Darkness

by John Saul

  Barbara closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself in preparation for the words she knew Mary was about to utter.

  Her fault.

  Whatever had happened—and she was certain it was bad—was her fault.

  She’d known it almost from the instant she’d found Kelly’s empty bed. In that first eternal moment of terror, she had heard her own words echoing in her mind.

  Maybe Jenny and I should have gone looking for her.

  Her own words.

  As the words rang in her head, she’d known what had happened. Jenny hadn’t been asleep at all. Instead, she’d crept out of bed and sneaked back onto the landing to listen.

  She had heard what Barbara herself had said.

  And gone looking for Kelly.

  How long had she been gone?

  Hours, certainly.

  Craig had called Tim Kitteridge, finding the police chief at his desk, and explained what had happened. Then, while Kitteridge began reorganizing the plans he’d been making through the long night, Craig, Ted, and Carl had gone out once more. Craig had insisted that it would be all right, that this time, at least, they didn’t have to worry about the swamp.

  Even in broad daylight, and with her father in the boat with her, Jenny hated the swamp. Her child’s imagination saw alligators and snakes everywhere; to her the swamp was a place where every living thing was a threat, and when her friends told her stories of other things that might live there—ogres and ghosts, zombies and witches—she sometimes lay awake all night, afraid even to sleep for fear of dreaming about the swamp.

  “She’ll stay by the canal,” Craig had insisted. “You know how she is—I had to take her to Judd Duval’s house myself last year and prove to her that Judd isn’t a witch. She’s probably hiding somewhere, three blocks away, too terrified of the dark even to come back here.”

  Barbara had tried to believe her husband’s words, but after he’d left with Ted and Carl, she’d sat silently, certain in her heart that something dreadful had happened to her daughter, and that it was her own words that had sent the little girl out into the night.

  At last she forced herself to face Mary Anderson. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

  Mary crossed to her, crouching down by the chair in which she sat, and took her hand. “It was Tim Kitteridge,” she said. “He just heard a call from Judd Duval. H-He’s found Jenny.”

  A flash of hope surged through Barbara, then ebbed away as quickly as it had come. The sadness in Mary’s voice betrayed the truth.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” she said, her voice breaking.

  Mary bit her lip, praying that perhaps Kitteridge had misunderstood the radio call he’d overheard. If Judd was taking Jenny to the hospital, there must still be hope. “I—I don’t know. Apparently Judd found her in one of the canals—”

  Barbara gasped, her right hand covering her mouth.

  “He’s taking her to the hospital,” Mary said quickly, recognizing her own cowardice in being unable to tell Barbara exactly what Kitteridge had told her.

  Barbara clutched at Mary’s hands. “I have to get there,” she said, lurching to her feet. “My baby—”

  “I’ll drive you,” Mary said.

  Michael was on his feet again, this time moving toward the patio door. “I’ll find Dad—”

  “No!”

  The single word resounded through the room like a shot. Michael froze. “No, Michael,” Barbara went on, her voice breaking. “I can’t stand the idea of you going out there again. I want you with me …” Her words trailed off into a sob, and Michael went to his mother, clumsily slipping his arms around her.

  “I’ll go,” Kelly said. Then, before her own mother could say anything, she spoke again. “Don’t worry, Mom. I won’t go anywhere near the swamp. Dad and Grandpa said they were going to look by the canals, and if I can’t find them, I’ll get help. Just take Mrs. Sheffield to the hospital. Please?”

  Mary hesitated, but then made up her mind. There was something different about Kelly, as if the hours in the swamp had not only terrified her, but made her grow up in some strange way. “All right,” she agreed. As Kelly left through the patio door, Mary led Barbara and Michael through the kitchen into the garage.

  Five minutes later Mary pulled into the parking lot next to the clinic. Barbara was out of the car even before it came to a full stop, running across to the emergency entrance. Judd Duval’s squad car still sat in front of the door.

  Inside, Barbara’s eyes searched frantically for a nurse, but she saw only Judd, sitting alone on a chair, writing on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. When he looked up, his eyes widened in surprise, but then he rose to his feet.

  “Miz Sheffield—”

  “Where is she?” Barbara cried. “Where’s Jenny? Where have they taken her?”

  Judd moved toward her. “Miz Sheffield, maybe you better sit down.” His hand closed on her arm and he tried to guide her to a seat, but Barbara pulled herself free as Jolene Mayhew, looking harried, pushed through the doors from the treatment rooms in the rear, and Michael, followed by Mary Anderson, rushed through the front doors.

  “Jolene?” Barbara asked. “Where’s—” She froze when she saw the look on the nurse’s face, her last shred of hope dying within her. “No,” she sobbed. “Oh, please, no … not my little Jenny. Not my baby …”

  Jolene hurried across the room to her while Michael stood frozen just inside the door. “Oh, Barbara. I’m so sorry. Dr. P’s in with her, but …” Her voice trailed off.

  “No,” Barbara sobbed. “She can’t be dead. Not Jenny! I want to see her.” She started toward the treatment rooms, and Jolene tried to stop her. Michael, too, stepped forward, but Mary Anderson intercepted him, putting her hand on his arm.

  “Let her go, Michael.” For a moment it seemed as if Michael hadn’t heard the words, but as his mother disappeared through the swinging doors that led to the back of the building, he nodded mutely and let Mary lead him to a chair. He sank into it and looked up to see Judd Duval sitting across from him.

  “My sister,” he breathed. “Jenny … is she—”

  Judd’s head bobbed slowly. “She was in the canal,” he said. “Right near my place. I was just leavin’, on my way to work. She—”

  But Michael had stopped listening. There was something about Judd, something in his eyes, that was wrong.

  With a deep certainty, Michael knew the deputy was lying.

  When Barbara came into the room, Warren Phillips was bent over Jenny’s body, his stethoscope pressed to her bare chest. Barbara gasped as she stared at her daughter, and the truth finally closed in on her. Jenny was so still, her skin so horribly pallid.

  “No,” Barbara sobbed, lurching toward the examining table on which her daughter lay. “Oh, no …” She reached out and touched her daughter’s face, her hand reflexively pulling back as she felt the coldness of Jenny’s flesh.

  “Barbara,” Warren Phillips said, coming around to support the distraught woman, easing her into a chair next to the door. “Barbara, I’m sorry. There’s nothing we could have done. When Judd found her, she must already have been in the water for nearly an hour.”

  Barbara heard the words, but her mind refused to accept them. She sat still, her eyes fixed on her daughter. When she finally spoke, her voice was nearly inaudible. “But there must be something—she can’t be dead. Not Jenny. She was in bed—I put her to bed. I tucked her in.” Her eyes finally strayed from Jenny, coming up to peer desolately at Warren Phillips. “She’s sleeping. She’s not dead. She’s just sleeping.”

  Phillips laid his hand gently on Barbara’s shoulder. “Where’s Craig, Barbara? Is he with you?”

  Barbara’s head swung slowly from side to side. “He—He’s out looking for her,” she said hollowly. “He’s out looking for Jenny.” It wasn’t possible—she couldn’t be sitting here, staring at her daughter’s corpse, while Craig was out somewhere in the barely dawning light, searching for the
ir little girl, hoping to find her any minute. But it was true.

  It was Jenny lying on the table.

  Her beautiful daughter, whom she’d kissed good night only a few short hours ago.

  She stood up, willing her legs to support her, and moved slowly to the table, looking down into Jenny’s face.

  She reached out again and gently stroked the little girl’s forehead, then bent, brushing the cold lips with her own. She backed away, her eyes never leaving Jenny’s expressionless face, and sank once more onto the hardness of the chair. “Can I stay here?” she asked. “Can I sit with her until Craig comes?”

  “Of course,” Dr. Phillips replied. “And I’ll get you something—”

  Barbara shook her head. “No. Please, no. Just let me sit with her. I’ll be all right. I will … I know I will …” As tears began to run down her cheeks, Phillips silently left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Thirty minutes later Craig Sheffield arrived, accompanied by Ted, Carl, and Kelly Anderson. As the Andersons joined Mary in the waiting room, Craig spoke to Jolene Mayhew, then went to the room where his wife still sat with Jenny. He paused at the door, his eyes fixing on his daughter, trying to comprehend the reality of what had happened. He heard Barbara’s broken voice, murmuring quietly: “My fault. It’s my fault.”

  “No,” Craig said, turning to his wife, dropping down next to her, gathering her into his arms. “Don’t say that, darling. Don’t even think it. It was an accident, honey. It was just a terrible accident.”

  Barbara shook her head, refusing to be consoled. “It wasn’t, Craig. If I hadn’t been so stupid—if I’d only realized she might be listening!” Her arms went around him, and she clung to him. “Take me home, darling. Please take me home.”

  Craig helped Barbara to her feet and led her down the hall to the waiting room, where Warren Phillips was talking quietly to Michael and the Andersons. As Craig and Barbara came in, Phillips rose to his feet.

  “I’m taking Barbara home,” Craig said, sounding dazed, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was saying. “Then I’ll come back. I’ll come back and …” His voice trailed off. Come back and what? She was dead. His baby, his princess, was dead. He gazed at Phillips, who immediately knew what was going through Craig’s mind.

  “You don’t have to come back, Craig,” he said. “We’ll take care of everything here. There will be some papers, but right now they don’t concern you. Just take Barbara home. If you need anything, call me.” He scribbled on a prescription form and tucked it into Barbara’s purse. “Just in case she can’t sleep.”

  Craig nodded and turned away, the shock of what had happened numbing his mind. Immediately Carl Anderson stood up. “I’ll drive them,” he told Ted. “You take Mary and the kids. We’d better all go to the Sheffields’. I don’t think they should be alone right now.” He glanced at Phillips. “If there’s anything that needs to be done, you let me know. Craig’s been a good friend for a long time, and I don’t aim to let him down now.”

  Phillips nodded agreement, and a moment later the waiting room emptied out. When they were alone, with only Judd Duval still there, Phillips spoke to Jolene. “Call Orrin Hatfield, and tell him we need him,” he said. “I can sign the death certificate, but given the circumstances, we’ll need a coroner’s report.”

  “I already called him,” Jolene replied. “He’s on his way.”

  Phillips nodded, turning immediately to Judd Duval. “There’s no need for you to stay,” he told the deputy. “Orrin can pick up your report after he’s finished his own examination.”

  Judd, looking relieved, hurried out of the hospital. Phillips turned back to Jolene. “Call Fred Childress,” he said. “Have him send a hearse.”

  He was just starting back toward the room in which Jenny Sheffield lay when Orrin Hatfield arrived, his eyes still puffy from sleep. “What’s going on, Warren?” the coroner demanded. “Jolene says you got a six-year-old girl who drowned in the canal?”

  Phillips beckoned the other doctor to follow him, and led Hatfield into the examining room. “I want this done quickly, Orrin,” he said. “Jolene’s calling Fred Childress, and by the time his hearse gets here, I want your report to be ready.”

  The coroner frowned uncertainly. “I don’t know, Warren. Given what Jolene said, there’ll have to be an autopsy, and that takes some time.”

  Phillips’s eyes hardened. “There will be no autopsy, Orrin. Look her over if you want to, but don’t touch her with a scalpel. We need her, Orrin. All of us.”

  Orrin Hatfield, who had already bent over Jenny, beginning his examination, straightened up. As he saw the expression in Warren Phillips’s eyes, he slowly began to understand.

  “I see,” he said softly. “How much time do we have?”

  Phillips glanced at his watch. “None. If we don’t start now, she might really be dead.”

  Going to the cabinet against the wall, he found the syringe he’d brought with him to the hospital less than an hour ago, carefully putting it away even before he started forcing water from Jenny’s lungs.

  Now, slipping the needle into Jenny’s arm, he administered the shot of naloxone, which would counteract the morphine he’d used to put Jenny into a coma even before he’d immersed her in the tub of ice water.

  The morphine had slowed her metabolism nearly to the point of death, and that, combined with the hypothermia induced by the ice water, had kept her barely alive through the last hours.

  With luck, there wouldn’t even be any brain damage.

  Not that it mattered, really, for Warren Phillips wasn’t the slightest bit interested in Jenny Sheffield’s mind.

  It was her thymus he was after.

  Her thymus, the large mysterious gland above the lungs, whose use he’d finally discovered so many years ago.

  There would be enough of the precious secretion from Jenny Sheffield’s thymus to stave off the aging processes of at least three of his patients. And she was young enough that he could milk her for at least another year.

  As long as she didn’t die before he got her to Fred Childress’s funeral home.

  21

  There were no lights on in the house, but she knew there was someone inside, waiting for her. Though the house was barely visible in the darkness of the night, still she could see it clearly; the worn, splintered boards of its siding glowing unnaturally, as if they had somehow come alive. Vines crept up the walls, but though the air was still, the vines moved like serpents, rippling around the windows, creeping toward the roof.

  She wanted to run from the house, but something drew her toward it, and though she struggled to turn away, her legs refused to obey her, carrying her steadily closer.

  At last she was on the porch, and now she could feel the vines reaching out for her, their tendrils twisting, searching. One of them brushed against her skin, and she wanted to shrink away, but again her body seemed paralyzed. As the vines began to enfold her, binding her arms to her body, the terror inside her threatened to overwhelm her.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  The door opened, and in the darkness a figure appeared.

  A man, so old he seemed barely alive at all. His hair, only a few thin wisps, hung limply from his scalp, which was covered with bleeding sores. His eyes—pale blue, shot through with reddish veins—fixed greedily on her, and when his lips curled back in an evil smile, she could see his rotting teeth, worn nearly away, crumbling from his gums.

  He reached for her, clawlike fingers ending in jagged, torn nails, touching the skin of her face.

  “No!” The word choked in her throat. With a valiant effort she tried to jerk away from the specter’s touch, tried to wrest herself free from the constricting vines.

  It was the effort of that final struggle before the man grasped her that finally woke Jenny, and now she did cry out, her voice a strangled scream as the last vestiges of the dream still held her in their grip.

  Her eyes opened and she t
ried to sit up, but the thick straps that bound her to the bed held fast, and at last, her eyes filling with tears, she gave up.

  She had no idea what time it was, nor how long she’d been here.

  There were no windows in the room, nor was it ever dark. Always, when she woke up from the horrible nightmares that seized her whenever she fell asleep, the lights were on.

  She wasn’t alone in the room. It was filled with cribs, four of which had babies in them. If she turned her head, she could see one of them, and now, as the dream released her from its terrifying grip, she gazed over at the tiny form.

  The baby was also awake, looking back at her, its small eyes fixed on her as if it knew how frightened she was.

  “It’s all right, baby,” Jenny whispered softly, the sound of her own voice comforting her, if only slightly. “It was just a dream, and my mommy says dreams can’t hurt you.”

  Her mommy.

  Why didn’t her mommy come for her?

  Over and over she’d begged Dr. Phillips to let her see her parents, but he always told her the same thing. “When you’re better. You don’t want to make your mommy and daddy sick, too, do you?”

  She heard a door open, and turned her head the other way. Sometimes it was the woman who came in, the silent woman who never said a word, no matter how much Jenny begged.

  But this time it was Dr. Phillips, and when he came over to the bed to look down at her, smiling, she started crying.

  “I had the dream again,” she said. “The man—the old man who looks like he’s dead.”

  “It was just a bad dream, Jenny. You mustn’t let it scare you,” she heard the doctor tell her.

  “But it does scare me,” Jenny wailed. “I want my mother. Why can’t I have my mother?”

  “Because you’re sick,” Phillips explained. “And that’s why I’m here. To take care of you. Haven’t I always taken care of you?”