Gallows Hill

by Lois Duncan

  “My dad’s in a wheelchair,” Charlie said, anticipating the question. “I’m glad you’re going to get to meet him. He doesn’t get out much, and it’s a special event when we have company. But I’ve got to warn you, he’s a character, so don’t let him throw you.”

  They got out of the car, and Charlie led the way up the walkway to the house.

  As soon as they stepped through the door, the explanation for Charlie’s fund of knowledge about unusual subjects became apparent. The people in this house were obviously voracious readers. One whole wall of the living room was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and another wall held shelves to the level of a window ledge. Even the tables at either end of the sofa had shelves built into them to house tall books that wouldn’t fit easily on conventional-sized shelves.

  “Mom? Dad?” Charlie called. “We’ve got company!”

  The woman Sarah had met throwing papers on the first day after Charlie’s injury emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  “Sarah!” she exclaimed. “How nice! I was wondering when Charlie was going to get around to inviting you over!”

  “Don’t tell me it’s Sarah the Marvelous and Magnificent!” a man’s voice called from the back of the house. “Am I finally going to get a look at the wondrous young woman who causes our son to whistle arias as he folds his stack of papers?”

  Mrs. Gorman exclaimed, “Ed, really!” and Charlie looked as if he wanted to sink through the floor as a bearded man in a motorized wheelchair came zooming out of a hallway that Sarah assumed led back to a den or a bedroom.

  “I hope you’ll forgive him, Sarah,” Mrs. Gorman said apologetically. “My husband’s a terrible tease. He’s also a maniac driver, so be ready to leap out of the way, or you’ll have bruises on your kneecaps.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Mr. Gorman said with a good-natured smile that was much like Charlie’s. “Is it permissible to say that now that I see you in person, I’m overwhelmed by my son’s good taste? And my wife is totally wrong about my skills as a driver. I assure you, you’re safe in our home. Just stand close to the walls and suck in your stomach as I whiz by.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Sarah said, attempting a smile, but not quite able to pull it off. Not when confronted so suddenly with the sight of two empty trouser legs knotted at the knees to prevent them from becoming tangled in the wheels of the chair.

  “Charlie didn’t tell you?” Mr. Gorman asked, his voice going suddenly gentle. “Son, I just wish you’d learn that it’s a kindness to totally prepare people instead of doing a halfway job of it. When you do that, they expect to find me in a leg cast. Sarah, please, don’t be upset. It was just an accident at work. I assure you the condition isn’t catching.”

  “Have you kids had lunch yet?” Mrs. Gorman asked, stepping in with practiced efficiency to redirect the conversation to a happier topic. I have a pot of soup on the stove, and I was just getting ready to dish it up. Please, stay and join us, Sarah. Charlie tells us you’re from California, but that’s a massive state. Whereabouts did you live? Were you lucky enough to be by the water?”

  A few minutes later Sarah found herself at the table in the Gormans’ cheery blue and yellow kitchen, swallowing homemade vegetable soup and telling them all about a place called Ventura where the air smelled of salt and sea foam and the winter was heralded by orange blossoms.

  Chapter

  SIXTEEN

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL me?” Sarah asked when they were back in the station wagon headed for her house. “That bookstore that was burned down—your parents were the owners! It was your father who was burned so badly that his legs were amputated!”

  “At the time it didn’t seem necessary to tell you,” Charlie said. “It isn’t something you talk about to somebody you hardly know.”

  “But since then we’ve gotten to be friends!”

  “We’ve had other things to talk about. And the truth is, Sarah, it’s a subject that’s hard for me to handle. My dad wasn’t an unathletic klutz like I am; he used to play tournament tennis. And he loved to dance. He and my mom used to roll up the rugs—we had rugs back then, when we didn’t have to keep the floors clear for the wheelchair—and they’d dance at night after dinner. And they wouldn’t pull the shades. I sometimes think that’s what made people madder than anything. Not only were my folks ‘evil’ because they sold unconventional books, they were ‘evil’ because they had unconventional fun together.”

  “How can they stand to keep living here?” Sarah asked him. “Your father can’t work—”

  “He does better than you’d think,” Charlie said. “He writes book reviews for some pretty prestigious magazines. And Mom works as a bookkeeper. We manage.”

  “What made you suddenly decide that you wanted me to meet them?”

  “It just seemed important. I wanted you to see for yourself what can happen when small-town fanatics go crazy.”

  “Because of the crow in my locker?”

  “I want you to take that seriously.”

  “You don’t mean that you think somebody’s actually going to burn down our house!”

  “We can’t know what might happen,” Charlie said. “There’s something creepy about this town. It’s like there’s a boil beneath the surface, always ready to erupt. I’ve felt that ever since we came here.”

  “You mean you weren’t born here?”

  “I was born in Arizona,” Charlie told her. “My folks had a New Age bookstore in Sedona, a town that’s supposed to be a hub of psychic vibrations. Everything was going great there, when suddenly about five years ago they got this feeling that we had to come here. By ‘here,’ I mean exactly here—to this one particular town, this dot on the map that they’d never even heard of until they flipped through an atlas and found it. They were drawn here by some karmic force, the same way your mother was.”

  “Rosemary wasn’t drawn here by anything but Ted,” Sarah said.

  “I’m sure that’s what she believes.”

  “Why else would she have come here?”

  “I just told you, my parents think they were led here by karma. That’s why they didn’t move away from here after the arson. They feel that one of us made a commitment before birth to perform some duty in Pine Crest, to complete some business that was left unfinished in a former lifetime.”

  “Your parents believe in reincarnation that strongly?” Sarah asked incredulously.

  “They believe in it so strongly that my dad has forgiven the arsonists,” Charlie said. “He figures that in a former lifetime he probably harmed them, and now the score’s even. That’s the reason he’s able to joke around like he does. He doesn’t feel bitter or hold grudges.”

  “If we’ve lived before, why can’t we remember it?” Sarah asked him.

  “Mahatma Gandhi called that nature’s kindness,” Charlie explained. “His theory was that everyday life would be impossible if we carried such a tremendous load of memories around with us. I’m not asking you to buy this, just don’t close your mind to it. Read those books and then see how you feel about it. Once you’ve done that, I’ve got a scenario I want to run past you.”

  “I don’t know that I want to hear it,” Sarah said nervously.

  “You can decide that later,” Charlie said, bringing the station wagon to a stop in front of her house. “For now, though, read those books. I think you’ll find them interesting.”

  “I will,” Sarah assured him. “Thanks for lending them to me. And, please, thank your mother again for me for the great lunch.”

  Ted and Rosemary had returned from their own lunch while she was at the Gormans’ and were out in the yard with Brian. Ted was busily raking the last of the oak leaves into piles, and Brian was rolling around in them like a demented puppy. Rosemary was standing on the sidelines, watching but not participating. To Sarah her mother looked a little bit lonely.

  “So, there you are!” Rosemary called to her as Char
lie drove off and Sarah started toward them across the yard. “We couldn’t imagine where you’d gone. From the looks of that armload, you must have been to the library. Are those for your witch-hunt report?”

  “I decided to switch to another subject,” Sarah said. “I borrowed these books from Charlie. His dad writes book reviews, so they’ve got a huge library.”

  She saw no reason to add that the books she had borrowed from the Gormans had nothing to do with her history paper.

  Ted paused to lean on his rake, seemingly undecided as to which part of her statement to attack first. It didn’t take him long, though, to make up his mind. “You’ve been over to the Gormans’? Frankly, Sarah, I don’t think that’s an appropriate place for you. Charlie’s a nice enough kid, despite his weight problem, but his parents are—how shall I say it?—a little bit odd.”

  “I liked them,” Sarah said. “I think Rosemary would too.” She turned to her mother. “Mrs. Gorman said she’d love to meet you. She works during the week, but she thought some weekend morning you might like to come over and have coffee. She’s going to call you.”

  “How nice!” Rosemary said, her face lighting up with pleasure. “It’s so ridiculously hard to make friends here. The neighbors all seem so busy. They didn’t even invite me in when I stopped by to introduce myself.”

  “I doubt that Mrs. Gorman is your type,” Ted said. “Besides, don’t you think our weekends should be devoted to family? Sarah, what’s this about switching topics for your history paper? It seems pretty late in the game for you to do that. Isn’t that paper due right after Thanksgiving?”

  “I picked the wrong subject,” Sarah said. “It’s not working out. I’m going to do my paper on the Boston Tea Party.”

  Before he could pressure her further, she hurried on past him into the house.

  She expected to find Kyra in the living room watching television or jabbering on the telephone, but the room was empty. As Sarah started down the hall toward her bedroom, she began to allow herself to hope that Brian was the only one of Ted’s children who had come back to the house with him. When she opened the door to her room, however, that hope was vanquished by the sight of Kyra, standing at the bureau rummaging through one of the top drawers.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Sarah demanded. “That happens to be my drawer.”

  Kyra froze and then turned slowly to face her.

  “I was looking for my rhinestone earrings,” she said. “You know—the ones Eric gave me for my birthday.”

  “What would they be doing in my drawer?” Sarah asked coldly.

  “I couldn’t find them anywhere at home,” Kyra said. “Then I remembered that the last time I wore them was the night Dad took me out to dinner and I spent the night here afterward. So I thought that maybe I left them here and you found them.”

  “If that had been the case, I would have dumped them into one of your drawers,” Sarah said. “The last thing I’d ever do is steal a pair of junky earrings with gaudy fake diamonds.” Her gaze quickly took in the rest of the room. “What’s my closet door doing open? Did you think you’d find your earrings on a hanger?”

  “It’s my closet too,” Kyra shot back defensively.

  “In name only! You’ve never kept anything in it.” Sarah walked over to the closet and peered inside. ‘You still don’t have anything in it. You weren’t hanging up stuff of your own, you were rooting through my stuff!” Her eyes flew to the shelf at the back of the closet where she kept her tote bag. “You’ve been into my pack! It’s unzipped!” She glanced down at the floor. “And my shoes! You’ve even been into my shoes—they’re all neatly in line!” She turned back to Kyra, her eyes blazing. “If you’ve been into my bureau and closet, you’ve probably been into my locker at school! You must be the one who left the crow!”

  “What crow?” Kyra asked innocently.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know about that!” Sarah said. “You either did it or you got your girlfriends to do it!”

  “I don’t know anything about any crow,” Kyra insisted.

  “Or the picture of the gallows that was shoved in my locker?” Sarah didn’t bother to wait for a reaction. “What have you done to turn everybody at school against me!”

  “I didn’t have to do anything,” Kyra said. “This is my hometown! I was born here! You don’t belong here! Everybody knows that your mother broke up my parents’ marriage. There’s no way Rosemary could have done that if you hadn’t bewitched my father!”

  “Get out of this room!” Sarah told her, shaking with fury.

  “It’s my room too!” Kyra said, crossing her arms in a gesture of defiance.

  “I warn you, if you stay in this room one more minute, you’re going to regret it!” Sarah gestured toward the paperweight on the desk. “You know the damage I can do with that when I choose to! I can give you the kind of future people only know in nightmares!”

  Kyra turned pale and began to back away from the bureau without even bothering to close the drawer.

  “Make sure that you pass that message along to your friends,” Sarah told her ominously, fueled by the astonishing effect of her ludicrous statement. “Tell them that if they do anything more to Charlie or me, I’ll see that they—that they—” She searched frantically for the ultimate threat. “I’ll see that they go up in flames and lose their legs exactly like poor Mr. Gorman!”

  “It’s true!” Kyra whispered, stumbling backward across the room. “You are just what they say you are! You’re an honest-to-God witch!”

  “You’d better believe it!” Sarah snarled dramatically. Dropping the books on her bed, she stalked toward Kyra with arms extended and hands contorted into claws.

  With a whimper of terror Kyra whirled and bolted from the room.

  Sarah shoved the door closed and sagged against it, panting from exertion, as if she had been engaged in a physical battle. She could not believe the effect that her performance had had on Kyra! The girl had actually believed Sarah was capable of putting a curse on her!

  “I bet that’s the last time she gets into my things,” Sarah muttered victoriously. Kyra, of course, would describe the scene to her cronies, probably embellishing it so that smoke poured out of Sarah’s nostrils, which would end any possibility of Sarah’s forming friendships in Pine Crest. She would finish up the school year alone, except for Charlie, but she wouldn’t be missing much. These weren’t the kind of people she wanted for friends, and college would open the door to a whole new social life.

  Now that the room was her own again, she went over to her bed and, for lack of anything better to do, picked up one of the books Charlie had loaned her. She intended only to skim it, but became so caught up in it that she was startled when Brian rapped on the door to summon her to dinner. When she arrived at the table, she was pleased, but not particularly surprised, to discover that Kyra had pleaded a headache and gone home. As soon as the meal was over and Sarah had done her share of cleaning up the kitchen, she returned to her room and plunged back into her reading.

  “So what did you find out?” Cindy Morris asked eagerly.

  The group of girls was gathered in the kitchen at the rectory. Cindy almost always had the house to herself on Saturday evenings, when her father conducted counseling sessions at the church and her mother presided at meetings of the Women’s Auxiliary.

  Kyra sat stiffly in a straight-backed chair at the end of the kitchen table, both nervous and pleased to be the center of such concentrated attention from the most popular girls in the school.

  “I didn’t find physical evidence,” she admitted reluctantly. “I think I would have, though, if Sarah hadn’t walked in on me. She seemed scared when she found me searching through her drawers.”

  “Oh, damn!” Debbie Rice said. “I was hoping that you might have found a rag doll with pins stuck in it or maybe a melted wax statue—something we could show to Mr. Prue or to Cindy’s father.”

  “I don’t have physical evidence,” Kyra repea
ted. “What I do have, though, is her verbal confession that she’s a witch.”

  “She came right out and told you!” Leanne Bush gasped.

  “Not only that, but she threatened all of our lives,” Kyra said. “She said for me to tell you that if we don’t do exactly what she wants us to, she will—and I’m quoting her exactly—‘give you the kind of future people only know in nightmares.’ She vowed to set us on fire and burn us alive!”

  “I told you!” Misty Lamb exclaimed, beginning to tremble. “She has powers that go beyond anything any of us can imagine! I didn’t realize, though, that she was that evil and vindictive!”

  “She caused your mother to get a concussion,” Cindy reminded her.

  “Well, yes—she did see Mom fall when she looked in the crystal.”

  “She didn’t just see it, she made it happen! There was nobody else in the kitchen. Your mother wouldn’t have gone crashing to the floor unless somebody shoved her.”

  “Danny and his friends have been watching her house,” Jennifer Albritton said. “Danny said one night when the moon was full, Sarah went creeping out to cast spells on her neighbors. She paused in front of each house and put a hex on it. When she caught on to the fact that he was following her, she disappeared! She just vanished into thin air! One moment she was there, and the next she was gone!”

  “Bucky told me that on another night, she opened her front door and stood staring out at them,” Leanne said. “There was nothing to lead her to do that, she just sensed that they were there. She must have sent the black cat out to spy on them, because the minute she appeared in the doorway, it materialized out of nowhere and jumped into her arms. She cuddled it up to her face, and they whispered to each other. Her animal familiar can talk to her!”

  Jennifer turned to Cindy. “Should we go to your father?”

  “We can’t do that without presenting him with evidence,” Cindy said. “Our only real proof that Sarah’s a witch is the way she can tell fortunes and put curses on people. If we told Dad that, we’d have to explain how we know it, which means that we’d have to confess that we got our fortunes told.”