Summer Of Fear (15 page)

“Then why do you want to go?”

Out of the blue an answer occurred to me. “I want to meet Mrs. Chavez. The professor has talked about her so often, I’d like to see her and tell her how sorry we are and find out if she needs anything while she’s here.”

“That’s a good idea.” Dad was regarding me with more approval than he’d shown for weeks. “That would be a gracious thing to do, Rae.”

“And you can take her the house key,” Mother said. “I locked up the Jarvis house. She and her husband will be wanting to sleep there.”

“But I can do that!” There was an edge to Julia’s normally well-modulated voice. “There’s no reason Rachel has to come. Besides, there may not be room in the car considering we have to pick up Mrs. Gallagher.”

“There’s plenty of room for four people to ride in Mike’s car,” I said firmly. “It’s not a two-seater, you know. And I’m sure he won’t mind my going, if that’s what you were going to bring up next. Remember, he’s as fond of me as if I were his little sister.”

“Don’t be so high-headed, Rachel!” Real anger flashed in Julia’s eyes. “You just kill your own snakes and leave me kill mine!”

“What?” I said, and from his seat beside me Bobby echoed the question, “What was that you said? About killing snakes?”

“It’s just a pussy term.” Julia flushed. “Somethin’ they say back home. What I meant was that Rachel should mind her own business. She’s not goin’ with Mike no more and there’s no good reason she’s got to shove in where she’s not wanted.”

There was a moment of silence. Everyone at the table was staring at Julia as though unable to believe their ears.

It was Dad, at last, who said gently, “You can’t mean that, Julie. It’s not as though you and Mike were going out on a date. Rae has as much right to go over to the hospital as you do. Don’t let the quarrel you girls had last night, whatever it may have been about, stand between you. We’re all one family; let’s try our best to get along together.”

Julia dropped her eyes and swallowed hard. From where I sat across from her, I could see the tendons in her neck standing out like taut wires as she struggled to contain her emotions. For once things were not going as she wanted. For the first time since her arrival in our home she did not have the situation under control.

Why, I wasn’t sure, but for some reason the last thing in the world that Julia wanted was for me to accompany her on her trip to the hospital.

“All right,” she said finally in a low, tight voice. “All right, Tom. You’re right, of course. I’m sorry I got so—so upset.”

“Rae can be pretty upsetting sometimes,” Peter said sympathetically. “I can see where you wouldn’t especially want her tagging along.”

“I wish you girls would make up,” Bobby said. “Then Rae could move back into her own bedroom. How am I going to have guys over or anything if I’ve got a sister sitting in there reading her dumb books on the other side of a flowered sheet?”

“Rae can move back whenever she likes,” Dad said. “I’m sure she won’t find it too easy herself, rooming with an eleven-year-old brother. Nothing would make me happier than to see—”

The doorbell rang.

“That’s Mike.” Julia kept her eyes on the table. I wondered if she was afraid that if she lifted them she would disclose something that she did not want us to see.

“I’ll get it,” I said, shoving back my chair. “I’m through eating.”

I jumped up quickly, before Mother could open her mouth to protest the pile of untouched food on my plate, and hurried to the door. When I pulled it open it seemed for a moment as though time had fallen away and it was spring again, for there was Mike, his thumbs hooked casually in the pockets of his jeans, his hair already fluffing up from an effort at combing that had not survived the short trip from his yard to ours. I’d opened the door to find him this way so many times, flashing his quick, happy grin, saying, “Hi, Carrot-top. Are you ready?”

Now he said, “Hello, Rae. Is Julia ready?”

“Almost,” I said. “We’re just finishing dinner. Is it all right if I go with you to the hospital?”

“Sure,” Mike said. “Glad to have you. I know you must be worried about the professor. You were always so fond of the old guy.”

“Not ‘were,’” I said for the second time that evening. ” ‘Am.’ He’s alive, Mike! He’s still alive!”

But a half hour later, standing with Mrs. Gallagher and Bonnie Chavez in the white-walled room at Presbyterian Hospital, I was not so certain.

“Is he—I mean, are you sure he’s—breathing?” I whispered.

“Yes, dear. Do you see that gauge? It’s measuring his heart beat.” Mrs. Gallagher put a plump arm comfortingly around my shoulders. “He’s doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. It’s just lucky that Bobby found him when he did.”

“I can’t believe it,” Bonnie Chavez said tremulously. She was a gentle-faced woman who looked startlingly like the photograph of Mrs. Jarvis which the professor kept on the piano in his living room. “Daddy was always so strong and healthy. That’s the only reason we agreed to letting him stay alone after Mother died. We wanted him to come live with us, but he was so definite about not wanting to leave Albuquerque. He had so many friends here and he loved the stimulation of being close to the University.”

“Something like this could have occurred any place,” Mrs. Gallagher told her. “In Clovis as well as here. You mustn’t blame yourself. No one is to blame.”

Oh, yes, someone is, I thought miserably.

Cautiously, so as not to risk disturbing the various tubes and tapes, I moved closer to the bed and stood, gazing down at the motionless figure which had only yesterday been a vital, active human being. The face on the pillow appeared so shrunken and strange that if it had not been for the crown of snowy hair I might not even have recognized it as the professor’s. The lips hung slack over a formless cavity of mouth, and the eyes were sunken deep into dark hollows beneath the shaggy brows.

I reached out gently and touched the gnarled hand which lay limp upon the sheet, and I felt no answering pressure, no response of any sort from the lifeless fingers.

“He looks so different,” I said haltingly. “His face—”

“It’s his teeth,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “One of the first things they did when we got here was to take out his dentures. They were afraid they might slip and get caught in his throat while he was unconscious.”

“And his glasses,” Mrs. Chavez said. “We were so used to seeing him wearing glasses. And, of course, he was always smiling and talking, never still like this. Even when he was sleeping, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this still.”

There were footsteps behind us and Bonnie Chavez turned.

“Oh, how pretty!” she exclaimed, trying to smile. “Look, Mrs. Gallagher, we have flowers!”

“Aunt Leslie thought you might enjoy them,” Julia said. “Mike and I stopped at the gift shop on the way up and got a card to go with them.”

“Thank you, dear. They’re lovely,” Mrs. Chavez said politely. “Now I must try to place you. Are you related to the kind woman who phoned me to tell me about my father’s accident?”

“I’m Julia, her niece,” Julia said. “And this is Mrs. Gallagher’s son Mike. We all just loved your father. He was a very popular person.”

“I used to do his yard work,” Mike said. “He was a great guy to work for, always patient about letting me plan my work time around swim meets. He’d come and stand and talk to me while I did the edging. He was interested in so many things that he could hold a conversation about anything.”

“He was wonderful with young people,” Mrs. Gallagher said. “It was the professor who first got Mike started reading. When he was a little boy he hated to read, and then one day Professor Jarvis brought over a book about a boy who wanted to be a long distance swimmer, and Mike never laid it down until it was finished.”

Their voices droned on behind me, rising and falling in a pattern of forced conversation, and I turned my mind from them and concentrated all the strength of my thoughts upon the figure on the bed.

Professor, I cried silently, this is Rachel, your friend! Are you there, Professor, someplace beneath the sagging skin and the deathmask face? Are you thinking and knowing? Are you there?

The professor did not move. His fingers remained limp in the warmth of my hand, and I tightened my grasp upon them, willing them to stir, to give me some sort of movement so that I would know life existed.

Professor, it’s Rachel, I told him frantically. Please, look at me, speak to me, do something!

“We really have to be going,” Mrs. Gallagher was saying. “Are you sure there’s nothing more we can do for you? Will you be staying at your father’s house?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Chavez said. “We’ll be going there later. My husband’s gone out to get something for us to eat, and we’ll sit with Daddy a bit longer. I’m sure the nurses are competent, it’s just that I hate the thought of going off and leaving him with strangers.”

“If you need any errands run, just let me know,” Mike said. “My hours at the pool are pretty loose.”

“Do call on me too,” Julia said. “I’m free to do anything that will help. Let me know if you would like to have me come down and sit with your father a while so that you can get some rest.”

It was then that I saw it, the flicker of an eyelid. If I had not had my gaze so concentrated upon the professor’s face I would have missed it altogether. Now, suddenly, I saw that the shaded eyes, sunken deep into the sockets, were not closed after all. They were open and staring, half covered by the shadow of the gray lashes, and with no facial movement to accentuate them they seemed as expressionless as the eyes of a plastic doll.

Yet when I leaned closer and could see into them, they were far from empty. They were thinking, knowing eyes, and they looked straight into my own.

Save me, they screamed from the confines of the immobile face. Save me, Rachel! Get me out of here! I’m trapped! I cannot help you! You must do it alone!

“—wonderful of all of you,” Bonnie Chavez was saying, her voice warm with gratitude. “It’s so good to know that Daddy’s friends are on call to help. It would have meant so much to him, knowing how many of his neighbors loved him and were concerned about him.”

“You must let me help,” Julia said. “I’d be so glad to sit with him. I lost my own father just recently and I know what it means—”

She would be so glad to sit with him. Of course. What was it I had read just yesterday—that a witch could cause death by walking three times clockwise around a sick man? The book had described this as difficult to accomplish because most beds stood against a wall.

But a hospital bed was on rollers.

I could not fall asleep that night. Not that this was unusual. How long ago it seemed since I had fallen asleep quickly and easily, the moment my head touched the pillow, and waked in the morning refreshed and happy! On this night I could not even read, for Bobby refused to let me have the light on, so I lay tense and restless in the stuffy, cramped area on the far side of the room divider, listening to the snoring sounds my brother made in slumber and trying not to be aware of the odor of his tennis shoes which lay on the floor directly on the other side of the flowered sheet.

In the room above me, the lovely, yellow walled room which I had painted myself the summer before, lay Julia. I could picture her there, lying flat and still, her hair loose upon the pillow, her lips curved slightly as she smiled in her sleep. Or was she sleeping? Perhaps, instead, she was lying awake, just as I was, thinking back upon the events of the day and planning for tomorrow.

Tomorrow—and the next day—and the day beyond that—how far ahead did Julia’s planning go? If only it were possible to look through those eyes of hers into the depths of her mind! I could not believe that she was moving impulsively along one day at a time in a haphazard manner. What had happened today was for Julia one step along a road toward a particular destination. What was it Julia wanted so desperately? Where was her road leading? And what was to become of us all if and when she reached her goal?

If I could answer these questions, perhaps I would be able to stop her. But where did the answers lie? Not in the books I had brought home from the library; I had read those from cover to cover. Not in Professor Jarvis, a speechless, motionless captive in a hospital bed. If only there were someone, I thought, who knew Julia before she came here, someone who might have an understanding of her motives and intentions. But who? Her parents were dead and so was the woman who worked for them. Julia had no brothers or sisters, and she had spent so little time in Pine Crest that it was doubtful that she would have had friends there of the sort in whom she would have confided.

No family, no friends. It was like trying to make sense out of a book that began in the middle with nothing before it but blank pages. No matter how carefully one concentrated upon the present chapter, there was no way to make sense out of what was happening because there was no knowledge of what had come before.

The more I pondered the problem the more insurmountable it became, and when I fell asleep at last it was a fitful, dream-laden sleep that brought little rest.

In the dream I was running along the edge of a road. Red cliffs rose to one side and a sheer dropoff lay on the other, and Mike was running with me.

“Will we get there in tune?” I cried to him. “Can we get there before it happens?”

“Are you crazy, Rae?” he shouted. “If you’d only explain—”

“I can’t!” I gasped. “There’s no time!”

And far ahead at the curve of the road there appeared, as I had known there would, a car. I knew who was driving, for I had had this dream before. Long before the car was close enough for me to see the face behind the wheel, I was running toward it down the middle of the road, waving and shouting.

“Stop!” I cried. “Stop!”

And then, just as had happened the last time the dream had occurred, as the car was bearing down upon me to the point where I could actually see the expression in the driver’s eyes, I awoke.

There was nothing but darkness and for a moment I was not certain where I was. I was drenched with perspiration and yet I was shaking as though I were cold, cold in this stuffy little room in the middle of summer. I stretched out my hand and felt the sheet hanging by the side of the bed and remembered. It was Bobby’s room, and I was here because I had chosen to be.