and carefully washed her face and hands, which relaxed her more than the breathing exercises had. The odor of the
McCay's
house still burned in her nose, and the sight of the dead, decaying animals still imposed itself on her vision.

In the hall, she found a blue knit cap she liked, put it on, buttoned up her coat once more, and then went through the breezeway to the double garage, where two cars stood in the gathering dusk of the afternoon, a gray Volvo sedan and a red Subaru station wagon.

She chose the Volvo. Once inside, she reached up and depressed the button on the garage door opener.

The door had long been in need of repair—something wrong with the motor—and it went up, creeping inch by creeping inch.

Diane sat behind the wheel, the engine running smoothly, waiting to shoot out through the open door.

In the meantime, while she waited, she busied herself by emptying the ashtray—filled with gum wrappers, mostly—into the small white plastic garbage bag that hung off one of the radio knobs.

Finished with this, she glanced in the rearview mirror again. Her response was a gasp.

The garage door was fully open now, but in it stood, outlined against the white snow, the two dark shapes she had come to fear, Mindy and Jeff
McCay
, their eyes tiny glowing circles in their otherwise empty faces.

They started walking into the garage, one on either side of the car.

Knowing she had to make a quick and dangerous decision, Diane floored the Volvo, screeching backward across the concrete floor, slamming into Jeff
McCay
as she did so.

Jeff went flying backward, the sound of his head smacking the garage wall with a sickening crunch.

Mindy shouted several obscenities at her, but nothing could deter Diane now. She left the garage doing twenty-two miles an hour in reverse, beginning to fishtail as soon as the steel-belted radials touched the ice-covered snow on the driveway.

She continued fishtailing all the way down the drive to the street, where, sliding, she ran into a wall of snow piled there by city graders. Mindy and Jeff ran down the drive toward her.

Letting a sob fill her throat, Diane started dropping the car into a forward gear, then slamming it back into re-verse in order to get traction and pull away from the wall of snow. Even through the closed window, she could smell tire rubber burning.

Jeff's gloved hand appeared from nowhere and started opening the door. Somewhere behind him, Mindy was shouting again.

Jeff's hand reached through the opening between the door and post.

Diane pulled the door shut quickly and viciously, making Jeff cry out.

Just then the car shot backward once again, both rear tires finally obtaining traction.

This time it was Mindy who she ran into as she escaped, Mindy throwing herself on the trunk of the car and beating on the back window, her glowing eyes larger and more furious now. Diane deliberately fishtailed this time so that Mindy was hurled off the trunk and thrown into the wall of snow.

Once on the street, Diane did not look back. She just drove, sobbing as she went. All she could think of was poor Jenny trapped in that terrible house and unable to escape.

Then she thought of empty faces and glowing eyes.

From two miles away, Diane could see the smoke smudge the dusk sky, heavy black smoke in several columns against wintry, crimson clouds, a silver slice of crescent moon in the west.

Roadblocks had been placed at several main intersections, traffic rerouted around the seven-block area affected by the fire. Diane listened to updates on the radio as finally, she realized she'd gone as far as she could by car. Pulling into an alley behind a medical complex, Diane parked her car and locked it, then set off walking.

The air, which should have been clear on such a chilly evening, was instead heavy with smoke. Diane coughed as she moved down crowded sidewalks toward the sky that was lighted now with dozens of emergency lights flashing across the clouds. Nearby, backup fire trucks rumbled down brick streets and emergency band radios crackled through the night like distant gunfire.

Huddling in her coat; not expecting to be this cold, Diane broke into a trot…

As she neared the intersection that was completely cordoned off, and where a block of buildings shot yellow-red dragon fire into the smoky sky, she saw a group of officials huddled around a police van.

The closer she got, the more she saw everything in silhouette, dozens of men in rubber fire suits standing in relief against smoke and fire and lights. Several different TV crews competed for position by running cameras as close to the burning buildings as officials would let them get. For Diane, this was a scene from hell—nature out of control, small men doing mighty battle against what seemed, at present, anyway, an implacable foe. An uncle of hers had been a fireman and had died of smoke inhalation. She'd never forgotten the man, and every time she was around a fire, she thought of him and his early death, and the way her mother had mourned for years afterward.

"Get the hell back, lady!" shouted a young fireman, drenched with water and holding a fire axe in his hand. "Nobody's allowed past that rope. Can't you read?" He sounded enraged.

An idiotic idea came to Diane. She would explain to this young man about her uncle and then he'd understand…

Shaking her head, hating her need for approval even under such circumstances as these, Diane said, as forcefully as possible, "I'm looking for the police Chief. Have you seen him?"

"No, I haven't," the fireman said. "Now, get the hell back!"

She was just about to give in to him when a familiar voice shouted, "Diane! Over here!"

From the left side of the frenzy she glimpsed Robert Clark moving quickly toward her. Dressed in a gray gabardine topcoat with a black fedora, he managed to look both dashing and official.

"It's all right," Clark said to the fireman, who merely shrugged and walked away. To Diane, he said, "People get a little testy after a while."

She nodded. "I'm sure I would, too."

"It's great to see you. And a surprise."

"I was wondering if I could borrow you for a few minutes."

He glanced around. "Sure. Even though the fire's still burning, everything seems to be pretty much under control. At least they've got it isolated now. Just give me a minute."

Moving back toward the knot of men gathered around a hook-and-ladder truck, Clark had a conversation that seemed especially animated in silhouette—lots of gesturing and nodding and pointing. Finally, after giving them something resembling a salute, he moved away from the truck and came back to Diane.

"I don't know about you, but I'm hungry."

She said, "I'll just have coffee. I'm too keyed up."

"I should stay within walking distance of the fire." She smiled. "That leaves us a choice of Arby's or Ma's Place."

He smiled back. "Any place named 'Ma's' is bound to be bad."

She laughed. "I'm afraid I agree."

The restaurant was crowded with young married couples and their children. The aroma of roast beef and French fries hung pleasantly over everything.
I can just taste all the cholesterol,
Diane thought to herself.

They took a booth near the back. Black night filled the windows. As Robert Clark went back up front for the napkins neither of them had remembered to bring, Diane looked out the window at a man and his small daughter in the parking lot. The wind was becoming so strong that they were being blown around as if in a hurricane. Finally, the man managed to get the car door open and his daughter installed in the front seat. Then he had to go through the arduous business of walking around the car and getting in on the driver's side.

"I just noticed something," Clark said, sitting down and setting napkins in front of them.

"That I went ahead and snuck a few French fries?"

"You did?"

"I confess."

"Well, since I'm the Police Chief, I guess I can refuse to press charges." His bantering tone ceased. He looked at her somberly. "You're afraid of something."

"How can you tell?"

"Little things. I've never seen you bite your nails before, but you take a nibble every few minutes tonight. And the sighing. You're pretty good at it."

"Anything else?"

"Your eyes. Very lovely as always, but very troubled, too. In fact, a few times you looked on the verge of tears."

"I sound like pretty great company."

He surprised her by reaching across the table and taking her hand. "That's one thing you never have to worry about, Diane. You're always great company."

Then he sat back, almost boyishly, and ate his formidable meal of roast beef sandwich, small order of fries, and vanilla shake. A few times, to complete the boyish image, he managed to have a vanilla moustache painted across his upper lip.

Several times, Diane tried to bring up what she'd seen that afternoon, and tell Robert everything that had happened. She thought again of Jenny's voice, asking for her help. She still felt guilty for leaving the
McCay's
place, but, given the fact that Mindy and Jeff had been coming back, she'd really had little choice.

Or was she simply rationalizing away her own cowardice?

"Now's as good a time as any."

Diane, lost in her own thoughts, glanced up from her coffee. "Pardon me?"

"I said now's as good a time as any—to tell me what's bothering you so much."

"I suppose you're right."

"I know I'm right. You really need to talk, Diane. You look more worried by the minute."

"I just keep thinking of Jenny."

"So something did happen this afternoon. I had a feeling that was it."

"I think I really let her down."

"Tell me about it," he said.

And so she did, the story coming out in a jumble of words and images. She described the appearance of the house, the curious circle on the kitchen floor with its evidence of animal slaughter, the dead animals upstairs, the feces and blood on the walls, and Jenny's voice, which curiously seemed to follow her throughout the upstairs.

"So you never actually saw her?" Clark asked.

"No."

"Did you have any sense of which room she might have been in?"

"No."

"Did you call out to her?"

"Yes."

"But you never actually saw her?"

"No."

"Then you left?"

Diane could tell by his tone that he thought it odd that she'd leave before finding Jenny. "I'm afraid I got scared."

"From what you're describing, I don't blame you. It sounds pretty eerie."

"I got frightened because the
McCay's
were coming back."

He shrugged. "I'm beginning to understand."

"You are?"

He nodded solemnly. "You feel guilty because you left before finding Jenny."

She felt her cheeks grow warm. "I'm afraid you're right. I wasn't very… brave."

He touched her hand again. "On the contrary, you were very brave. Even with a gun I wouldn't have been too happy about going into that house as you describe it. A few years ago I worked on a series of satanic murders and I got pretty scared. Damned scared, in fact."

She thought of the
McCays
' glowing eyes. Now seemed an ideal time to describe them to him. "So you believe in occult things?"

He smiled bleakly. "Afraid I don't. These turned out to be some young derelicts who liked to kill people and who had tried to convince themselves that they were following orders from Satan." He shook his head. "Nothing satanic about it, I'm afraid."

"Oh." She knew then that she would not tell him about the
McCays
' eyes. Suddenly, sitting there in the busy restaurant, she felt curiously alone, isolated.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No. Why?"

"You look…sad."

"No, I'm fine."

He studied her a moment longer, then said, "Like some more coffee?"

"Please."

While he was gone, Diane started thinking of Jenny again. Her voice. Her plea for help.

"Actually, I wouldn't mind something a little stronger right about now," Clark said, setting down Diane's coffee.

She looked up, forced a smile, nodded her thanks for the coffee.

Seated across from her again, he said, "How about tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"Sure. We go in the
McCay's
place."

"But how—"

"With a search warrant, of course. You've given me enough to get a warrant with. Sounds like a pretty grotesque example of child abuse of some kind."

"You're sure? That you can get a search warrant?" He sipped coffee and nodded.

Diane allowed herself a moment of relief. Now it would all be over and Jenny would be safe. "That would be great."