The Unloved (37 page)

Harold Sanders frowned as the loud banging on the front door was repeated. Who the hell would be out in weather like this? Carrying his beer with him, he went to the door, opened it a crack—bracing it against the wind with one foot—and peered out. Standing on the front porch, water streaming off his yellow slicker, was Frank Weaver. Harold’s frown deepened, and he pulled the door open far enough for the deputy to slip through.

“What the hell’s goin’ on, Frank? It’s not fit for man nor beast out there tonight.”

“Might have someone missing, Hal,” Weaver replied. “Got a few questions I’d like to ask Kerry, if it’s all right with you?”

“Kerry?” Hal Sanders repeated, taking on a guarded look. “You’re not tryin’ to say my boy’s in trouble, are you? ‘Cause if you are, you’re gonna have me to deal with first!”

Edith Sanders, wiping her hands on her apron, came in from the kitchen just in time to hear the last thing her husband said. “Don’t be silly, Hal,” she told him. “Kerry’s never been in trouble in his life, and you know it. I’m sure there’s some mistake.” She turned to Weaver, her eyes questioning.

“Now, take it easy, both of you,” the deputy assured
them. “It’s not Kerry we’re worried about. But Jennifer Mayhew hasn’t turned up at home, and near as I can tell, she ain’t anywhere in town, either. But I hear Kerry talked to her this morning, and I just want to hear what he’s got to say.”

The elder Sanders’s expression immediately cleared, and as Edith called upstairs to her son, Hal offered the deputy a beer. Weaver shrugged. “Don’t mind if I do.” He was just popping the tab of a Bud when Kerry Sanders appeared in the kitchen door.

“Mr. Weaver?” Kerry asked. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Jennifer?”

“Well, now, I don’t rightly know,” the deputy replied. “But I can tell you Alicia Mayhew’s pretty het up. She says you talked to Jenny this morning.”

Kerry nodded. “Julie and I both did. We were just coming across the causeway, and she was coming the other way. She was going to see Julie’s aunt.”

Weaver nodded. “Did she say why?”

Kerry nodded, then repeated the conversation he and Julie had had with Jennifer. When he was finished, the deputy looked troubled.

“And you’re sure she actually went on up to the mansion?” he asked.

Kerry shrugged. “I guess so. She said she was, and she was walking that way when we left. And if she hadn’t, she’d have found us at the beach, wouldn’t she?”

“Who knows?” Weaver asked rhetorically. Then: “What about Marguerite Devereaux? Did you see her when you were out there?”

Kerry hesitated, then nodded, his face coloring. “I saw her,” he said, his voice taking on a slight bitterness the deputy immediately seized upon.

“Something wrong between you and Marguerite?”

“I—I didn’t think so,” Kerry stammered. “At least, there wasn’t until I started hanging around with Julie. Ever since then, it’s like she hates me or something.”

“So she
was
acting strange?” Weaver pressed.

Kerry swallowed nervously. “I—I’m not sure. She didn’t want Julie to go to the beach with me. She kept talking about
how Julie didn’t have time to waste like that. She said Julie should be practicing her dancing.”

“Hunh,” the deputy grunted. “Well, I don’t suppose we can hang her for that, can we?”

Kerry’s brows furrowed. “What’s going on?” he asked.

The deputy shrugged. “Don’t know as anything is, really. But Alicia says Marguerite looked real strange when she was out there, and kept talking about a recital tomorrow. Said she was sure Jennifer would be there. But Alicia never heard about it before, and now she says the more she thinks about it, the more worried she gets.”

“Does—Does she think Marguerite might have done something to Jenny?”

“Well, now, I guess she does,” Weaver replied.

For the first time since Kerry had come into the kitchen, Hal Sanders spoke. “So what are you doin’ here, Frank? How come you’re not out on the island, having a look around?”

Weaver turned to stare at Hal. “You kidding?” he asked. “You seen what it’s like outside? No way am I going to try to get out there tonight.”

“But—But what about Julie?” Kerry asked.

“What about her?”

“If something’s wrong with Marguerite—” “If something’s wrong with Marguerite, which isn’t really likely, all things considerin’, it’ll keep till morning,” Weaver said. “And Kevin’s out there too. He can take care of things.” He finished his beer, then crumpled the empty can with a quick squeeze of his right hand. “Well, I’d better be gettin’ back to the office. Will’s gonna want to know what I found out.”

He shrugged back into his slicker, and a moment later was leaning his heavy frame into the storm as he hurried back to his car. Harold Sanders, who had walked to the front door with Weaver, waited until the police car was gone before he went back to the kitchen. But when he got there, he noticed that something was bothering Kerry.

“What is it?” he asked, laying a hand on his son’s shoulder.

“I just don’t like it,” Kerry said. “I didn’t like it when I
dropped Julie off this afternoon, and I still don’t. I keep having a feeling that Jenny’s mother’s right, and there’s something going on out there.”

Hal gave Kerry’s shoulder a squeeze, then slapped him gently on the back. “Well, whatever it is, it can wait till morning, as Frank said. And it’s none of your business anyway,” he added.

But Kerry shook his head. “I just wish someone would go out there and take a look around,” he said.

“But you heard Frank,” Hal replied. “You can’t get out there.”

Kerry nodded absently, and started back upstairs. But as he got to his room, he made up his mind.

Perhaps the cops wouldn’t try to go out to the island tonight, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.

Grabbing his keys from his dresser and pulling a slicker out of the closet, he headed back downstairs.

Marguerite, oblivious to the storm, opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the driving wind. It was completely dark now, and the rain had started again, lashing out of the sky, plastering her hair to her face, and washing her makeup away in smearing rivulets of color that looked almost like bloodstains against her pale skin. Her hip was burning with pain, and every step was a nightmare of searing needles being driven through her right leg. But she shut the pain out of her mind and groped her way down the steps. The path down the gentle slope was a sea of mud, and she could feel it squishing between her bare toes as she limped on. She’d taken off her mother’s dress, replacing it with a long white robe that had also been her mother’s. Its soft chenille clung damply to her body, and it felt heavy on her shoulders, but she plodded on, oblivious to it all, until she came to the gates of the small cemetery.

A bolt of lightning flashed down from above, and Marguerite flinched, then covered her ears against the crash of thunder that threatened to overwhelm her. But as the explosion
of sound died away to a boiling rumble, she lifted the latch of the gate, opened it, and stepped through into the graveyard itself. She moved forward numbly, her right leg dragging through the mud now. With each step her legs threatened to give out beneath her, and she had to steady herself, reaching out to the weathered grave markers as she staggered toward the crypt.

At last she was there.

Her fingers reached out, brushing against the cold marble, and then, fumbling in the pocket of her robe, she brought out a large key. She inserted it into the slot in the heavy door of the crypt and turned it. A moment later the door swung open.

“M-Mama?” Marguerite asked. Her voice was tiny, childlike, and as she reached for her mother’s coffin, her fingers trembled. “I-I’m sorry, Mama,” she whimpered. “I didn’t mean to do it—I didn’t mean to do any of it. But the bad times came again, Mama. The bad times came, and you weren’t here to take care of me. And they were going to lock me up, Mama. They were going to lock me up and leave me alone, and I couldn’t let them.” Her eyes filled with tears, but the rain washed them away as quickly as they came. “I know I’m a bad girl, Mama. I know I’m the worst girl in the whole world. But I didn’t want to be, Mama. I didn’t ever want to be.” She sniffled, and her hand moved slowly over the coffin, caressing it. “All I wanted to do was dance, Mama. I wanted to dance, and I wanted to please you, and I never could. And so you left me. They were all going to leave me, Mama. They were going to leave me and lock me up, and I couldn’t stand it. But I don’t know what to do, Mama. Tell me? Please, Mama … tell me what to do.” Her voice broke then, and she felt a strangling in her throat. “Tell me, Mama. You’re all I have. You’re all I ever had.…”

She was silent then, and the storm whirled around her. But she felt none of it, for deep within her own mind, all her energies were concentrated on bringing her mother back to life. And slowly, very slowly, Marguerite submerged her own personality, and, out of the depths of her subconscious, resurrected her mother’s soul.

*      *      *

“Look!” Jeff cried out. He was at the window of Julie’s room, his face pressed against the glass. Sheets of water poured down the windows, and for a moment all Julie could see were
formless
streaks. But then, as lightning glowed briefly in the distance, she saw the pale form in the cemetery, near the crypt. “She’s back,” Jeff whispered. “Grandmother’s back. It—it means someone else is dead.”

“No,” Julie insisted, but as she peered frantically out into the storm, her heart began to race. And then, as both the children pressed against the glass, the whole universe seemed to light up with the power of a thousand searchlights. A sheet of brilliant light flashed across the night sky, the darkness washed away in a shadowless glare.

And in the graveyard the ghostly figure looked up.

Julie and Jeff gasped in shock as they recognized the visage of their aunt shining palely in the bright glare, her face framed by a sodden mass of hair, her right hand pressed against her hip while she leaned her weight against her mother’s crypt.

And then the light was gone as a wave of thunder rolled across the sky, shaking the mansion to its foundations, making the windows rattle in their frames.

“It’s her,” Jeff whimpered. “It’s not Grandmother at all. It’s Aunt Marguerite.”

“It’s always been her,” Julie breathed, her voice quavering in the pitch-black darkness that followed the lightning. “There isn’t any ghost—”

“But she always comes after someone dies—” Jeff whispered, then fell into a shocked silence as he realized what he’d said. When he was finally able to speak again, his voice was barely audible. “She
did
kill them,” he whispered. “That’s why she’s out there now. She killed Daddy.”

“No,” Julie wailed, her voice taking on a note of desperation. “We don’t know that. Jeff, Daddy didn’t even come home tonight—”

But her words died on her lips as another flash of lightning struck outside, lashing down from the sky to split open the
roof of the garage. At the same moment a gust of wind screamed through the pines, and suddenly the wooden doors of the garage flew open, jerked off their hinges and were sent tumbling across the driveway, smashing against the house itself.

And inside the garage, briefly illuminated by flickers of lightning, Jeff and Julie saw their aunt’s battered Chevrolet. Mutely, they stared at each other, both of them instantly knowing what it meant.

Their father had, after all, come home that day.

Come home, and never left again.

Marguerite stood in the rain, feeling the cool water washing over her face. It felt good. Felt so good to be alive again, and whole. And there was so much to do.…

A flash of lightning blazed across the sky, and she peered up to the second floor of the house.

A face was pressed against one of the windows—the face of a little boy.

But that wasn’t right.

There shouldn’t be a little boy in the house.

Only herself. Herself and her daughter. And Marguerite was safely locked up in the little room of the basement, where she would stay until she was willing to listen to reason. Imagine, blaming her mother for what had happened to her—

But what was Kevin doing up there? She’d sent him away—sent him away months ago, when she’d decided what had to be done about Marguerite. But now he was back, and if he found his sister—

She began stumbling toward the house, the mud dragging at her right leg, threatening to throw her off balance. And her hip hurt. But why should it hurt? There was nothing wrong with her—had never been anything wrong with her!

She concentrated on the face in the window, though the lightning had long since faded and even the thunder was no more than a distant drumroll. But she could see it still.

Kevin’s eyes, staring at her, accusing her.

But not for long. He should have stayed away, stayed in school, where she sent him. He wasn’t supposed to come back yet—wasn’t supposed to come back for a long, long time, when everything that had happened would be long forgotten.

But if he found his sister—found her locked up down in the cellar—

No! He wouldn’t find her—she wouldn’t
let
him find her! She’d stop him—stop him any way she could.

All her mother’s hatred burning brightly inside her, Marguerite struggled on toward the house, and when she finally reached the kitchen and leaned against the door she’d closed behind her, it was more than the storm that she shut out.

Along with the wind and thunder and lightning, she closed the last vestiges of her own personality out as well.

Though it was Marguerite’s body that began making its way toward the stairs in the entry hall, it was Helena Devereaux’s spirit that pressed her onward.