The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (25 page)

"Are you all right,
miss?" a waiter asked.

"Oh yes . . . I'm
fine." She managed to smile.

Where was Ronnie? Why
was he taking so long? She glanced toward the door to the outside.
Bianca wanted to get there. She didn't know if she could manage it
by herself. What was happening to her? She used to be able to get
around town by herself. Bianca was becoming an emotional cripple.

Finally Ronnie
slipped her shawl around her shoulders. With relief she leaned back
against his chest.

"The car's
waiting. I tipped the doorman to fetch it."

When they arrived
back at Ronnie's apartment, she immediately turned on the lights.

"Now, Bianca, I
want you to go lie down in the bedroom while I take my shower and get
ready for bed." He led her over to the bed.

"Aren't you going
to take off your shoes?" he asked as she did so. When he left the
room, he flicked off the lights.

Again she was alone
in the darkness. She clutched a pillow to her and tried to
concentrate on the slim bar of light emanating from under the bottom
of the closed bathroom door where Ronnie was taking his shower.

Finally she heard him
coming out. Bianca leaped up off the bed and ran to him. She threw
her arms around Ronnie and hugged him to her, dressed as he was now
in his terry cloth bathrobe. He was rather formal. He always insisted
on niceties like that.

"My, my, Bianca,
get hold of yourself!" He stroked her hair and wound it around his
fingers. "This does seem to be a rather severe regression on your
part. We'll have to explore it in the morning when we have more
time."

With that he picked
her up and carried her over to his bed. Bianca woke up during the
night and thought, This is dark, too. Then she told herself it wasn't
the same. Ronnie was with her. His body was warm next to hers even if
he was fast asleep.

So gradually her eyes
closed, and she went back to sleep again. Her eyelids flicked open.
Each time she would snuggle up closer to Ronnie, pressing her back
more firmly against his. She even intertwined her legs with his.

When the room got
impossibly dark, she turned and faced Ronnie. She couldn't see
anything else except him. She couldn't feel anything except his
striped pajama top. She could relax at last.

Bianca had planned to
go to summer school the next day after Ronnie left for his internship
at the hospital. He wanted to make a lecture given by Dr. Rankin, the
Shipleys' family physician.

Ronnie's advice was
different. He advised her not to exert herself. She should stay in
the apartment and rest. When he got back, they could finish exploring
together everything that had happened yesterday.

Bianca was afraid of
flunking out of summer school. The teachers had already issued strict
warnings about her grades. They had told her that she wouldn't
graduate from high school if she didn't apply herself. Summer
school was her last chance — unless she wanted to repeat grade
twelve all over again in the fall!

Bianca phoned her
lawyer. He had helped Harry when he had been arrested in the spring.
That had been the last time that his brother, Mike, had broken out of
jail. She directed the lawyer to get Harry out on bail if he could.
It was the least she could do for him. She had done as much before.
Everybody deserved a fair shake.

Bianca left the
apartment for school. She thought to take her car, but she remembered
that it was still parked at her house. She'd driven it there last
night when she had gone home to pack her clothes. So she had to walk.

Black thunderheads
had gathered overhead. Lightning streaked across the sky. Rain pelted
down on to the pavement in torrents. There was a power outage at the
school.

Bianca was in a
basement classroom when the lights blinked out. There were no
windows. It made her think of when Mike Fellini had clapped her
inside that coffin inside the old McCollough mausoleum in the
cemetery. She fidgeted in her seat while the other kids were joking
and laughing. She couldn't take it any more.

"May I please be
excused to go to the bathroom?" She gulped as she asked the
teacher.

Bianca remembered
that the nearest ladies' room had a window well. She could wait
there until the lights came back on again. It was stuffy inside the
bathroom in this heat. She struggled with the window handle. She
tried to pull it open to let some air in.

When the window
finally creaked open, Bianca gasped. There crouched Rick Roscoe in
the window well with the rain pelting down on top of him. He pressed
his face up against the screen.

"I figured you'd
show up here. You're in big trouble for not kidnapping Little Katie
for me. Don't think I've forgotten either. I'm planning
something especially horrible for you. Don't even think about going
to the cops, or I'll make sure that little girl doesn't see her
third birthday."

Bianca backed away
from the window. She ran into the sink. She kept on backing up until
she got her hand around the doorknob. She flung it open and raced
down the darkened hallway until she found the stairs. Groping up the
stairs in the pitch blackness, she finally managed to reach the
ground floor. She saw daylight down at the end of the hallway. That
must be the door to the parking lot.

"Where are you
going, Miss Winters?" the building secretary called after her as
she spotted Bianca heading toward the door. The secretary had candles
lighted all around her desk in the office so she could see.

"Did somebody
threaten you?" A uniformed policeman stepped forward.

A policeman was
stationed in the office every day of the summer session. It was like
the spring all over again. No one could be sure whether the killer
was after Bianca. Did the murderer think that she had seen him do
away with Tom Jones that night on the yacht? Did he think he had to
waste her? Was Bianca in danger of being kidnapped herself, just as
Doc had almost made away with her in May because she'd witnessed
him kill Mrs. Ingersoll?

No one wanted to take
a chance with the life of the heroine of St. Simons Island!

"No ... ah ... I
just don't feel well . . . that's all. . ." Bianca lied as she
stopped in front of the office door. She did not want to tell the
policeman about the darkness scaring her. He would think she was
loony. Nor did she want to tip the policeman off about Rick Roscoe in
the window well. She had Little Katie to think of.

"Do you want a ride
home?"

The officer led her
over to the entrance to the school. He started to signal to the
officers who surrounded the school on all sides. They were there as a
further precaution to ensure Bianca's safety.

"No ... ah ... I
just want to walk. It will be good for me . . . you know, the fresh
air and all. . .I thought I might even stop by the market and get
some fruit. . ."

"But, Miss Winters,
it's raining!" the officer objected.

Bianca tried not to
blush. She had not told anyone that she was living with the new
intern from England, Dr. Byron Kingsley. She did not want her parents
to find out during their trip to Alaska. The police might very well
call and notify them. Nor did she want some snoopy newspaper reporter
to report it in the gossip column. Since she had saved Little Katie
and inherited two million dollars, her picture frequently appeared in
the paper.

"That's OK. . . I
don't want to be too much trouble.''

"Nonsense!" The
officer put up an umbrella for her and led her over to a policeman
standing near the sidewalk directly in front of the school. "Miss
Winters doesn't feel well," the first officer instructed him.
"Take her home."

While the two
officers were making small talk, Bianca caught sight of Rick Roscoe
glaring at her from the far side of the school parking lot. He
climbed into his old wreck of a car and started the engine as if he
intended to follow her.

Bianca swallowed
hard. If the officer dropped her at her house, she would be all
alone. Rick could break a window. He could knock down a door and get
to her easily.

If Bianca got back to
Ronnie's apartment on her own, the landlady was always there. She
had eyes like a hawk and could help protect her against Rick Roscoe.

Bianca waited until
the policemen were turned another direction, waving to a fellow
officer passing down the street in his squad car.

She made a dash for
it across the lawn in the opposite direction from where Rick Roscoe
was still sitting inside his car. She hid behind one live oak tree
after another as she made her way down the street. Their branches
were good for keeping the rain off her head.

While Bianca tried to
sneak back to Ronnie's apartment, a refrain ran through her head:
Oh, Ronnie, I wish I would have listened to you! You advised me to
wait for you at your apartment. Now I've got Rick Roscoe after me
again.

On the way back to
Ronnie's apartment, Bianca had to pass Christ's Church Cemetery.
She didn't like to go in there any more since Mike Fellini had
clapped her into a coffin. But she had to duck into the cemetery
today because it had one of the densest stands of live oak trees on
St. Simons Island. Though it wasn't exactly safe to stand under
trees during a thunderstorm, she had no choice if she didn't want
to get totally soaked.

Right in front of her
was Doc's grave, one of the newer graves in the cemetery in the
paupers' section. The grave was not even two months old. With a
pang she remembered attending his funeral when the urn of ashes had
been placed inside his coffin. There had not been many mourners in
attendance. He had not had that many friends. Instead there had been
gawkers and onlookers attracted by all the publicity. And, of course,
there had been the press.

The fragrant white
magnolia blooms she had put there on her last visit some weeks ago
were dried up and wilted now. With a pang of guilt she worried that
she, who had been responsible for his death, had been forgetting Doc.
His parents, haughty aristocrats that they were, had disowned even
his memory after the revelations about his activities. They had
refused to pay for the tombstone. Using the proceeds from her new
trust fund, it had been Bianca who had paid for it instead.

"Doc." She spoke
aloud as she stood there waiting for the rain to end. "I wish you
could meet Dr. Byron Kingsley."

She paused for a
minute. It was almost as if she could hear Doc answering her.

Of course he couldn't
really say anything. So she continued, hoping that somehow he could
hear her wherever his soul had flown.

"I think you would
approve of him. He is a doctor, too, you know."

She heard a chirp.
Maybe a bird had answered for Doc.

"He's real smart
the way you used to be. He uses a lot of big words just like you. And
he wants to help me out. In fact, he sort of reminds me of you more
than a little, Doc. He really does."

Bianca did not like
to dwell on the bad things that Doc had done, such as killing Mrs.
Ingersoll, the Shipleys' maid, by pushing her down the steps and
shooting her. She did not like to dwell on how he had tried to steal
jewels from the jewelry box in Mrs. Shipley's bedroom. Nor did she
like to recall how on that last night when he'd died, he had almost
killed Harry by shooting him in the head.

Instead Bianca liked
to remember the good things that Doc could have done if he had lived
and continued his medical practice.

"That's what
Byron Kingsley really reminds me of, you know, Doc. He reminds me of
the good side of you, what you could have been. He's smart like
you, but he wants to help people, too. He's very generous with his
time.

He spends hours and
hours with me alone. He never asks for anything in return. He acts as
if doing good deeds is a reward in itself."

"Bianca!" A voice
spoke.

She gasped. She
looked around. Where had that voice come from? She'd been extra
fearful lately. Her nerves had been preying on her mind. But she'd
never actually heard voices before.

"Doc — Doc, it
can't possibly be you!" Bianca exclaimed.

It sounded just like
him. She had never forgotten his voice. She heard it almost every
night in her sleep. It was as if she'd heard it yesterday, the last
hour, the last second, it seemed so fresh in her recollection. His
gruff, gravelly sounding, almost bass voice with his deep,
upper-class Georgia accent always seemed to be there hovering in her
mind. Yet never after his death had she heard the voice so distinctly
like this — not since the night he had died, urging her on the
stairs to shoot Harry.

"Bianca, I'm
still here. . ."

She gaped down at
Doc's grave. The voice seemed to come from his tombstone.

"Bianca, I've
been here all along. I've been here watching you every minute of
every day. . ."

"Doc!" Her legs
shook so badly that her knees collapsed underneath her. She fell to
the muddy, grassy ground. She couldn't take her eyes off his
tombstone. She clasped her arms around herself and trembled as if she
had a fever.

"You killed me too
soon. . . There was so much I had yet to do. . . Now I can't go to
heaven. . . I can't go to hell. . . I just he here watching the
living and dreaming about what could have been. . ."

"No, Doc, no! Don't
say that. Please don't. I'm not very good with guns, you know.
The thing just went off. You reached for your gun. You lost your
balance and fell and—"

"You shot me all
the same! You killed me. I broke my neck when I fell down the stairs.
The last thing I heard was the cracking sound."

"But you were
trying to kill Harry, and—"

"That two-timing
wretch who's not faithful to you. . . That wretch who steals your
money. . . Who uses you. . . You see, the dead know all. . . We can
see everything. . ."