Second Child (19 page)

Brett shrugged. “No. But so what? There’s lots of people who’ve seen her.”

“Name one,” Teri challenged.

Brett stared at her for a moment, then started laughing. “I can’t believe it,” he moaned. “Are we actually arguing about a ghost? It was only a story.”

They were approaching Maplecrest now, and the house was dark except for a light in the master suite on the second floor. “Want to come in for a Coke or something?”

Brett nodded, grinning. “Sure. And then you can walk me home, so D’Arcy doesn’t get me, and then I can walk you home, and we can go back and forth all night.”

“Forget it,” Teri said. “You get a Coke, and then you walk home by yourself. If a ghost gets you, tough.”

They started across the lawn, then froze as a low growl drifted out of the darkness. “What the hell?” Brett said.

“It’s just Blackie,” Teri told him. “He’s so stupid … Blackie! Go home!”

She reached down and picked up a stick, then threw it in the direction from which the growl had come.

There was a yelp, and then Blackie began barking, shattering the quiet of the night. A moment later, from upstairs, they heard Phyllis Holloway’s voice.

“Tag! You get that dog inside! I will
not
have him disturbing the neighbors all night!”

Brett glanced uneasily at Teri. “I think I’ll skip the Coke,” he said. “She sounds pretty pissed off.”

“It’s okay,” Teri protested. “She really likes you.”

But Brett shook his head. “I think I’ll just skip it. It’s pretty late.”

Phyllis yelled at Blackie once more, and then Tag, too, shouted at the dog. After one last bark at Teri and Brett, Blackie trotted off around the corner of the house. A moment later, on the front porch, Brett gave Teri a quick kiss before starting toward the path that would eventually take him home.

Teri let herself in the front door and went through the dining room and butler’s pantry into the kitchen to find a Coke for herself. But as she opened the kitchen door, the acrid smell of Lysol filled her nostrils, and when she turned on the light, she saw that the floor was still damp, as if someone had washed it that night.

Cora?

It couldn’t have been—Cora always left right after supper.

Besides, Cora wouldn’t have left it wet.

She fished a Coke out of the refrigerator, opened it, then went back the way she’d come, mounting the main stairs to the second floor. When she got to the landing, she heard Phyllis calling out to her.

“Teri? Is that you, dear?”

She went to the master suite, whose door was ajar, and tapped softly.

“Come in,” Phyllis said. Teri pushed the door open, and saw her stepmother propped up in bed, a magazine resting on her lap. Phyllis patted the wide expanse of the bed. “Come sit down and tell me all about it.”

Fifteen minutes later Phyllis smiled happily. “I’m so glad you had a good time,” she said, reaching out to take Teri’s hand. “And though I suppose it’s really rather unkind of me, given what happened, I want you to know how happy I am to have you back here again. I’ve always thought you belonged here. You’re—Well, I guess sometimes I used to feel like you should have been my own daughter. Is that terrible of me?”

Teri smiled gently at her stepmother. “I don’t think so,” she said. “But you already have Melissa.”

Phyllis’s smile faded. “Yes,” she said, “I do, don’t I? But Melissa isn’t like you. Oh, I don’t mean I love her any the less for it, but she just doesn’t have your—well, your ability to get along. I do my best, of course, but sometimes I’m not sure she really cares about the things that count. I mean, like tonight,” she went on, her voice taking on a rough edge of annoyance. “What must the other children have thought of her, leaving the party just because she ‘didn’t feel good’?
Every
one has times when they don’t feel good, but you don’t simply leave a party because—” Her words trailed off as she saw an oddly uncertain look come into her stepdaughter’s eyes. “That
was
why she left the bonfire, wasn’t it?”

Teri, her body tingling as she sensed an opportunity, ran her tongue nervously over her lower lip as if she were reluctant to say anything, but finally shook her head. “It—It was the ghost story,” she said at last. “Brett was telling us the story of D’Arcy, and it scared Melissa.”

Phyllis groaned out loud. “Are you telling me she ran away over a silly ghost story?”

Teri shrugged helplessly. “Well, it
was
pretty scary. And nobody really minded.” She cast her eyes carefully downward. “But I suppose I should have gone with her, just to make sure she was all right.”

“Don’t be silly,” Phyllis retorted, her anger at Melissa’s childishness still burning within her. “The only way Melissa is going to learn anything is by having an example.” She smiled fondly at Teri. “And I can’t think of a better one than you. Besides, there’s no reason in the world why your good time should have been spoiled by her childishness.”

“Then you’re not mad at me?” Teri asked, looking shyly at Phyllis once more.

“Mad at you? Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t think I could ever be mad at you.” She squeezed Teri’s hand, then offered her cheek. “Now give me a kiss, and run along.”

A few minutes later, in the bathroom between their bedrooms, Teri pressed her ear against Melissa’s door. She heard nothing, and finally opened the door to slip into Melissa’s room.

As before, Melissa was lying on her back, her eyes open, staring fixedly at the ceiling. Teri stood by the bed for a few minutes, gazing down at her half sister. Finally, her voice all but inaudible, she spoke.

“Melissa?”

No response.

“Melissa, are you awake?”

Once again, no response.

Teri pulled the sheet back. There, fastened securely to Melissa’s wrists and ankles, were the restraints that held her to the bed.

Teri hesitated, and then an idea came to her. “D’Arcy?”

Melissa’s eyes shifted away from the ceiling and came to rest on Teri.

“D’Arcy, can you hear me?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Melissa’s lips moved. “Yes, I can hear you.” A slight chill coursed through Teri as she heard the voice issuing from Melissa’s lips, for though it was recognizable, it had changed somehow. There was a flatness to it, a toneless quality.

Almost, Teri found herself thinking, as if a dead person had spoken.

“Do you know who I am?”

Melissa’s head moved, and then D’Arcy’s odd voice spoke again. “You’re Teri. Melissa told me about you.”

“Did she?” Teri asked, suddenly tense. “What did she say?”

Melissa smiled slightly. “That she loves you very much.”

Teri relaxed. “Will you tell me who you are?”

A moment of silence, then: “Melissa’s friend.”

“Where do you live?”

“Upstairs.”

Teri glanced upward, her heart beating faster. “Then why are you here?”

“Because Melissa needed me.”

“Needed you for what?”

“To protect her from her mother. When her mother’s mad at her, I come and take care of her.”

Teri turned the words over in her mind, then spoke again. “But what happens to Melissa? Where does she go?”

“She goes to sleep,” D’Arcy replied.

“What about you?” Teri asked. “Don’t you want to go to sleep, too?”

D’Arcy was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “When Melissa’s tied up, I have to watch out for her.”

Once again Teri thought for a while. And then, working carefully, she began to unfasten the restraints from Melissa’s ankles.

A moment later she’d freed her half sister’s wrists as well. “There,” she said. “Now you can go back upstairs.”

But Melissa’s eyes had already closed, and now her breathing had taken on the deep rhythms of sleep.

Her lips curving in a dark smile, Teri pulled the sheet back over Melissa. Silently, she slipped away, leaving Melissa alone in the darkness.

Alone, and released from her bonds.…

The bonfire had burned down to no more than a pile of glowing embers, and the breeze from the sea had taken on a dank chill. Wisps of fog were swirling over the beach, and as she glanced around, Ellen Stevens shivered slightly. “Let’s go home,” she said to Cyndi Miller. From the other side of the fire pit, his face barely visible in the reddish light of the coals, Kent Fielding grinned evilly.

“Scared?” he asked.

Cyndi Miller shook her head. Yet as the breeze died away and the fog began to thicken, she felt her nervousness increase.

But it was stupid—she’d grown up here, and never felt scared on the beach at all. And all her life she’d run back and forth between her friends’ houses and her own, threading her way through the patches of woods with never a second thought.

But tonight, somehow, it was different.

It was the ghost story.

And it was stupid, because it certainly wasn’t the first
time she’d heard it. In fact, she and Ellen had been talking about it only the other day.

Except that when they’d been talking about the ghost of D’Arcy then, the sun had been shining brightly and they’d been lying around the pool at the club, surrounded by their friends.

Now it was night, and the fog was closing in around her, and suddenly everything looked different.

Telling herself she was being stupid, she resolutely got to her feet and zipped up the light jacket she’d put on an hour ago. “Why should I be scared?” she asked, more to hear the sound of her own voice than anything else.

“Because of D’Arcy,” Kent told her, his grin broadening. “Look around—it’s just the kind of night she likes. She can sneak through the fog, searching for her bloody hand, and no one can see her.” His voice dropped, growing more menacing. “In fact, she could sneak up behind you, and reach out …”

Cyndi felt the skin on the back of her neck begin to crawl, as if there were someone behind her, reaching toward her, but she refused to give Kent the satisfaction of turning around to look.

“…  she could grab you by the neck …” Kent went on.

And suddenly Cyndi felt fingers closing around her throat.

She screamed, jerked away, then spun around just as Jeff Barnstable burst out laughing.

“Gotcha!”

Her face flushing hotly, Cyndi glared at Ellen Stevens. “Did you know what he was doing?” she demanded.

Ellen, unable to suppress her own giggles, nodded. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “It was just too good to pass up. The way you were staring at Kent. And he kept talking while Jeff sneaked up on you—”

Suddenly, Cyndi, too, was giggling. “Well, if D’Arcy really is out there, it won’t be us she comes after,” she said, shifting her glare to Jeff and Kent. “After all, it’s boys she’s mad at, isn’t it?” She turned to Ellen. “Are you ready?”

Ellen nodded, shoving the last of her things into her beach bag.

“Sure you don’t want us to walk you home?” Kent asked.

Cyndi eyed him archly. “I think I’d rather have D’Arcy chase me than have to fight you off,” she said.

Leaving Jeff and Kent to shovel sand onto the last embers of the fire, the two girls started along the beach. A few seconds later, when Cyndi turned around, the boys, and the fire pit as well, had disappeared into the thickening fog.

Once again Cyndi shivered and moved closer to Ellen. “I—I’m not sure I like this,” she admitted, keeping her voice low to make sure Kent and Jeff couldn’t hear her.

“Oh, come on,” Ellen replied. “It was only a ghost story, and there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

And yet as she, too, peered into the dense gray mist that covered the beach now, she felt a tiny flash of doubt. But that’s stupid, she told herself. There
aren’t
any such things as ghosts.

But what else might be out there, concealed in the fog, waiting for them?

“L-Let’s get off the beach,” she said out loud, her own voice dropping to the same level as Cyndi’s. “The fog’s never so bad in the woods.”

They turned to the left and walked a few paces, and suddenly Cyndi felt water swirling around her feet. “What—” she began, then shook her head as she realized what had happened. “We got turned around,” she said, reaching out and taking Ellen’s hand. “Come on.”

They turned their backs to the water and started across the beach once more.

Even the soft lapping of the surf was oddly muffled by the thick, nearly black mist that had settled around them. Cyndi found herself straining to pierce the fog with her eyes, but no matter how she tried, she could see nothing. Her foot struck something, and she tripped, nearly losing her balance.

“Are you okay?” Ellen whispered.

Cyndi nodded. “I think these are the steps that go between the Fieldings’ and the Chalmerses’. How come you didn’t bring a flashlight?”

“Who thought we’d need one?” Ellen countered. “I mean, there wasn’t any fog last night.”

They moved up the wooden steps that led from the beach to the path that formed the only boundary between the Fielding property and the ten acres next door that the Chalmerses owned. They came to a stand of pine trees, and a few yards farther on, as Cyndi had hoped, the fog began to thin. Now they could see the trunks of trees around them, though when they looked up, the treetops seemed to fade away into nothingness.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Ellen whispered. “I mean, it’s like everything just ends all around us.”

They moved quickly along the path, and after a few moments, off to the right, they could see the Chalmers house looming out of the fog. Then, as they watched, the fog grew thicker and the house slowly disappeared, as if it had been swallowed up by the mists. A tiny gasp caught in Cyndi’s throat. “Come on,” she whispered, her voice taking on a new sense of urgency. “Let’s get to your house.”

They scurried along the path for a few more yards, but although they were moving inland, the fog seemed only to thicken. And then, like the cold breath of the living dead, the breeze began again.

It was nearly pitch-black now. Something slapped against Ellen’s cheek. She yelped with shock more than pain, and as she stopped short on the trail, Cyndi collided with her from behind.

“What’s wrong? How come you stopped?”