The Dark: A Collection (Point Horror) (6 page)

Bianca bit her
assailant's hand. She heard him cry out. She made a run for it
toward the exit. She thought only of the elusive door with the
silvery glow that had begun to look like heaven.

The thug dragged her
back to the couch and pinned her down again, crushing her with his
whole weight. She flailed back and forth, trying to knock him off
her. Her own strength was running out.

"Spare Little
Katie! Kill me! But let her go!" Bianca pleaded.

Somebody shook her by
the shoulders and called her name. "Bianca!" It didn't sound
like the killer.

She did a double
take. Suddenly it wasn't May 27, the day of the murder. It was now,
almost exactly two years later.

Chestnut-brown eyes
stared down into hers. His dark hair was mussed up and hanging around
his ears. A big scratch marred his cheek. His usher's cap was gone.
His uniform with the stripe up the sides was torn. His white shirt
had lost a few of its buttons. It hung loose around his waist. It was
Harry Fellini!

Chapter 5

"Hey, Bianca, get a
life!" Harry frowned. "Who do you think I am — some sleaze from
a back alley jumping you? You're at the Island Theater."

Bianca's mind had
snapped. She'd seen the Black Widow going berserk on the screen.
The audience had turned into a bunch of vicious beasts. She had run
for her life, slammed into poor Harry Fellini, and mistaken him for
the killer of her nightmares.

"Sorry I was a
little rough. Didn't want to let you run out of the theater like
that." He explained. "You were far gone."

"I did this to
you?" She touched his torn, white shirt.

"It wasn't an
encounter with a baboon from the zoo!" Harry brushed himself off.

Bianca's trembling
hands fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. But she was too clumsy,
getting them buttoned askew. His cap lay on the floor on top of a
pile of dirty popcorn. She snatched it up and handed it to Harry,
hanging her head.

"I'll — I'll
pay for the damage. It won't happen again. Oh, I shouldn't have
come here tonight! It's been one, big, long disaster."

"If you can't go
to a movie without acting like that, you're in bad shape. Come and
sit down."

Harry drew her into a
room behind the refreshments stand, away from prying eyes. It didn't
look like anything special, just an employees' lounge. There was a
small refrigerator in the corner, an old, beat-up, used model that
had seen better days. An urn of hot water for tea and a coffee-maker,
along with a basket of sugar packets, tea bags and a carton of
half-used cream, sat on a table.

He showed her to a
sofa shoved back up against the wall. The stuffing was coming out of
holes everywhere. It was comfortable enough, though, especially after
what she'd been through.

He poured black
coffee into two Styrofoam cups and stirred sugar and cream into both
with a stick. He plopped down next to her and handed her a steaming
cup.

"Don't worry. The
boss's upstairs, smooching it up with the ticket taker 'cause he
knows it's closing time. Got a regular bachelor pad up there — a
bar, stereo system, bed and everything. Keeps that bar well stocked.
Won't be bothering us anytime soon."

Harry glanced at his
wristwatch, a cheap model with a fake leather band. It was midnight.

What could Harry
possibly have to say? Bianca felt humiliated enough. She'd made
such a spectacle of herself that she had better stay at home on
Saturday nights. She wouldn't be able to face anybody in school on
Monday. They would point. "There's that dumb Bianca Winters.
She's so frightened of the dark that she's lost her mind. Doesn't
even remember where she is."

Then there was that
warning from the killer to wonder about. Had her brain invented him
because the lights had gone out in the bathroom? She'd have to talk
to Doc. He would know how to interpret it.

Bianca couldn't
meet Harry's eyes. "I — I don't know what came over me back
there."

Bianca wanted to call
a taxi to get home. She could bury her head under her pillow and
never have to look anyone in the eye. Maybe she should drop out of
school. She didn't have to graduate in June with her classmates.
She could go to night school — where nobody knew her — to earn
her diploma.

"Hey, don't keep
apologizing! Don't you have any pride left?"

Doc never talked to
Bianca like that! He would pat her hand, insist that she would do
better the next time, after they'd discussed matters. He would
assure her that she was acting normally for someone who had been
through such a horrible trauma.

"Drink that coffee.
Believe me, kid, you need it. It hits the spot on a night like this."

Bianca took a big sip
of coffee and burned her mouth. The coffee jolted her as he had
promised.

"You've got to
take down that sign that says: Hit me, I'm an asshole!" Harry
advised. "You could say I'm an expert. I wore a sign like that
three years ago right after Mike got thrown into the slammer for
holding up a bank. Couldn't look anybody in the eye. Went around
staring at the floor."

He took a sip of the
coffee, then stared her straight in the eye.

"Kids knew how to
push my buttons. They teased the hell out of me, saying that I would
go up the river like Mike, or claiming that Mike was the Boston
Strangler in disguise. I stayed after school and met the guys who
badmouthed me out in the woods behind the football field. I punched
them out to prove I was better than Mike."

"What happened?"

He shrugged.
"Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost. The teasing never stopped.
Every few days it was another guy or one of the same guys as before.
I was everybody's football. They kicked me around until my leather
was worn off. They had lots of fun. I was miserable, just letting my
guts hang out for everybody to see."

It touched Bianca
that he was telling her private stuff that must hurt to remember.
He'd seemed such a loner at school. She'd assumed that Harry
hadn't had any feelings since he'd always worn one of those
frozen mugs and had looked like a tough guy.

She had imagined that
her own private hell was the worst — being the sole surviving
witness to a murder that she couldn't remember, having a killer
hanging out there waiting to waste her as soon as she remembered the
slightest thing. But she couldn't imagine living with the shame of
having a brother or a sister who had gone to jail and wasn't sorry
about it.

Everyone on St.
Simons Island had heard about Harry's brother, Mike Fellini. He had
gone from petty theft and purse-snatching when he'd been in high
school to armed robbery as soon as he'd dropped out.

Three years ago Mike
had been holed up in an old, abandoned shack on the far side of the
beach next to the swamp. No respectable employer on the island would
hire Mike to change a tire for fear that he would run away with it.
He'd been spotted at night in various places where no one had good
reason to go — such as the swamps and the lagoons. Some had
gossiped that he'd spent his time hunting for buried treasure left
there by the Spanish several hundred years ago.

For three years now
he'd been serving a sentence for armed robbery in the Georgia state
penitentiary.

Bianca had never had
a brother or a sister. But if her mother or father had suddenly taken
to the streets to carry on a life of crime, she would never be able
to hold her head up. It would be a badge of shame.

Someday the murderer
of Mrs. Ingersoll might be caught and Bianca would be safe. But there
was no chance of living down the horror of having a family member
turn to crime. That person would always be your mother, father,
brother or sister as long as you lived. On an island where everybody
knew everybody else, that was like living in perpetual hell. The real
hell couldn't be any worse.

"You don't have
such a chip on your shoulder any more," Bianca remarked. "When I
see you at school, you look as if you don't care. Mike doesn't
seem to bother you."

Harry looked straight
into Bianca's eyes. "I pulled myself together and toughened up.
It hasn't changed Mike. It's just made Mike a helluva lot easier
to put up with."

Bianca bit her lip.
"I don't think I could do that."

"Why not?"

"I'm not that
brave."

"Somebody like you
who—"

She clapped her hand
over his mouth.

"It makes me feel
guilty when people call me a heroine. I — I don't deserve it."

"If you're not a
heroine, nobody is!" he exclaimed. "Risk your life for a baby?
Man, most people would have run out the door and saved their own
necks when they heard a killer in the house."

She shook her head
no. "I'm stupid, and I'm a coward." If only Harry could see
what was written all over the mirror in the ladies' lounge!

Harry put his hand
under her chin and made her look at him. "Hey! Don't put yourself
down. The reason the other kids tease you is that they're afraid of
you."

"I — I don't
understand. . ."

"They'd be scared
shitless if they were faced with a killer. They wouldn't have
survived.

They know it. They're
envious of you and don't want to admit it. It's like you have
some sort of awesome, supernatural power." Harry was gazing at her
with naked admiration.

Bianca blushed and
looked shyly down at her lap. No one had ever seen her behave so
badly, then praised her like this.

"Thanks!" Bianca
murmured, managing a wan smile. "You don't know what I'm like."

"You're not a
convict like my brother!"

"I'm just as bad
in a different way. I mean, I haven't done anything illegal that
the police would arrest me for, but. . ."

"What have you done
wrong?" he scoffed.

Bianca had never
talked like this to anyone, not even Doc. She was thinking about
confessing stuff to Harry that she'd never told another soul.

"You can't call
somebody brave who sleeps with the lights on," she began. "I
don't mean just night lights either. I mean overhead ones. Do you
know any other kid like that who's almost eighteen?"

"Three years ago
when Mike was out on bail awaiting trial, I used to leave the phone
off the hook all the time. I was afraid that Mike might call. You
might say that's my phobia — Mike."

Bianca felt
encouraged enough to smile.

"Go ahead!" Harry
urged her. "Confess more of your deep, dark secrets. You haven't
shocked me yet."

He beamed at her with
such a bright smile that it made her heart pound. She'd never felt
like this before. She didn't know what to call it. His hand was
warm as it closed around her smaller one. A reassuring feeling flowed
into her. He gave her courage. No matter what she said, Harry didn't
make fun of her.

She tried to think of
her deepest, darkest secrets to test Harry. "I tell kids I need
lots of sleep. That's why I don't ever go to slumber parties.
Really it's that—"

"You can't sleep
with the lights out, right?"

"You're not
shocked?"

"Keep trying to
shock me. You're doing a terrible job."

"This is my first
movie in years because—"

"You're scared of
the dark. You don't have to bother to tell me that was why you
excused yourself to go to the rest room. There are lights out here in
the lobby. It's pitch black inside the theater without any
windows."

She'd never met
anyone who understood her feelings so well. "How — how did you
know?" she stuttered.

He shrugged. "Guess
you could say I felt the same way about my brother. Sort of like your
fear of the dark. I was always trying to escape him — at first.
Started coming up with false last names when I went places where they
didn't know me. If I saw Mike walk past when he was awaiting trial,
I'd go hide in the bathroom. Once I hid in an umbrella closet. Made
an absolute fool of myself when the dentist's nurse decided to
leave in a hurry. I fell right on top of her when she opened the
door. Damn near frightened the poor woman to death. Thought I was a
dead body. Might as well have been in those days."

Bianca's mouth
dropped a foot. It sounded like something stupid she would do
herself. She challenged herself to think hard. She was going to come
up with the worst things about herself that she could imagine, things
that she could hardly admit to herself, let alone to someone else.

"I'm afraid of
the night sky. At sunset I close the shutters and stuff bath towels
under my door so I can't see that thin, black line of darkness from
out in the hallway. All I see is the electric light on my ceiling
instead."

This was clearly the
sort of stuff you never told anybody else, not even your diary. Would
he say she was nuts?

"Look, kid," he
squeezed her hand, "you're a survivor. You're real tough,
tougher than you think — just like me."

She blinked back
tears. "You really think so?" She didn't seem to be able to
shock him no matter what she told him.

"I know so!"

This was different
from talking to Doc about her problems. Doc was an adult that she was
going to for advice, that she was trying to please. Doc never had
problems. He had everything figured out. He never had to confide in
her. Harry was more her equal, someone she could share her feelings
with, painful as they were. She'd never realized until now how
desperate she'd been for a friend.

He leaned close.
Their noses touched. He brushed her lips with his own gently. Then he
did it again and again.

A tremor went through
her body. This time it wasn't fear. She couldn't believe that
anybody could like her enough to kiss her — if they knew her
darkest secrets. She wanted to thank Harry in her own, special way.
She leaned forward and kissed him back. With Doc, she had always
waited for him to make the first move for fear of displeasing him.