by John Saul
“What was that all about?” Angel finally asked.
Seth shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “They live down the street from me.” He picked up his fork and poked at the food on the plate in front of him.
“But how come they called you Beth?” Angel pressed.
Seth’s face flushed again. “How should I know?” he asked. “Maybe it’s just because I’m not very good at sports.”
Angel frowned. “That’s the name, isn’t it?” she asked. “The one you wouldn’t tell me yesterday.”
Seth nodded but said nothing.
“It isn’t any worse than ‘Mangy—’ ” Angel began, but Seth didn’t let her finish.
“Can we just talk about something else?”
“Like what?” Angel challenged.
“Like how that stuff got on your mirror last night,” Seth replied. “’Cause I know it wasn’t me.” He pulled a piece of paper from his notebook and pushed it across the table. “Draw what was on the mirror.”
Angel sat perfectly still, gazing at Seth, but when he said nothing else, and wouldn’t even meet her gaze, she finally fished around in her backpack, found a pen, and began to draw, doing her best to recreate the image she’d found on the mirror this morning. When she was done, she pushed it toward him.
Seth gazed at the drawing for a long time. “It looks like someone going down stairs,” he said at last. “But what’s that square under the stairs?”
Angel gazed at him in exasperation. “How should I know? I don’t even know if the jagged line is supposed to be stairs!”
“Well, what else could it be?” Seth argued.
“I don’t know! Maybe it’s supposed to be lightning or something?”
“That’s not what lightning looks like,” Seth shot back. Picking up the pen, he drew the kind of zigzag line that depicted lightning in every comic strip he’d ever seen. “Does that look like what was on your mirror?”
Angel shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter anyway, because it had to have been me that made the marks. I mean, the lipstick was all over my fingers, and my sheets and pillowcase, and everything.”
“Well, it won’t hurt for us to at least look, will it? And with all the stories about your house . . .” His voice trailed off. Then: “It just seems like we should try to find out, that’s all.”
There was a burst of laughter from Zack and Heather’s table, and a moment later Jared Woods was once again making the ugly sucking and kissing sounds. Then Chad Jackson joined in, and then Zack and the rest of the boys at his table took up the chorus. As the mocking sounds echoed through the cafeteria, Seth’s face turned crimson.
“Let’s just leave,” Angel said, putting the pen back in her backpack.
Seth shook his head. “That’s what they want.”
“So what are we supposed to do, just sit here and pretend it isn’t happening?”
Seth looked directly into her eyes. “Isn’t that what you did back in Eastbury?”
Angel wanted to shake her head but knew she couldn’t, because back in Eastbury it had been the same as it was here and there had never been anything she could do about it except pretend it wasn’t happening.
Just like Seth was pretending the laughter that was steadily building around them wasn’t directed at him.
“Why won’t they just leave us alone?” she finally asked. “What did we ever do to them?”
Seth said nothing, because he knew the answer as well as Angel did.
Neither of them had done anything at all.
They just had to deal with it.
Or figure out a way to make it stop.
Chapter 19
ELL? WAS I RIGHT? AREN’T YOU JUST LOVING YOUR house?” Joni Fletcher asked, fixing Myra Sullivan with a look of such utter triumph that Myra half wished she hadn’t agreed to have lunch with her sister. “I’m telling you,” Joni plunged on, “it was an absolute steal!”
The dining room of the Roundtree Country Club had barely begun to fill, and Joni’s final word seemed to bounce off the walls, echoing through the room like a gunshot. Three women at the next table—women Myra had never seen before—turned to look at them, and Myra felt her face flush with embarrassment. She’d known it was a mistake to come here; she’d never felt comfortable with Joni’s country club friends. And it wasn’t just because she had nothing to wear, though she was honest enough to admit that her wardrobe—or the lack of it—was at least a factor. Nor was it the fact that she knew there was no chance at all that she and Marty would ever be members here. For Myra Sullivan, the biggest problem was the people who were members here.
At the moment, that applied to the three women who had looked at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable, then pointedly looked away again without even acknowledging her presence when she nodded to them. They could have at least nodded back, she thought, but she rejected her own notion. “We must always be charitable to others,” Father Raphaello had always said, “even when others are uncharitable to us.” I’m sure they’re very nice women, she told herself, shifting her attention back to her sister, who seemed not to have noticed the other women at all.
“I’m telling you, Myra—you owe me big-time for this one, if I do say so myself.”
“And don’t you always say so?” a new voice said. Myra looked up to see two more women standing just behind her, both of them as perfectly dressed as Joni Fletcher. One was a pretty blonde whose hair was cut in the kind of pageboy that never seemed to go out of style for the kind of women who always fit perfectly into places like the Roundtree Country Club. The other woman had glowing auburn hair drawn up into a severe twist. A square-cut emerald hung from a simple gold chain around her neck, and she wore a smile that looked no more real than the color of her hair. It was the second woman who had just spoken. “I’m Gloria Dunne, and this is Jane Baker.”
“I’m My—” Myra began, but Jane Baker didn’t let her finish.
“Oh, you don’t have to tell us who you are—Joni’s been an absolute bore on the subject for simply weeks now! And I want you to know how much I admire you for buying the house out at the Crossing!”
“We all do,” Gloria Dunne added as she and Jane Baker took the two vacant chairs at the table. “Although frankly, I can’t imagine living there. If even half the stories are true—”
“For heaven’s sake, Gloria,” Jane Baker cut in. “We were all children!”
“I’m not saying I believe all of them,” Gloria Dunne said. “But you know what they say—where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
“Now there’s an unfortunate choice of words,” Jane remarked, signaling the waiter with a single uplifted finger, and getting an immediate response. “A martini, Gloria?” she asked. Then she glanced at Myra and Joni. “Anything for you two, or is Gloria going to be drinking alone again?”
“I’ll have iced tea,” Gloria Dunne said, her voice as tight as the twist in her hair.
When the waiter finished taking their orders, Myra turned back to Gloria Dunne. “What did you mean, ‘half the stories’?” she asked.
Gloria Dunne’s perfectly shaped left eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. “You mean Joni didn’t tell you?” Her gaze shifted to Joni Fletcher. “I thought there were full disclosure laws in Massachusetts,” she said, a little too sweetly.
“There are,” Joni replied. “But they only apply to actual circumstances, not rumors.”
Myra’s eyes clouded. “Rumors? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing!” Joni declared before either Gloria Dunne or Jane Baker could speak. “Just stories kids tell—you know, the same kind we used to tell. The man with the hook? The girl in the prom dress on the lonely road? That kind of stuff.”
“Not exactly,” Gloria Dunne said. Ignoring Joni Fletcher’s glare, she turned to Myra. “I’m assuming she told you about the murders,” she said. Myra nodded. “Did she also tell you about everything else?”
“Everything else?” Myra echoed. “I’m not sure what
you mean.”
“I mean,” Gloria Dunne said, “the fact that no one has ever lived in that house for more than a few months at a time.”
“Why?” Myra asked.
“The ghost,” Gloria Dunne pronounced. When Jane Baker uttered an annoyed groan, Gloria’s expression hardened. “Groan if you want, Jane, but I remember when you wouldn’t walk past that house even if you were on the other side of the street!”
“When I was eight,” Jane Baker shot back.
“When we were both fifteen,” Gloria corrected her. “And it wasn’t just us either.” She shifted her attention back to Myra. “I’m sure you don’t believe in ghosts, and I’m not saying I do either. But that house—” She took a deep breath, then let it out in a deep sigh. “All I can tell you is that no one ever seems to be able to live in it very long. And there are all kinds of stories of people seeing and hearing things out there.”
“What kind of things?” Myra pressed.
Gloria shrugged. “All the usual things—noises at night, people smelling smoke, seeing things. I think half the people who ever lived there wound up killing themselves—”
“Gloria!” Joni Fletcher cut in, and now she sounded genuinely angry. “You don’t have any idea if any of that is true or not!”
“Everyone in town knows perfectly well—” Gloria began, but Joni didn’t let her finish.
“Everyone in town knows perfectly well that one man cracked up, and believe me, I told Myra and Marty all about it when I showed them the house. The rest is just rumor, and frankly, I’m surprised you’re spreading them.” As Gloria’s eyes darkened with anger, Jane Baker quickly stepped in.
“Every town has its haunted house,” she said, smiling at Myra. “And all the kids are terrified, and all the adults—except, apparently, this one”—she tilted her head toward Gloria Dunne—“know they’re just stories. This is not the seventeenth century, and no one believes in ghosts and hobgoblins and witches and devils and all the rest of the stuff that scares kids half to death. So why don’t we just leave it at the fact that you and your family have bought what has always been the ‘haunted house’ in Roundtree, and assume that now that we have a nice, normal family living in it, the silly stories will finally dry up and blow away.”
“Hear, hear,” Joni Fletcher said, raising her water glass.
Gloria Dunne started to say something else, but once again Jane Baker preempted her. “Why don’t we talk about something else entirely? For instance, what about the Family Day that’s coming up this weekend?”
“Family Day?” Myra asked.
“Here at the club,” Jane Baker explained. “It’s wonderful fun—this month there’s a father-son golf tournament and a mother-daughter tennis tournament, then a barbecue and a dance. Or there’s a barbecue if it’s not too cold, and so far it never has been—Indian summer always seems to last just long enough to cover Family Day.”
Myra shook her head. “I’m afraid my husband doesn’t play golf, and neither my daughter nor I play tennis.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jane Baker declared. “I don’t play tennis either, so you and I and your daughter will hang around the pool while the boys and men play golf.”
“But I really don’t think—” Myra began.
Once again Jane Baker took charge. “It doesn’t matter what you think,” she said. “You’re coming, and that’s final. Everybody at the club has been dying to meet you and your husband, and I’m sure all the kids will love your daughter. So that’s that.”
The waiter arrived with their food, and Myra nodded mutely, knowing there was no way out.
Chapter 20
ON’T LISTEN, ANGEL TOLD HERSELF. IT’S ONLY A sound and it doesn’t matter. She was standing at her locker, trying to concentrate on the combination, but every time she worked the dial, the sound would come again. She knew who was doing it—Jared Woods, whose locker was only about twenty feet down the hall from hers. Seeing him standing in the hall when she first came up the stairs, she almost turned back, but she’d left the heaviest of her books in her locker that morning, and now she needed it. Steeling herself, she’d mounted the last stair and started down the hall, staying as close to the opposite wall as possible. As she passed behind him, she thought maybe he hadn’t seen her. But then, just as she started turning the dial on her locker, it began.
The same ugly-sounding kissing noise he and Chad Jackson had been making in the cafeteria.
She tried to just shut it out, but lost track of the combination, and when she tried to lift the handle of the locker, nothing happened. She started over again, but the sound seemed even louder, and she lost track of the number of times she turned the dial between the second number and the third.
Then, as she was starting over for the fourth time, she felt someone behind her. She froze, her fingers still on the dial, and stole a glance down the hall. Jared Woods was still there, still making the disgusting sounds with his lips, but now he was staring at her, thrusting his hips toward her as if—
The kind of movement Jared was making shoved against her from behind, slamming her up against her locker. Before she could react, she heard Chad Jackson’s mocking voice, “This what you want? Huh?” and the awful memory of yesterday and last night rose up in Angel’s mind.
Once again she heard her father’s accusing voice: Whore!
Once again she felt the touch of the unseen hand pressing against her breast in the darkness of the night. Now she recalled her mother saying: Filth! You will not speak it . . . you will go to church and confess your sins to Father Mike!
Confess . . . confess her sins . . . confess her guilt. Maybe it was true; maybe all of it was her fault. Maybe—
No! It wasn’t her fault! She hadn’t done anything!
Bracing herself against the bank of lockers, Angel shoved hard, but Chad anticipated her move and suddenly stepped away. Losing her balance, Angel tumbled to the floor, her left elbow striking the hardwood, her backpack skidding down the hall. As a sharp stab of pain shot from her elbow down into her hand, she sat up.
There were more kids in the hallway now, and they were staring at her.
Jared Woods was still making the horrible noises.
Then Heather Dunne rolled her eyes, shook her head, and turned away.
A few seconds later the hallway was empty, and even the ugly sounds died away as Jared Woods headed down the same stairs Angel had come up only a couple of minutes before. The sound of laughter exploded up the stairwell, and tears of humiliation streamed down Angel’s cheeks as she struggled to her feet, finally managed to open her locker, and found her history book.
The bell had already rung by the time she got to her classroom, and a ripple of not quite muted laughter ran through the room as she slunk into her seat.
The afternoon dragged on, and as Angel moved from one classroom to another, she did her best to ignore what was going on around her. But what Chad Jackson and Jared Woods had begun in the cafeteria seemed to have spread through the school like a virus, and each break between classes was worse than the one before. Wherever she went, the kissing sounds followed her, and even though no one else shoved up against her the way Chad Jackson had, more and more of the boys began thrusting their hips toward her as she approached and bursting into laughter as she passed.
Laughter, and more of the increasingly obscene-sounding noises.
Maybe it was her fault—maybe she was doing something. But what?
The day wore on and grew steadily worse, until by the end of the last period, which it seemed to Angel would never come, all she wanted was for the ground to open beneath her feet and swallow her up. Knowing that wasn’t going to happen, she simply sat in her chair when the final bell rang, letting all her classmates drain out of the classroom ahead of her. At least half the boys made the sucky-kissy sound as they passed her, and three of them thrust their crotches into her face, but only after making sure Mrs. Holt wasn’t looking. Don’t cry, she told herself. Just act like nothing’s t
he matter. The seconds turned into minutes as the sounds of laughter and chatter and slamming lockers rose then slowly began to die away. Only when the corridor had fallen completely silent did Angel finally reach under her desk, pull out her backpack, and begin stowing her books away.
“Angel? Is something the matter?”
She froze, then shook her head.
“You’re sure?” Mrs. Holt pressed. “It seemed like some of the boys were acting—well, a little strange.”
“I—I didn’t notice anything,” Angel stammered, and heard the quaver in her own voice as she stood by her desk, ready to leave.
“I don’t know,” the teacher went on. “It certainly seemed as though—”
“They were just teasing me,” Angel broke in, searching for a way to escape before she had to tell the teacher about what had happened to her since lunchtime. “Because I’m new.” Finally she turned and hurried to the door, risking a glance at the teacher. Mrs. Holt’s brow was furrowed, and Angel could see the pity in her eyes. “Can I go now?” she asked.
Mrs. Holt seemed on the verge of saying something else, but then nodded, and Angel darted out before the teacher had a chance to change her mind.
She headed toward the stairs leading to her locker on the second floor, but then changed her mind—if any of the boys were still waiting to torment her, they’d be upstairs where her locker was. Veering away from the stairs, she headed instead for the front door, pushed her way through the inner set, then paused in the vestibule to peer out into the afternoon sunlight. Seeing no one except Seth Baker, who was on the other side of the street, looking like he might be waiting for her, she pushed the outer door open and stepped out onto the landing at the top of the steps.
She was about to wave to Seth when she heard the awful kissing sound.
Whirling, she saw her cousin standing a few feet away, just far enough to the side so he’d been invisible from inside the doors. As she glared at him, Zack Fletcher thrust his crotch forward, pursed his lips, and made the disgusting sound one more time.
