The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (19 page)

A noise on the yacht
awakened Bianca some indeterminate amount of time later. She sat
straight up in bed. She listened with her ears perked up. It was
still dark. The alarm clock said 3 a.m. Her room adjoined Katie's.
Had she heard someone opening the little girl's door?

Mr. and Mrs. Shipley
were supposed to stop by in the morning to pick Katie up and take her
back to their house. That would be about three hours from now. No one
else was authorized to be on the yacht except the armed guard. He was
to stay on deck at all times. He wasn't to venture into the family
quarters unless Bianca summoned him.

Bianca hurried over
to Katie's room and snatched the child up in her arms, The child
awakened and moaned. Bianca said, "Sh-h-h!"as she sat there on
the bed with the little girl, trying to quiet her own fears.

Had she imagined the
door opening? She thought she heard breathing and realized that
someone was there in the darkness of Katie's bedroom with them.
Perhaps she had beaten him to the child's bed. Perhaps he had
intended to snatch the little girl and make off with her.

Bianca couldn't
stay here. She carried Katie toward the door, wondering if she dared
to cry out for the bodyguard or whether she should keep her mouth
shut. As she moved, she could hear someone's footsteps following
her.

Bianca disappeared
into the Shipleys' bedroom next-door on the yacht. She shut the
door and locked it. Still she heard the breathing. Evidently the
intruder had slipped in behind her.

She hurried out of
the Shipleys' bedroom into the next guest bedroom. The creep seemed
to have followed her inside this room as well!

Bianca opened the
door to the deck and raced out into the night. She passed what looked
like the slumped body of the guard. Tom Jones was lying on the deck.
His wide-open eyes were staring up at the night sky. He wasn't
moving. He wasn't breathing. He looked dead.

Bianca fled down the
gangplank. Thank God it was still in place! At least she didn't
have to leap overboard and swim with the child in her arms. She was
at the harbor village. She looked towards Mr. Pigsley's shop,
Island Ice Cream Delights, hoping against all hope that she would see
the old man up and about at this early hour.

The shop was closed
up tight. There was not a light on anywhere, not even upstairs where
the Pigsleys lived. They must be asleep.

The assailant chased
Bianca down the street. She hid from him behind every building that
she could find. He always seemed to surprise her. He leaped out from
behind every bush and tree. His shadow loomed up out of nowhere.

Bianca kept going
across a wide, grassy expanse. Live oak trees grew so close together
that they blocked out the moonlight. There was only one tall, stone
building that rose in the darkness up ahead. The creep was right
behind her. She flung open the door and dashed inside.

She raced up the
spiral staircase. Bianca realized too late that she must be heading
up into the island's only lighthouse. Footsteps pursued her. She
continued all the way to the top.

She finally reached
the beacon room. She opened a trapdoor in the ceiling and clambered
up on to the roof, hoping that this freak would never think of
looking there. She stood outside in the damp night air in her
nightgown, clutching the child, waiting for morning.

Everything was silent
— dead silent — except for the hooting of an owl. She didn't
know if the killer was watching her from a window or whether he had
gone back down to the ground and was eyeing her from there. Every
time an owl hooted or a cricket chirped, she jumped.

As she stood there
one hundred feet off the ground, she clutched the weathervane. She
tried not to look down as her head whirled around. Her legs
threatened to collapse underneath her. She couldn't go anywhere
from here. She didn't risk going down until morning.

With her one free
hand she clung to the weathervane as if to life itself. If she let
go, she was a goner. Little Katie would be, too. So Bianca continued
to hold on grimly — to life and to sanity — as the night pressed
in on all sides.

Chapter 2

Dawn finally came. A
streak of fear shot through Bianca as she clutched the weathervane.
She could see the ground. It wasn't swimming in milky darkness any
longer. It was at least one hundred feet below, if not more. One
false move — over the edge she would go!

"Hey, Bianca, is
this some new stunt?" Down below stood a young man with a flushed,
florid complexion, curly blond hair and blue eyes. He was snickering
up at her. The neck of his shirt gapped open to reveal more curly,
blond hair.

Bianca shuddered and
crept back against the weathervane. Rick Roscoe and his girlfriend,
Marianna, had threatened her and Katie in the cemetery two months
ago. They had tried to intimidate her and make her go out with Rick.

They had wanted to
pilfer her money when she came into her trust fund. Rick had been
arrested and put on probation.

Had Rick been the
goon on the yacht last night? Had he chased her up the stairs of the
lighthouse? Did he intend to mock her now?

"Hi, Bianca, my
heroine. You look like the girl who saved Little Katie last spring.
So brave it's sickening!"

A girl with dark,
curly hair down over her shoulders leered at Bianca with her fiery,
amethyst eyes. Her plucked eyebrows resembled black arches. Her
eyelashes had been lengthened with mascara until each lash looked
like a long and pointed weapon, or perhaps the legs of a black widow
spider. Marianna Haynes was every bit as poisonous!

Marianna's breasts
were well defined by her form-fitting top. Her slacks were bursting
at the seams, revealing a derriere as big as a full moon. Marianna's
arm was looped around Rick's waist.

Bianca's stomach
felt like a tight little ball. Marianna had almost pushed her into an
empty grave in May. Marianna had tripped and fallen into the grave
herself. She had spent days in the hospital.

"Some people are so
rich that they don't have to go to work. They spend all morning up
on the roof working on their tan instead," Marianna taunted Bianca.

Marianna had to toil
away at the Island Theater as the concessions girl. Her boss had
hired her back after the incident in May. She'd been lucky that she
hadn't ended up in the slammer. Marianna and Rick had been feeding
information to Harry's jailbird brother, Mike, about which shops to
knock over in return for a share of the proceeds.

Had Rick and Marianna
thrown their probations to the winds and sneaked on to the Shipleys'
yacht? Had they knocked off the bodyguard to chase her up the
lighthouse tower for kicks?

Maybe her old
high-school classmates had satisfied their sadistic desires to make
Bianca suffer because a trick of fate had caused her to have more
money than they did. Surely they hadn't been trying to kidnap
Little Katie last night. No little girl could be that unfortunate.

"Help me!" Bianca
called down to Rick and Marianna. After all, she did not see anybody
else. Nobody else was up and about yet.

"You've got two
million smackeroos in the bank. Nobody with that much money needs any
help at all," Marianna declared.

"If you don't
want to help me, help Katie. The baby doesn't deserve to suffer."

Marianna called up,
"You wait there, Bianca. Marianna's coming for you."

Marianna headed up
the spiral staircase. She poked her head up through the trapdoor in
the ceiling of the beacon room. She waved and laughed at Bianca and
Katie, making faces.

It reminded Bianca of
the time, only two months past, that Marianna had cornered her in the
movie theater bathroom. Marianna made her write in lipstick I AM A
COWARD on the mirror because Bianca was afraid of the dark. Marianna
didn't intend to help. It made her feel better to torment Bianca.

Little Katie bawled.
Bianca didn't have a bottle or any of her toys. She hugged the
toddler against her chest. That was all that she could do.

A truck from the
correctional facility on the edge of town pulled up along the lawn in
front of the lighthouse. The city park was the place for the
prisoners to take their morning exercise before it became crowded
with shoppers. The convicts filed out of the van one by one.

Bianca caught sight
of Mike Fellini in a prison uniform. He cast her a dirty look and
made a lewd hand gesture.

She had run into Mike
in the cemetery in May on the same night that she'd encountered
Rick and Marianna. Harry's older brother had kidnapped Little Katie
in hopes of extracting one million dollars from the Shipleys. Bianca
had tricked Mike into thinking that she had called the police and
they were about ready to spring at him out of the shadows. He had
fled, leaving Bianca with Katie. Mike had been recaptured and
returned to jail.

Had Mike Fellini
escaped from his cell last night and come after her? Had he returned
to the prison after getting his kicks? He had sworn revenge.

Prisoners were
working on the lawn. They picked up trash and stuffed it into sacks
attached to their backs. Mike didn't take his eyes off Bianca and
Katie, not for one second.

The correctional
officer noticed the direction in which Mike was staring. He
recognized Bianca in her nightgown. St. Simons Island was a small
place. Most people knew everybody else. Besides, Bianca's picture
had been in the paper lately.

The correctional
officer raced in her direction. He pounded on the door at the base of
the lighthouse. There was nobody to let him in. Someone, probably
Marianna, had locked the door. Of course Marianna and Rick were
nowhere to be seen now.

With frightened eyes,
the officer got on his cellphone and called 911. He glanced up at
Bianca, afraid that she might fall before he could summon help.

The walkway along the
harbor's waterfront was getting busier. An occasional passerby on
his way to work would gawk up at Bianca and Katie.

"Is she a jumper?"
One girl looked terrified.

An ambulance with its
flashing lights pulled up before the police or fire department
arrived. Three ambulance workers leaped out. One looked like a
doctor, carrying a black bag, like all the other doctors that Bianca
had met over the past two years at Brunswick Memorial Hospital. She'd
been going there for outpatient treatment for her phobia.

Two medics held a
net, the kind that firefighters used. "Jump!" they urged Bianca.

Bianca's legs were
frozen in place. She didn't know if she could let go of the
weathervane even if she wanted to. Her hand had been clutching the
metal rod all night.

The doctor approached
her. Dressed all in white, he looked rather slim and wiry. Nor did he
look very old. His thick, curly blond hair fell into his eyes, which
seemed to be blue. His shoulders were big and muscular. He tried to
talk her down in a soothing, calm tone.

"They tell me your
name is Bianca Winters. You're a brave girl. Come forward and jump.
All you have to do is tell yourself that you can."

As soon as the doctor
opened his mouth, she could tell he wasn't from around here. He
spoke in a British accent. He didn't sound the least bit put off by
the girl on the roof.

His voice inspired
confidence. She went forward step by step. Still she stopped short of
the edge. With Katie in her arms, Bianca couldn't jump.

A fire truck showed
up with flashing lights. Firemen carrying nets and ladders leaped off
the truck. The doctor waved them away. He was clearly in charge here.

"Wait there until I
come up," the young doctor urged.

He broke down the old
wooden door to the lighthouse with the aid of a sledgehammer that he
retrieved from the ambulance. He raced up the stairs. He crawled out
on to the roof of the lighthouse.

"Now, Bianca, get
down on your hands and knees. Crawl towards me." He held out his
hand for her to grasp.

She crawled forward a
little and then stopped.

He kept coaxing her
on in his deep, comforting voice that made him sound as if he were in
control of the situation and would not let anything go wrong.

"Look into my eyes.
Don't look down. It's just a little farther."

Their fingers
touched. She let him take her free hand and hold it. A spark leaped
between them as Bianca gazed into his eyes for a minute, feeling his
strength that he was imparting to her.

She remembered how
far down to the ground it was. She felt her head go around, imagining
that she was falling. The stranger put his arm around her and pulled
Bianca and Little Katie toward him.

The young Englishman
carried her and Katie down the spiral stairs. She wrapped her arms
around his neck and held on as tightly as she could. They emerged in
time to see a police van pull up alongside a car of newspaper
reporters flashing cameras in everyone's faces.

In their party
clothes Mr. and Mrs. Shipley raced out of the police van. They
embraced Bianca and their daughter.

"Thank God you're
all right! The bodyguard is dead — shot through the heart with a
silenced gun," Mrs. Shipley sobbed.

The pavement came up
to meet Bianca's face. Darkness was all.

About an hour later,
as Bianca lay in the hospital, a head of dark, flyaway hair burst
through the door. Harry had driven back from Brunswick as soon as he
had heard on the radio. Anything that concerned the Shipleys was big
news on St. Simons Island.

He hugged and kissed
her. "Are you all right, Bianca? What happened?"

She assured him that
it was just a precaution that she was in the hospital.

Harry wouldn't go
home to his mother. He slept in the lobby until Bianca was released
the next afternoon. He drove her back to the new home that her family
had bought since she had come into her trust fund on her eighteenth
birthday in May.