Chain Letter (17 page)

“But I could have helped him,” Tony said, choking on the revelation. “He should have
told me.” He clenched his fists and yelled, “Neil!!”

The cry echoed over the cemetery and through the orchard. Of course, there came no
answer. The fury left Tony’s face as quickly as it had come. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hurly,”
he said softly.

“Most of all,” she said, dabbing at her eyes, regaining her composure, “Neil didn’t
want to have you sitting around worrying about him. He was a brave kid.” She handed
Alison a handkerchief and Alison took it gratefully, blowing her nose. His suffering
in silence filled her with as much awe as sorrow. When she had a cold, she called
all of her friends and cried on their shoulders. Neil had taught her a lesson about
nobility that she would never forget.

Tony offered to drive Mrs. Hurly to the home of the friends she was staying with,
but she refused, reassuring them that she would be all right. They watched her drive
away in silence. With a wedding you could always throw rice, but there seemed to be
no good way to end a funeral.

Tony walked her toward his car, which was a respectable distance—he had parked on
the far side of the cemetery by the chapel and had ridden to the gravesite in the
hearse. By unspoken
consent, they did not hold hands or talk until they were out of sight of the casket.

“It’s funny the way your mind plays tricks on you,” he said finally. “Just for a moment
there I was thinking how sad this day is and how I would have to call Neil when I
got home to tell him about it. That’s what I’ve always done these last four years.”
He shrugged. “Now I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She wanted to tell him that she would listen. But she was afraid how poor a substitute
she might be. “I wish I had called him a few times,” she said instead. “Just to chat,
you know. I always meant to.”

A scrawny rabbit, looking anxious to get to the neighboring farm fields, cut across
their path. “He would have liked that a lot. He liked you a lot, more than you know,
I think.” He stopped her and reached into his coat pocket. “That’s what I was trying
to tell you that night in the car in front of your house. You were his . . . love.”

“Me?”
Neil had found a shallow phony like her attractive? “I never even suspected.” The
information hit her as hard as the fact of his cancer.

“But he asked you out.”

“Yeah, just to the movies. I didn’t think anything of it. I . . . I . . . ” Her tears—she
should have run out of them yesterday—bubbled up again. She sought the handkerchief
Mrs. Hurly had given her. “I turned him down.
Damn
.”

Tony hugged her gently. “He didn’t hold it against you.
The last time we were alone together, he asked me to do two things for him should
the Caretaker get to him. One of them was to give you this.”

He placed a warped lump of blackened metal in her hand. It took her a moment to realize
it was Neil’s emerald ring. The heat had distorted the gold band but the stone had
not shattered. “Did he have this on when . . . ”

“He was wearing it, yes. He was going to give it to me to keep for you but he said
he wanted to get it cleaned first.” Tony added softly, “It made the identification
easier.”

“But I can’t take this.”

“If I’d had more time, I would have had it cleaned up. I think a jeweler could reset
the stone.”

“No. I don’t care that it’s no longer beautiful. I just don’t deserve it.”

Tony smiled, and she knew before he spoke that it was from a sweet memory. “He used
to see you as a goddess. To him, you had everything: beauty, poise, good humor, love.
He loved you, and although he was never really able to express it to you, I like to
think it made him happy just being in the same world as you. For that, you deserve
the ring.”

“Was he . . . jealous of us?”

“Not Neil.”

The question had been unworthy. She held the ring tightly. “I’m honored to know he
saw me that way. I’ll keep it safe.”

They resumed their walk toward the chapel. For the last
several minutes, the sun had been hidden behind the clouds and it appeared that a
storm truly was on its way. Here they’d been cooking for the last few weeks and now
when summer was about to officially begin, they were going to get rained on. Graduation
was just around the corner. There would be a few empty seats at the ceremony.

“What else did he want you to do for him?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It’s a long story.”

“Were you able to do it?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Did you check with Mrs. Hurly to be sure it was OK that I keep the ring?”

“Yes, and it was fine. Please don’t feel guilty about it.”

“I was just afraid that she would feel uncomfortable losing a family heirloom.”

“I don’t think Neil’s mother even knew he’d had it.”

“Oh, for some reason I assumed it had been in the family.”

Tony stopped.

“What is it?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Nothing important.”

T
he thunder rolled toward the house without haste, starting far off in the mountains,
flattening and building over the empty fields that surrounded the deserted housing
tract, reaching her ears and filling her head with a lonely, inhuman roar. The storm
was thickening, the rain pelting the roof harder with each passing minute. The sun
had hardly set, and it was black as midnight outside the drawn curtains. Alison was
alone. But it was not yet her turn. She was safe. . . .
Sure.

Earlier in the day, her parents had left for New York, her mother accompanying her
father on an important business trip. Her mom had been reluctant to leave her alone,
and Alison herself had not been wild about the idea. But she had refused to let her
secret situation interfere with her parents’ plans; they intended to turn the trip
into a twentieth-anniversary
second-honeymoon combination. They had been looking forward to it for some time. Nevertheless,
her mother had almost stayed. Fran’s and Kipp’s kidnappings had been on the other
side of the county and Neil’s supposedly accidental death had not even been indirectly
connected with the abductions, but mothers have strong intuitive radar when it comes
to danger. Only when Joan—of all people, they were getting desperate—had called and
promised to bring over Brenda to spend the night had her mother left feeling comfortable.
Joan and Brenda would be arriving soon, Alison thought, rechecking the clock, moving
magazines from one corner of the coffee table to the other, polishing tables she had
polished already, unable to sit still. She was not scared, just uneasy, terribly uneasy.

Part of the problem was that there were no ceiling lights in these new houses. All
they had were lamps, dim, yellow, old-fashioned ones that cast as many shadows as
they alleviated. She contemplated unscrewing a couple of shades but she didn’t want
the others to see how much the gloom bothered her. They might laugh.

Searching for something to occupy her mind, she spotted the DVDs she had bought yesterday
on her way home from school. The choices were two extremes:
The Wizard of Oz
and
Emanuelle.
She had wanted something light and something dirty—both helped one forget. Since
Joan probably wouldn’t let them watch the adventures of Dorothy and Toto, she
slipped the fantasy tale into the DVD player and turned on the TV, making herself
comfortable on the sofa.

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

When she had been small and had first seen the movie, the witch, the wizard and even
the tornado had given her nightmares. Since then, she had caught the flick or pieces
of it several times, and the magic and terror of believing had never come close to
the initial experience. But tonight, with the hypnotic strumming of rain on the windows,
the bare drafty spots of the half-furnished house all around her, her isolation and
the recent tragic events of her life, the impossible appeared not so intangible, and
all adventures, good and bad, seemed just around the corner. Indeed, the accidental
landing of the house on the wicked witch’s sister that started Dorothy’s perilous
journey closely paralleled their own accidental killing of the man. Now if the man
had had a brother . . .

Or a sister!

The lights and the TV went out.

“Eeh!” Alison cried, swallowing her heart.

The lights came back on, followed by a wall-shaking boom. She eased back into the
cushions, trying to catch her breath. Lightning was responsible, nothing more. Brenda
and Joan would be here soon. No one was going to kill her.

I wallow in your evil. You are a bad witch.

The TV was full of static. At the power surge, the DVD had automatically turned off.
Reaching for the
PLAY
switch, she
decided to take a break before traveling any farther along the yellow brick road.
She turned off the equipment and picked up the phone.

Tony had been avoiding her since the funeral. Appreciating his need to be alone, she
had tried not to be a burden. Still, she had called occasionally; she was getting
low on friends, too, and needed support from someone. It would have been unnatural
for him to act normal after the loss of his best friend; nevertheless, his self-absorption,
his long blank pauses while speaking, frightened her. Something bizarre was percolating
deep inside him.

There was no answer at his house. His parents had gone to San Diego to visit his brother,
but he had specifically told her he would not be accompanying them. She had been calling
since eight this morning and had still to receive an answer. Where could he be? It
wasn’t his turn, either.

Joan was a week past the deadline. None of them had gone that long without paying
for it. Maybe it had been a mistake to invite her over. After all, when you got right
down to it, Joan hated her guts. Then again, she had not invited Joan or Brenda. They
had invited themselves.

Alison called Brenda’s house and got her mother. Yes, Brenda had left a while ago.
No, Brenda had said nothing about picking up Joan. Yes, it was terrible weather they
were having . . . Thank you, Mrs. Paxson.

Whenever she was uptight, a hot bath always helped. Figuring she’d hear the girls’
knock even if she were upstairs, she
decided to squeeze in a quick one. Before she climbed the stairs, however, she rechecked
the locks on the front and back doors.

The wet warmth was a delight. Slipping all but her kneecaps and face beneath the bubbly
surface, she closed her eyes and thought of how when she was a rich and famous actress,
she would have a Jacuzzi installed in her Beverly Hills mansion where she could entertain
Tony in the way she had seen on
Real Housewives
. The erotic daydream was only half over—they still had their bathing suits on—when
the phone rang. Reaching for a towel and groaning, she pulled herself up. This had
better be Tony. She could tell him she was talking to him in the nude.

She did not waste time drying and got it on the fifth ring. But the instant she picked
it up, the party on the other end put the phone down. Whoever it was must not have
been that anxious to talk.

Standing naked and dripping next to her bed, she had the sudden uncanny sensation
that she was being watched. Her rational mind knew that eyes perceived only light
and could project nothing that could be felt; yet it was as if twin fingers were lightly
tracing down her spine.

Cold air shook her from her frightened pose. The window was open, that was it. Her
subconscious had registered the fact before her conscious mind and had been reminding
her via her paranoia that she was standing naked in a lit room where anyone out on
the street could see her. That sounded reasonable.
Hugging the towel to her breasts, she hastily closed the window, pulling over the
curtains.

She dressed warmly, in a heavy pair of corduroy pants and a thick woolen sweater.
She was pulling on a second pair of socks when the lights went out for the second
time. The darkness lasted and lasted. She’d noticed no flash of lightning, and she
counted to thirty and heard no thunder. Having no natural explanation for the loss
of power, she began to imagine a dozen unnatural ones, with a sharp blade and a puddle
of blood in every one. But once again, before she could go off the deep end, the lights
snapped back on. Her tension burst out of her in a cackle of a laugh that sounded
alien to her ears. Where were those stupid girls?

The downstairs TV was also back on, full of static. From experience, she knew the
power switch was tricky, and could pop on if not pressed hard enough. But she could
have sworn she’d hit the thing squarely. Fretting over the tiny irregularity, she
made another check on the doors. What she found did not soothe her nerves. The dead
bolt knob on the back door was turned up, which is where it normally should have been
to be locked. When it had been installed, however, the carpenter had been either drunk
or unfamiliar with the brand and had arranged matters so that the door was locked
when the switch was horizontal. Her father had reminded her of this flaw, this morning
in fact, and she was almost positive she had turned it sideways before going for her
bath. But could she have, out
of habit, done the opposite? She must have. What alternative was there?

Oh, say, the Caretaker just happened to be in the neighborhood.

“Shut up!” she told herself, twisting the lock, yanking on the knob to prove to herself
the door couldn’t budge an inch.

She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of milk. There was a phone next
to the microwave and she tried Tony again. Three tries got her nothing. The wind raking
the outside walls howled softly, sad and forlorn. Closing her eyes, she strained her
ears to detect a trace of civilization beyond: the hum of the distant freeway, the
drone of an overhead plane, the passing of a nearby motorist. But there was only the
cold storm, and the beating of her heart. She tossed the milk down the sink.