Nightmare (17 page)

“Taylor will be all right. Someone’s with her,” she said, and Emily found herself being tugged around and pulled toward the group, which had begun following the ranger.

“I’ve decided I don’t want to go through the cave,” Emily said.

“Nonsense. It’s a marvelous experience,” Mrs. Comstock insisted.

“But—”

Mrs. Comstock’s voice became firm. “No excuses, Emily,” she said. She thrust the sprig of honeysuckle at her. “Here. Take this. Isn’t the fragrance heavenly? Somehow this pale little flower reminds me of you.”

Emily shivered, wishing Mrs. Comstock would let go of her arm. Was the honeysuckle a message, too? Emily
wondered if Mrs. Comstock was aware of the honeysuckle in the photograph and this was her way of telling her. That would mean that Mrs. Comstock was the one who had called to her and threatened to find her.

Emily knew she couldn’t accuse Mrs. Comstock to either Dr. Isaacson or the police. She still had no proof. Emily fingered the vial of potion in her pocket.

Suddenly Mrs. Comstock released her. “Come along,” she said. “We have to keep up with the others.”

The ranger paused and pointed out a formation called the Queen’s Watchdog, in which limestone had naturally eroded into the shape of a dog, and the Queen’s Throne, a massive flowstone. Above and around them the striped, layered walls were scooped and gouged out in impressive whorls and surrealistic carvings. Emily felt as if she were floating in an unreal world without time or meaning.

The group turned to the right, entering a narrow stretch the ranger said was called Lovers’ Lane. Emily reluctantly trailed the group, trying to stay as far away from Mrs. Comstock as possible. She jumped as the lights turned off in the room they had left, plunging it into total blackness, and scurried to keep up with the rest, who were listening to the ranger’s description of the history of the cave. But she couldn’t keep from glancing over her shoulder at the dark mouth that seemed to be swallowing their footprints.

To Emily’s surprise, she thought she saw a small, wavering light moving through the darkness. She blinked and looked again, but it had disappeared.

The group filed through one of the narrow bends, Emily at the rear. Again she looked back. Again she spotted the light, which seemed to be following them.

This time the small beam didn’t turn off, and as it came closer, Emily could see that it was Dr. Anderson,
carrying a flashlight. As she walked toward Emily into the lighted alley, she smiled and said, “I thought I’d meet up with you sooner.” She turned off her flashlight and held it down at her side.

“How did you know where we’d be?” Emily asked.

“I’ve been here before. I know the route.”

Emily realized she could no longer hear the ranger’s voice and there was no sign of the others on the tour. “We’d better hurry and catch up,” she said.

“We’ve got time,” Dr. Anderson said calmly. “In fact, this gives us a good chance to talk, Emily. I know that something is bothering you. Would you like to tell me about it?”

“Not now,” Emily said. She began edging down the path. “If they turn out the lights …”

At that moment the lane was suddenly smothered in total darkness. “They don’t know we’re here!” Emily cried. She took a step and stumbled against the rough wall, nearly falling. “Help!” she tried to yell, but her voice wobbled and was weak.

“They can’t hear you,” Dr. Anderson said. “By now they’re in the Indian Council Room.” Calmly she explained, “Lovers’ Lane makes two sharp turns. We’re at the back of the loop, and sound won’t carry as far as the Council Room.”

The voice!
Emily thought. In the darkness, Dr. Anderson’s voice stood out, and she remembered it well. Her heart beat faster, and her hands began to sweat. She wiped them on her shorts, fighting the panic that made her want to scream. She put her hands to her face, but the dark was so deep she couldn’t even see the shape of her fingers. She thought she heard whispers and something skittering through the pebbles near her feet. “Turn on your flashlight!” she cried.

“When I’m ready,” Dr. Anderson said. A scolding note came into her voice as she complained, “You didn’t come when I called you. I said, ‘Little girl, come back,’ but you didn’t.”

Emily gasped, pressing up against the cold rock wall. “If I had, you would have killed me, too.”

“So you saw and heard it all. You knew. Everything.”

“You said you’d come looking for me. You told me you’d find me.”

“I tried my best. I was sure you must live in Dallas, and I scoured the nearby neighborhoods.”

Emily groaned. She remembered Dr. Anderson asking her parents at the reception how long they had lived in Dallas. She should have realized that Dr. Anderson had remembered her. Right that minute she should have known.

“My career has always meant everything to me,” Dr. Anderson said. “My position at the educational center was my dream come true. The only way to get it was to falsify my credentials. No one would have known. No one would have cared. My work was impeccable. When Amelia Foxworth told me she had investigated and discovered the truth and would make my actions public, I reacted out of fear. Don’t you understand? She would have ruined my career, my entire future, but I didn’t plan to kill her. I just reacted.”

Emily, still flattened against the wall, took a hesitant step to the left, away from the sound of Dr. Anderson’s voice. Something seemed to brush against her cheek, and she shuddered, trying to swat it away, but her fingers touched only the cold air in the cave. She reached with her toes for solid footing but couldn’t find it. Where was she? Swallowed up by this inky darkness, she had no sense of direction.

“Please turn on your flashlight!” she begged.

“Have you been listening to me?” Dr. Anderson demanded. “Do you understand how I must continue to protect the outstanding reputation I’ve built for myself?”

Desperately, Emily tried to remember what her surroundings had looked like. Did the trail curve to the left? The right? Was there a drop to one side? The intense blackness that pressed against her eyes was terrifying.

“Answer me! Don’t you understand?” Dr. Anderson’s voice rose in a screech.

“You killed Dr. Foxworth,” Emily said.

“I told you why. I didn’t choose to have her die. And I hope you realize that I have no choice in what I’m about to do now.” Dr. Anderson’s voice grew calmer and more determined. “Just to our right there’s a rise some people try to climb on, even though they’re not supposed to. They’ll find your body below it. They’ll assume that you climbed and fell. I left the girls in the snack bar, fortified with Cokes and sandwiches, and told them I was going to step outside and look around. They think I’m with them. They’ll say I was when they’re asked.”

Emily tried to step in the opposite direction. She was determined to move so she wouldn’t be an easy target. But her foot dislodged some pebbles that clattered as they rolled. She had no weapon. Nothing with which to defend herself.

“You aren’t going to escape, so don’t bother trying,” Dr. Anderson said quietly.

I do have a weapon
, Emily thought, remembering. Her breath coming in short gasps, her heart racing, she reached for the vial of potion in her pocket. Carefully she pulled out the little stopper and placed her thumb securely over the open top of the vial. Her thumb stung where the liquid touched it.

Suddenly the bright beam of Dr. Anderson’s flashlight was aimed directly at Emily’s face, blinding her.

Instead of ducking or trying to get away, Emily moved forward, toward the light. With her left hand she grabbed the flashlight, shoving it to one side. Now she could see Dr. Anderson’s face, strained with anger, and the hand clutching the rock that was raised high over her head.

Emily twisted to the right just as the rock came down, painfully scraping her left shoulder. Pulling back her thumb, Emily threw the contents of the vial directly into Dr. Anderson’s eyes.

Dr. Anderson screamed, let go of the flashlight, and bent double, clawing at her face.

Suddenly, the recessed lighting flashed on. Haley ran down the path toward Emily, Coach Jinks and Dr. Weil behind her.

“When I realized you weren’t with us, I told Coach—,” Haley began. She gasped. “What happened to Dr. Anderson?”

Emily watched Dr. Anderson, on her knees at the side of the path, scooping water from a little stream and splashing it into her eyes.

“She’ll be all right,” Emily explained. “I had to stop her. She tried to kill me because I saw her push Dr. Foxworth over the stairs near the pool at the educational center.”

“What! Is this true?” Dr. Weil took Dr. Anderson by her shoulders and pulled her to her feet.

Haley gasped again as she saw the empty vial Emily held out to her. “The potion!” she said triumphantly. “You used the potion!”

“It was the only way I had to defend myself.”

Mrs. Comstock and Dr. Hampton appeared, their
eyes wide with astonishment. Maxwell pushed forward, along with some of the others.

Dr. Anderson babbled, “Dr. Foxworth knew! I had to stop her! I didn’t mean to kill her! It wasn’t my fault. And Emily saw what happened! She was going to tell!”

To Emily’s relief, Dr. Weil calmly took charge. He soothed Dr. Anderson, trying to quiet her. Then he sent two girls back to the administration building to call the sheriff’s department, and he picked out Maxwell and Coach Jinks to assist Dr. Anderson from the cave.

Before they left, while everyone seemed to be talking at once, Maxwell turned to Emily, pushing the knitted edge of his cap back from his forehead. “You’re right about what I should do,” he said. “I’m going to try my hand at writing. I’ll call it
Maxwell McLaren, The Early Years
. I’ll be able to write it, won’t I, Emily?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “I think you will.”

As Maxwell and Coach Jinks disappeared around a bend in the path, Haley asked, “Em, do you think there’s a chance Max really will be famous someday?”

Emily shrugged and answered, “Who knows? At least he’s going to find out if he really can write.”

Dr. Hampton stepped forward, Mrs. Comstock elbowing her way to a place beside her.

“Emily, I don’t understand,” Dr. Hampton said. “If you thought you were in trouble, why didn’t you come to me for help?”

“You lied to me about when you came to work at the center,” Emily said. “You were there when it opened, and you said you weren’t.”

Dr. Hampton looked surprised. “I didn’t think it mattered. I was there only the first semester. Then I returned to where I had been employed to finish a project on which I was needed.”

“I needed the truth,” Emily told her. “You didn’t give it to me.”

Mrs. Comstock smiled sympathetically as she moved forward. “You could have come to me, dear,” she said. “I tried to assure you that you could always confide in me.”

“You tried too hard,” Emily said.

The cold, damp walls of the cave seemed to press toward her, and she could hear a scurrying sound coming from the dark shadows. Bats? Mice?

“I want out of this place,” Emily said.

Haley grasped Emily’s arm and steered her back down the path in the direction of the entrance. “I’ll go with you,” she said. “We’ll find Taylor and tell her everything that happened.”

She paused, turning Emily to face her. “
I’ll
be the one to tell her. After all, it was Loki who warned you, and it was the
curandero
’s potion that saved you.” Her smile was smug. “All because of me.”

Emily didn’t argue. She knew she’d be repeating the entire story to Dr. Isaacson, to the police, to her parents, and to countless other people before it was over.

Unfortunately
, she thought,
it will never be over
. Nightmares had a way of returning when least expected, and now the old dreams would be joined by a new one: the haunted eyes of a desperate woman in a dark cave.

But Emily realized she was no longer afraid to be Emily. She no longer needed to be invisible. She smiled at Haley. “I can handle it,” she said.

“Well, of course,” Haley said.

Emily followed Haley from the cave up the steps into the late-afternoon sunlight.