The Dreamstalker (11 page)

Chapter 13

Alysia Holland died of natural causes.

That was the news Mrs. Holland called to relay to Karen. “I didn't want you to hear it from anyone but us, Karen. Will you pass the news along at school? I know there must be gossip.”

“What—what do you mean, natural?” Karen twisted the edge of her sheets into a knot. She was still in bed on Monday morning. She hadn't slept late, hadn't slept much at all, but she was not planning to go to school. She'd have to tell people later.

“We let them perform an autopsy on Alysia. We couldn't stand not knowing how or why she had died. We knew she had a heart murmur. Lots of people do. What we didn't know is that it was anything to worry about. The doctor had told us it wasn't. Even now he's puzzled. He can't believe it, but he can't find anything else that's a possibility.”

“Alysia had heart trouble?” That was something old people have. Old people die of heart attacks.

“All the doctor could conclude was that she died of a heart attack. But he did say the—the—” Mrs. Holland paused for a moment. “The expression on her face suggested she was frightened, and that could have caused her heart to give out.”

Karen bit her lip. She had one more question. “What about the way she was dressed?”

“Well, that remains a mystery, and we may never have the answer. The police did trace that cape to the drama department at the school. It usually hung in the costume loft.”

“But how did Alysia get it? Why was she wearing it? And the paint—what about the red paint?”

“We don't know. How are you doing, Karen? Are you all right?”

That showed the kind of person Alysia's mother was. It was her daughter who had died, and here she was asking if Karen was all right. “I—I think so. This is so hard.” Karen felt as though the twisted sheet were knotted in her throat.

“We have to celebrate Alysia's life, Karen. All that she had done and been up to now. Would you like to read something at the memorial service, or say anything?”

“I don't know if I can, Mrs. Holland.”

“Well, think about it. We're going to wait until next Saturday. That'll give you some time.”

Karen felt as if she'd need about a million years to accept this. Both of her best friends dead? In the space of a couple of weeks? It wasn't right. It just wasn't right.

She sat there until mid-morning, alternating between thinking and trying not to think.

On Saturday night Mrs. Holland had covered Karen with some blankets and left her asleep on the couch in the Holland living room. Mr. Holland had brought Karen home late Sunday morning. She felt ashamed that she had slept until eleven o'clock, but it was because of whatever the doctor had given her. She would never have slept that long otherwise.

The rest of the day, she had sat or lain in her bed, locking her bedroom door. She wouldn't talk to any of her family. Kerr had tried to get her to come out a couple of times. She'd just shouted, “Go away.”

Today the house was quiet, blanketed with fresh snow. The outside world was overcast, and soft flakes fluttered down intermittently. There was a part of Karen that was sure the sun would never shine again. Then, despite the circumstances, she began to get hungry. It would be all right to eat, she knew. Alysia would have wanted her to keep going.

She slipped quietly down to the kitchen, prepared a tray and took it back to her room: a pot of tea, toast spread with raspberry jam, an orange she had peeled while the water boiled. She had placed two cocktail napkins on the tray. They pictured tiny, white clouds, a colorful rainbow on a backdrop of turquoise blue. Cheerful napkins. She stared at the soft folded paper. The design reminded her of a more typical Colorado sky.

Eating slowly, she stared out the window, watching each flake float past the glass square, then disappear. The jam was sweet on her tongue, the orange juicy and chewy. The tea in its fragile china cup was the color of winter grapes, not quite brown, not quite burgundy. It was just the correct temperature, warming her inside as it slid down her throat and into her stomach.

After she ate, she pulled her journal from the drawer in her bedside table. She felt she had to write down some facts. There was some connection between Gordon Anderson's death and Alysia's. The thought had come uninvited—or perhaps not. Maybe she was sitting there waiting for it. Yellow paint, red paint, the way Alysia was dressed, Gordon was not dressed. What did it mean? And Jesse—was there a connection of these two deaths to his? She tried to think about this objectively, as if she didn't know any of the people involved. Jesse shouldn't have died. Alysia had a heart murmur, but she shouldn't have died of it. What did that mean?

What did the three people who died have in common? Two were close to her, but certainly not Gordon. Gordon had no friends. He was close to no one. She wondered if he was close to his mother or father? It seemed a shame for a person to go through life with no friends.

Karen had no friends left.

She let go of that thought quickly. She had Kerr, even though they hadn't been as close this year. Other people liked her. No one had liked Gordon.

All the people who died had been in the special gifted and talented class, the psychology class. The class taught by Dr. McArthur for college credit. The class they had elected to take, in addition to their other school work.

They had been talking about dreams in the class. Karen had dreamed about each person who died, just before he or she died. Those three dreams were the only dreams she had remembered during the whole class study.

Did Dr. McArthur have anything to do with the deaths? That seemed absurd, but she couldn't rule out anything.

The phone rang. Should she answer it? It might be Mrs. Holland again. Slowly she picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Karen, this is Captain Martin, Evergreen Police Department. I'd like to come over and talk to you, unless you would rather come down to the department.”

What did he want? To ask more questions? She had no more answers. She didn't want to go out. “I—I guess you can come over here.”

By the time she had gotten dressed, Captain Martin was there. Her mother had let him in. Kerr came into the living room the same time she did.

“Why do you want to talk to my sister again?” he asked. “She's very upset. You'll just upset her more.”

“I'll try not to, Mr. Newton,” Captain Martin said. “I feel it's necessary to find out as much as I can about this case. If you'll excuse us.” Martin dismissed Kerr. “But I may want to talk to you later, so don't leave the house.”

Kerr hesitated, as if he wasn't going to leave Karen alone.

“Go ahead, Kerr. It's all right.”

“I'll be upstairs. Will you call me if you need me, Karen?”

“Yes, Kerr. I promise I will.”

“You two are very close, aren't you?” Martin observed.

“We're twins, Captain.” She tried to relax in a chair near the fire. She felt as if she'd never be warm again.

“Karen, I need to ask you some things I may have asked before. Why did you think someone came in through Gordon Anderson's window?”

“I told you that already. He always left his window cracked, no matter how cold it was. Everyone knew that.”

“Karen, they didn't. But you're right: Mr. and Mrs. Anderson confirmed that he had a phobia about not getting enough fresh air. They had tried to convince him it was silly in the dead of winter, but even when they closed the window, he'd get up and open it before he went to sleep. They figure he did that the night he died.”

“But he had an asthma attack anyway?”

“It looks that way.”

“Maybe he said he did that, and I remembered it. We talked about phobias once in our psychology class. That must be it. How could I know it otherwise?”

“I don't know. Don't you think it's kind of strange that you dreamed about all three of these people before they died?”

“Of course I think it's strange. I don't understand it any more than you do. What are you saying, Captain Martin? That I had something to do with these people dying?”

There was silence for a few seconds. “Karen, I don't know you very well, but I don't really think you're capable of killing three people, two of whom were close to you. Do you?”

Not without knowing it
. She couldn't do that, could she? The strangest feeling came over her. Could she be losing her mind in some way? Could she be doing things she didn't know she was doing, didn't remember doing? Was she really doing this and having her only memory of it in a dream? She rubbed her forehead and took a deep breath. Why? Why would she do this? No! No, she didn't, she couldn't. She knew she couldn't have hurt Jesse or Alysia under any circumstances.

“No!” Suddenly she was angry that he'd even think that. “No, I couldn't have! How could you even think that?”

“I have to think about everything, Karen. Sometimes people are sick. They do things they wouldn't do under normal circumstances.”

“I wouldn't kill anyone—especially my friends—under
any
circumstances. Besides, the doctor says Alysia died of a heart attack. And Gordon choked because of his asthma. You're trying to say that someone—me—killed them? That they were—were—”

“Murdered, Karen. Say it. I don't know how, I don't know who, but I don't think three deaths like this, so close together, are a coincidence. I think someone is responsible. How well do you know Dr. McArthur?”

Karen gasped. That idea was almost as crazy as her being a murderer. But she calmed down and thought about it. Hadn't she had the same idea earlier herself?

“Not very well. He volunteered, or was hired, or something to teach our special class. We all agreed we were interested in psychology.”

“The study of human behavior. How people react when friends are dying.”

“He'd have to be crazy. He's a bit strange—but Captain Martin, I can't think he's murdering his students. Can you? I can't believe he'd kill us off one by one to see how we'd react. That would be like using us as human guinea pigs, laboratory animals.” Karen closed her eyes and pressed on her temples. This conversation was getting them nowhere.

The police chief didn't answer. She stared at the fire, snapping and crackling merrily. She had always enjoyed an open fire in winter. It made a room cozy, a house welcome during a storm. But there was nothing cozy or comforting about the discussion she was having with Captain Martin.

“Dr. McArthur did know Alysia was afraid of sharks,” she said.

“Someone had to have come in the house and dressed her that way. He or she must have had a key, or have been there already. No one broke in.”

“Now you're back to saying it was me.” How could she be so calm about that possibility? Because she didn't believe it, that was why. She couldn't believe it and stay sane. But maybe she wasn't sane. That's what Martin was saying.

“Dr. McArthur could have known that Gordon was afraid of choking,” she continued. “That he left his window open. We filled out a questionnaire when the class first started. It had all sorts of things on it—favorite color, favorite pastime, fears we had, personal things. He said he wanted to get to know each of us really well. He made appointments to talk to people alone. Interview them, explore personalities. He said he was really interested in the adolescent mind. We told him we didn't like to be called adolescents. We were past that. He said some of us might be, but others probably weren't.”

“Did you ever talk to him? Alone?”

“Yes. I enjoyed it. He's a very smart man. And I was thinking I might want to major in psychology in college. He was also fascinated by twins—twinship, he called it. He talked to me once about that, and he talked to Kerr alone, then both of us together.”

“Would you talk to him again now? Make an appointment to talk about your dreams, pretend they're bothering you?”

“I don't have to pretend, Captain Martin.”

“All the better. And, Karen, if the connection, the common denominator, for these deaths is this class, you realize you might be in some danger, don't you?”

Karen hadn't thought of it. It didn't take her long to say, “I'd rather think I'm in danger from someone else than think I had something to do with Alysia's and Jesse's dying and don't even know it. What do you want me to ask him?”

“I don't know. Talk to him and see what he says. Just see what you can find out. Use your intuition. Ask him—tell him I've suggested you could be doing this and not know about it. See what he says.”

Karen remembered something. “Captain Martin, I lost it in class last week. Dr. McArthur said there are no bad dreams. That everything in a dream is a part of you, like a secret desire, I guess. I broke down and said maybe I had caused Jesse's death by dreaming about it. Dr. McArthur tried to calm me down. He said I didn't, that he knew I didn't. He seemed so sure of it.”

“Okay, that's the sort of thing I want you to look for. Say anything that comes to your mind about all this. Get his reaction. Try to remember everything he says.”

Karen watched Captain Martin leave. She didn't know whether to feel better or worse. She was glad for someone to talk to, even if that someone had suggested that she might be psychotic. That she might be a murderer and not even know it.

She was connected to all of this. She was sure of that. It was the only thing she was sure of. It gave her some comfort that she could help Captain Martin in his investigation, that there was something she could do. She'd go upstairs and call Dr. McArthur right away. She'd make an appointment to talk to him.

Chapter 14

As an experiment, I'd say this is paying off beautifully. In fact, there's no doubt of my being able to kill whomever I please. I have never been so fascinated by anything in my life. And the power! I feel as if everyone around me is totally in my power
.