One Summer (46 page)

“With you gone, he will no longer have any reason to struggle against his destiny. We are the eternal triangle, he and I and you. Sometimes you and I are men, and he is the woman. But you are always my friend, and my betrayer. You must always be destroyed before we can be happy together. He would have responded to me before now if it had not been for you. I know that. He has sensed your presence for years. Just as I have. Only you and he didn’t know what you sought, and I didn’t know who.”

“Kay, this is crazy.” As soon as she said it, Rachel knew she had made a mistake.

The smile Kay gave her was terrifying.

“Get out of the car,” she said, and fumbled between her seat and the door for something. Rachel, poised to take advantage of the first instant the locks were released, was shaken to see that Kay was suddenly clutching a gun. It was large and black and businesslike, and it was pointed right at Rachel’s chest.

“Kay …” It was a whispered appeal to her childhood friend, as Rachel truly faced the fact that she was about to die. Her appeal did no good at all. Kay’s eyes glowed with satisfaction at this evidence of her rival’s weakness.

“Be very careful,” Kay warned her, her voice menacing. “I don’t want to shoot you. But I will if I have to. Now get out of the car.”

55

“S
he’s coming.”

The words roused Jeremy from semiconsciousness.

Who, Mom? But then he knew. Not “it” but “she.” The thing was a she, then. He trembled in terror.

“Get up. Stand over by the door.”

Jeremy whimpered. The thing was coming, coming to kill him. If only he could die now, right now, and get it over with. He was so scared. He wanted to die. Mom, Mom! Take me to where you are!

“Get over by the door! Hurry!”

When his mom used that voice, she meant to be obeyed. Gasping, shaking, Jeremy managed to get on his hands and knees. He was dizzy, sick and dizzy, and his head pounded so, he thought it might explode. But his mom was relentless. He had to stand up. He pushed against the wall with his feet while his shoulder scooted up the cold stone. When he was upright, he was sweating. But he gritted his teeth and moved near the door.

“She will open the door. When she does, run! Run as fast as you can! Remember how you always won the hundred-yard dash at school? Run like that. You can do it, Jeremy.”

I’m sick, Mom. And I’m scared.

“I’ll be with you, son. Just run.”

56

“W
ait.”

Rachel was out of the car, having slid out on Kay’s side at Kay’s command. It was raining now, sullenly. Rachel hardly felt the drops that pelted her. Her eyes were glued to Kay. The pistol never wavered as Kay walked around to the car trunk—it stayed pointed squarely at the center of Rachel’s chest.

Kay slid a key into the trunk, opened it just a little so that it would not block her view of Rachel, and felt around inside. She pulled out a bundle of moldy-looking black cloth. Rachel, watching helplessly while her heart banged like a jackhammer, felt physically ill as Kay grasped the cloth with one hand, shook it out, and swirled it around her shoulders.

It was a cloak, a hooded black cloak that looked as if it dated to the nineteenth century. Wearing it, Kay seemed to have stepped into the present from another time. Looking her over with disbelief, Rachel frantically tried to think of some way she might escape. But she could come up with nothing.

“The flowers are for you, you know. For—later. Pink carnations. Pink is your color, don’t you think?” The calm, eerily sane-sounding question was terrifying. Rachel was speechless.

Kay felt in the trunk again and withdrew a knife. It was a butcher knife, the kind found in many kitchens, including the one at Walnut Grove. But in Kay’s grasp it took on a hideous menace. Rachel knew that she was looking at the weapon that had murdered Glenda, and possibly Marybeth as well, and she wanted to throw up.

Would she be number three? The possibility seemed unreal, so unreal that as she contemplated it, Rachel almost moved beyond fear. Surely she would not die in such a way. Her life was so sweet! She wasn’t ready yet. She couldn’t leave Johnny, or her mother, or Becky, or—

But such reflections led to panic, and panic was the one thing she couldn’t afford. She must think like a rational being because that was the one thing Kay no longer was.

Kay could not stab her and hold the gun on her at the same time. That was one point in Rachel’s favor, and she grabbed onto it like a drowning person to a branch.

Then a niggling little voice added a caveat. Maybe this time, Kay meant to use the gun. Maybe the knife was for stabbing her body after it was already dead.

Kay was insane. Hysterical sobs bubbled up in Rachel’s throat as she faced the fact. Swallowing, she forced them back. If she was to have any chance at all, she had to stay calm.

Kay shut the trunk. Then she waved the gun at Rachel.

“All right. Walk.”

“Where to?”

Rachel toyed with the idea of running, just taking off that very minute as fast as she could go and gambling that Kay would not shoot or would miss if she did.

“Toward the back of the cemetery! Now!”

At the last minute Rachel found she could not risk running. The idea of being shot in the back made her knees threaten to buckle. She turned and walked. Glancing about, she sought desperately for anything that might aid her. If only someone, anyone, would come! But the church was little more than a relic now, visited only on Memorial
Day and when the Preservation Society came to plant flowers or pull weeds or do whatever it was they did. The building itself hid the graveyard from the road. About half a mile to her right, across an expanse of tall, golden grass, was the beginning of the woods through which she would need to run to reach home. To her left was a copse of trees that ended at an abandoned rock quarry. No hope for succor there. Ahead of her was the graveyard, and beyond it more fields.

If she was going to do anything to save herself, it had to be done in the next few minutes. She could sense Kay’s growing agitation as the other woman walked some six paces behind her, and she feared that it might explode at any second into murderous rage. When that happened, unless a miracle occurred, her life would be over.

“Toward the vaults back there. That’s right, the one on the end.”

As Rachel slowly complied with Kay’s orders, her eyes fell on a stout branch on the ground next to the partially buried crypt that was her destination. As weapons went, it was likely to prove pathetic against a gun and a knife. But it was all that offered itself to her, and perhaps if she grabbed it at the last minute and whirled about, swinging it—

She would be shot, or even stabbed. But it was better to die fighting than just to die.

Rachel felt terrified sobs rise up in her throat. She choked them back, clenched her fists, and fought to remain clear-headed. If she were to have any chance at all, she had to be able to think.

At that moment she began to pray.

57

“R
eady, Jeremy?”

I’m ready, Mom.

But he was so scared. At least his fear was making him feel stronger. At the idea that the thing would soon appear in the doorway with its knife, his heart pounded and his breathing quickened, and the awful, blinding pain seemed to leave his head.

“As soon as the door opens, son. Run.”

Jeremy flattened himself against the damp moldy stone as he heard the scratching sound for the second time. He knew what it was now—the sound of a key scrabbling in search of a lock.

He braced himself to shoot forward like a bat out of hell.

His only chance lay in catching her by surprise arid barreling past her before she recovered. If he couldn’t do that, he would die.

The lock creaked as it turned in its cylinder.

“I’m with you, Jeremy. On your mark …”

58

W
hen Rachel stopped on Kay’s orders, the branch was about eighteen inches from her feet. Kay smiled continually now, only the smile was a grimace. It was the most terrifying thing Rachel had ever seen. The ancient stone burial vault to which Kay had herded her was partially buried and overgrown with vines and moss, with the name
Chasen
carved into the rusty iron door.

Chasen
. Rachel felt a new wave of horror as she realized that this was the crypt where the organist’s remains were reputed to have been found. Kay, as a part of her mad fantasy, was going to kill her in the vault.

“Don’t move.” Kay stepped around her carefully to assault the lock with a long, ornate iron key that she pulled from a pocket of the cloak. It was slow work, as the lock was old and Kay couldn’t take her eyes off Rachel. Rachel, fighting panic, knew that when the door opened, the fight for her life would begin.

“You didn’t bring the others here.” Rachel strove to keep her voice calm. She hoped to distract Kay from her task long enough to sidle closer to the branch.

“There’s too much hue and cry now. If you were found like the others, I might put myself at risk. Certainly I would put Thomas at risk. I don’t want him to go back to jail.”

“I’ll be missed, Kay. My family will look for me everywhere.”

“But they won’t find you.” The lock clicked audibly, and Kay smiled with satisfaction. “The police will look, but they’ll end up saying you ran away. Just like they did when I killed you before. Just like they did with that boy.”

“That boy—” Rachel stiffened with horror. “You mean Jeremy Watkins? Did you do something to him, too?”

“He saw me.” Kay pulled the key from the lock and pocketed it. “He’s in here. Dead, by now. Or near enough to make no difference.”

“You killed him?” Rachel felt faint again at the thought of poor little Jeremy suffering the same slashing blows as his mother. The same ones that would shortly rain down upon her.

“Not like the others.” For a moment Kay looked almost confused. “I didn’t hate him. He just got in the way. So I hit him and brought him here. I was going to kill him, but I was interrupted. Some fool out-of-towner saw my car parked by the church and pulled in to ask directions.” She chuckled, and the sound was horrible. “It was almost as if God didn’t want me to kill him that night. So then I decided, I’ll let God take him in His own good time. By now, He’s probably done so.”