The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (20 page)

Her parents had
retired from their former jobs and started a travel agency, which had
been their dream for years. They now got to take those trips that
they'd always wanted to. Her parents had visited their daughter in
the hospital earlier that morning. A note on the table said they
would be back for dinner.

"We'll make
dinner," Harry assured Bianca. "You can't let that killer slow
you down or spoil your style."

Bianca didn't want
Harry to see how shaky she was. When she pulled up the step-stool and
couldn't climb to the third step to reach the spaghetti sauce in
the back of the cabinet, he caught on fast.

"You're tough,
kid. You can make it. Now walk up those steps again," Harry ordered
her.

"Oh, Harry!"
Bianca collapsed into his arms. "You weren't cornered up on that
roof all night long with the killer lurking somewhere below. You
didn't have Little Katie with you."

He carried Bianca
into her bedroom. "You're a strong girl, Bianca. You're my
inspiration during all that police and surveillance training. You've
survived again and again. You'll survive this time, too."

Harry made her feel
better about herself, though he was so busy. First he had taken that
crash course in Atlanta right after his graduation. Now there was the
advanced course in Brunswick.

They took a shower
together, rubbed noses, and made out. She wrapped a towel around
herself and went to fetch new clothes. When she came out of the
bathroom, her telephone was ringing off the hook. It was her banker
from downtown Brunswick asking if she had authorized the large wire
transfer from her account.

She didn't have
time for banking right now. She couldn't recall the details. There
were all sorts of bills to pay.

"I'm sure I did,"
she answered impatiently.

Why did her banker
have to interrupt her at a time like this? She'd only taken on a
personal banker since she'd come into her trust fund. Before that
even her parents hadn't had one.

"I make it a
practice to call my clients when there are transactions over a
certain amount. I wanted to make sure. That's all."

She said goodbye. She
couldn't be bothered to think about money. After all, she was still
in her towel. Harry had his arms around her waist. He was kissing her
neck.

Harry left right
after dinner. She turned on her computer to start her homework. She
was taking summer school. She had to graduate from high school after
the rest of her class. The kidnapping in May and Doc's death had
put her behind in her studies. She had agreed to earn her high-school
diploma by the end of July.

The flashing mailbox
symbol lighted up on her computer screen. She clicked it and brought
up her new mail. Her banker had sent her a copy of her latest
statement for her interest checking, money market and brokerage
accounts.

One hundred thousand
dollars had been wired out of her account today!

Her bills were big,
but they weren't that big. She hadn't remembered authorizing a
wire for that much money. She picked up the phone and called her
banker. She asked for the time of the transaction. She wanted to know
the name on the wire transfer form.

"That's why I
called you earlier," the banker replied. "The wire transfer
request date was last Friday about eight o'clock in the morning, as
soon as the bank opened. The signature on the form was Mr. Harry
Fellini. It takes a couple of days for a wire to go through, you
know."

"Harry!"

"The young man does
have your permission to withdraw money from all your accounts. I have
a signed paper here that says so. You don't limit the amount he can
take either."

"That's right."

"Do you want me to
put a limit on Mr. Fellini's future withdrawals and wires?"

"Ah . . . no. . ."
Bianca hung up.

True, she had given
Harry a debit card and an ATM card for her checking account. She had
given him permission to withdraw whatever money he needed from her
stock funds and money market accounts for books and other necessities
to supplement what the Shipleys had given him. Bianca had wanted to
help him and his mother.

Harry had told her he
would carry the debit card and ATM cards around to make her happy,
but that he would never take money from her no matter how rich she
was. Up to now he had withdrawn not a penny. Why all of a sudden had
he taken one hundred thousand dollars? He hadn't even mentioned it
to her!

She picked up the
phone and dialed Harry's house. Mrs. Fellini answered and said he'd
started back to Brunswick. Bianca leaped into her car and went after
him, hoping to get an explanation.

It was getting dark
out as Bianca drove through the Village right by the waterfront. She
caught sight of Harry all right. He was sitting at a table in the
corner of the cafe, talking to another girl. The girl was dark-haired
and pretty. Her bosom was brushing against his arm as she leaned in
his direction and whispered into his ear. He laughed at her remark.
The girl looked like Marianna Haynes!

Bianca stopped at the
red light and didn't move when the light turned green. Other cars
started to honk. One came up right beside her. The driver rolled his
window down.

"Get moving! Your
car's in the middle of the intersection!"

Bianca pulled over
along the side of the road. She had believed Harry when he told her
that he'd gone off to Brunswick to get a bodyguard's training as
well as a pilot's license. Now she wondered what he was doing in
his dorm room. Was he seeing Marianna? Did they live together during
the week? Harry had promised to come home on weekends. That gave him
plenty of time for "extracurricular activities".

Harry would never do
anything like that to her, would he? He said he'd never even liked
Marianna. She wasn't his type. Why was Bianca watching as Marianna
fawned all over him?

Marianna had a way
with guys. If she broke up with Rick Roscoe, she could seduce any guy
she wanted if she put her mind to it. She was spiteful. She'd do
anything to make Bianca feel miserable.

Bianca turned her car
around. She headed back home. She felt crushed — not that the money
meant that much to her. It meant the world to everybody else — even
Harry, who wanted to use it to impress another girl.

The oppressive
humidity of the summer night weighed down on her lungs. It made it
hard to breathe. She heard sounds in the darkness. She could pick out
the whine of the cicadas. An owl hooted. A dog barked. She was alone
on this side street with no one else around.

Someone was following
her car. When she speeded up, he speeded up. When she turned, he
turned. When she stopped, he stopped. She floored the gas pedal. He
chased her down a winding, narrow road with overhanging live oak
trees lining it. Branches swiped the sides of the car. One slammed
against the windshield and almost broke it.

She reached the end
of the road. A yellow sign with the words dead end appeared in her
headlights. Bianca veered into the parking lot. The other car
followed her.

Bianca leaped out and
began running. Why was she running into stone pillar after pillar,
some bigger than others, sticking up out of the ground? Was this the
graveyard? Somehow the monuments and markers were way too far apart
for that. Some of them loomed in the shadows twenty-five feet high.
None in the graveyard were half so tall.

Bianca remembered
Fort Frederica. She hadn't visited this place since grade school
when her whole class had come here on a bus. It was a national
monument to commemorate how the English soldiers had beaten back the
Spanish threat from Florida — not very far to the south —
hundreds of years ago. The stone markers rose up like white wraiths
under the silvery moon, dotting the nightscape.

A dark form cornered
her in a thicket of live oak trees. She stumbled over the intertwined
roots. She fell flat on her face. At the last moment she got her arms
and legs around the trunk. Bianca started to climb the tree.

The freak grabbed her
ankle. He was dragging her down, pulling her along the ground through
puddles of standing water. Mosquitoes were eating her alive. Swamp
miasma hung all around.

He got his hands
around her neck and started to push his fingers into her windpipe. He
strangled off her scream. All she could do now was whimper.

In a whispery, low
voice he hissed, "I wanted that little girl. You stood in my way
the other night. That makes me very angry."

Bianca groaned.

"Now you won't
shut up!" he hissed more loudly. "That makes me furious."

He tied a gag around
her mouth and kept on pulling her along the ground. He roped her to a
live oak tree that hung over a black swamp with gnarled tree roots
sticking up out of it. The roots were in the shapes of tortured,
twisted forms that looked human.

What was he going to
do? Drown her?

He went back to his
car to fetch something. It smelled like raw steak meat, fresh from
the butcher's shop. He tied it to her ankle and let her foot hang
into the water.

"Now you'll
understand how you made me suffer when you deprived me of my ransom
for Little Katie. You shouldn't have done that."

The freak raced off
through the high grass. She could hear his footsteps for a long way.
His car door slammed shut. His engine started. He drove away. She was
alone in the darkness.

Soon she saw what he
had obviously intended. Two garish yellow eyes above the surface of
the water swam toward Bianca in the dark. The moon was bright. The
sky was cloudless. It was an alligator! The alligator began to eat
the steak and gnaw on her tennis shoe.

Bianca worked the gag
down over her mouth. Her assailant had not had enough time to tie it
right.

She screamed.

Chapter 3

The hungry alligator
had almost bitten through her shoe. She didn't know how to fend him
off. She was too paralyzed with fear.

Footsteps raced
toward her. It was the same English doctor who'd saved her from the
lighthouse the other day.

"What on earth?"
he exclaimed, shining a flashlight on her.

He threw rocks at the
alligator and chased the creature away. Then he untied her and
carried her back across the Fort Frederica National Monument grounds
to the adjacent apartment complex.

"You're lucky I
like to sleep with my windows open. I'm used to the humidity from
all my foreign travels. Everybody else has air-conditioning going. I
heard you scream."

He put her to bed in
his apartment and watched over her as she slept. He talked to her in
the morning, giving her lots of advice about coping with her ordeal,
and took her home.

"Will you be all
right if I leave you here alone?" he asked. "Nobody else seems to
be here."

"I can manage. I'm
used to it," Bianca assured him. She remembered what Harry had told
her about being strong.

"Sometimes patients
who experience trauma suffer flashbacks. It's good to have somebody
around in case you need them. You've been through a lot during the
past couple of days."

Her eyes met his blue
ones as she climbed out of the car. It seemed like deja vu, another
time, another place. Those eyes held her transfixed. She had
forgotten where she was when he took her house keys from her and
opened the front door. He scribbled his name, address and phone
number on a piece of paper.

He took down her
phone number. "I'll call this afternoon to see if you're all
right."

She nodded. "I'm
sorry to be so much trouble."

"That's what
doctors are for. That's what I'm doing here in Georgia. Brunswick
Memorial is one of the finest hospitals in the States for psychiatry,
my specialty. Your hospital draws interns from all over the world."

"What's your
name?" It was funny. He reminded her of someone that she had known
very well.

"Dr. Byron
Kingsley. My friends call me Ronnie."

She stood there
staring long after his car had left. Shaking off her abstraction
about the newcomer, she went inside her house. She opened an old
photo album from a year ago and leafed back through the pictures. She
put her finger on the ones of her and Doc. Ernie McCollough was the
last doctor who had shown an interest in her case. Would Byron
Kingsley be the next?

Finally she glanced
at her watch. Bianca was late for summer classes. She had to get over
to the high school in a big hurry. In fact, she should have asked
this Dr. Byron Kingsley, Ronnie, to drive her there.

Distractedly she
flicked on the radio while she stepped into the shower and changed
her clothes. The announcer came on:

This just in. Mike
Fellini, notorious felon, convicted kidnapper and hardened thief, has
just escaped. He was being transported from the city park at the
harbor where he was helping the other prisoners clean up the lawn. On
the way back to the prison he overcame the van driver. Now he is free
to prey on the public. Lock your doors. Don't pick up hitchhikers.
He is believed to be armed and dangerous. He is liable to do anything
to resist recapture. And—

Great! Bianca thought
as she flicked off the radio. That's all I need.

She ran out of the
house only to remember that her car wasn't parked in her driveway.
She'd left it at Fort Frederica National Monument last night.
Bianca raced back inside to call a tow truck.

In the meantime she'd
just have to walk to school. She'd checked her wallet. Oddly
enough, she seemed to be out of cash, though she had been to the ATM
machine the other day. Cabs wouldn't take checks or credit cards.

Where had the money
gone? She didn't have time to think about it.

Nothing was that far
from anything else on St. Simons Island. Still she had to walk a mile
in the hot, sticky weather that was coastal Georgia in the
summertime. The live oaks that lined the street provided deep shade.
She stuck as close to them as she could. Spanish moss draped from the
branches brushed against her head. The dry, scratchy stuff that was
full of bugs rubbed the back of her neck, reminding her of human
fingernails.