by John Saul
Foliage closed in around the boat, choking the channel, and what little conversation had been going on died out completely as wary eyes watched the shore, certain that at any moment the frightening figure might appear again to snatch one of the other children from the boat.
Mothers tightened their grip on their children, and the children themselves clung to their mothers.
Suddenly the prow of the boat burst out of the tangling vines and the canal spread into a broad lagoon.
Ahead, directly across the lagoon, was the dock at the tour headquarters.
The invisible hand that had held Kelly’s mind released its grip, and she gasped slightly, certain she had failed, that nothing at all had happened. But then she looked around and recognized the tour headquarters only a few yards away. “I did it,” she said, almost inaudibly. “I got us here!”
As Kelly clumsily maneuvered the boat up against the dock, she saw Phil Stubbs glaring at her, his face red with fury.
“What the hell’s going on?” he demanded. “Where’s Michael? You should have been back an hour ago!”
“He’s not here,” Kelly told him, her voice distant, as if she’d hardly heard the question. Stubbs stared at her, seeing for the first time the strange look in her eyes. But before he could say anything else, a babble of voices broke out.
“My baby,” the woman in the stern screamed. “He took my baby!”
Stubbs stared at the woman in confusion. “What—”
“It was a man,” another of the women told him. “A horrible old man. He looked crazy, and he took her baby,” Her voice rose. “He just came out of the swamp and took it! The guide went after him. For God’s sake, call the police!”
Stubbs froze. A man? What were they talking about? But all the women were shouting at him now, and their children too.
“Now just calm down,” Stubbs finally called above the confusion. He turned to Kelly, who was gazing off into the swamp, her brows knit into a deep frown. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
Kelly’s head swung slowly around. Her voice held a strange, abstract quality, as if she were only vaguely aware of what she was saying. “We were going through a channel. There was a man on the shore, and as we passed him, he reached in and picked up a baby. He wanted it. He wanted a baby.”
Phil Stubbs’s eyes narrowed. “Who?” he demanded. “Who was it? Did you recognize him?”
Kelly hesitated, but then nodded. “It was my grandfather.”
Michael swore out loud as his foot caught under a mangrove root, throwing him forward to sprawl in the soft mud that bordered the island. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he scrambled back to his feet and stood still, listening.
Carl Anderson seemed to have simply disappeared. And yet, only a moment ago, just before he’d tripped, Michael was sure he’d heard the sound of a baby crying. It had only lasted a fraction of a second, then was suddenly cut off, as if someone had silenced the baby by covering its mouth.
He looked around, searching the thickets with his eyes but seeing nothing. Everywhere he looked there seemed to be only tangles of mangrove roots, and the strange cypress knees that protruded above the water’s surface like dead stumps, and stands of pine trees.
And yet he could feel that Carl Anderson was close by, sense his presence somewhere so near that Michael felt as though he should be able to see him.
Clarey.
The name popped into his mind unbidden, but suddenly he could see her in his mind’s eye, sitting on the porch of her shanty, her eyes gazing into the swamp but her mind reaching much farther than her eyes could see.
Closing his eyes, he silently called out to her, willing her to answer him, willing her to reach into his mind and guide him to wherever Carl Anderson might be hiding.
And slowly an image took form.
An image of a single pine tree, taller than all the rest, standing alone, and surrounded by a dense thicket of brush.
He opened his eyes and looked around.
The pine tree stood not fifty feet away, exactly as he’d just pictured it in his mind.
He started toward it, his eyes fixed on the thicket but his mind concentrating on the image that had been summoned up when he called out to Clarey Lambert.
And in that image, he could see Carl Anderson clearly, crouched in the brush, his back to the tree, clutching the baby in his arms.
He could see the slack folds of Carl’s skin, see his sunken, fevered eyes, see his cracking fingernails.
He pushed his way into the brush, parting the grasses before him.
A moment later his eyes beheld the vision his mind had already seen.
Carl leaned against the tree, the baby held in his left arm as he clutched his gun in the trembling fingers of his right hand.
The gun was raised, its barrel pointing at Michael’s chest.
Michael paused, staring at the reality of the vision that had plagued him for so long, but now the fear he had always felt in the presence of the ancient man was gone.
“Get away from me,” Carl Anderson croaked, his voice rattling in his throat. “I’ll kill you.”
Michael’s eyes remained fixed on the old man. “You can’t kill me,” he heard himself say. “You know you can’t kill me. I’m already dead.”
Carl Anderson gasped as he heard the words, and stared up at the teenage boy whose eyes were fixed on him with a steadiness that made his heart pound.
“No,” he said, his voice taking on a pleading note now. “Leave me alone. I never hurt you. None of us ever hurt you.”
“Our souls,” Michael said. “You stole our souls.”
Carl’s eyes widened. The gun wavered in his hand as Michael came toward him. He tried to steady the revolver, tried to squeeze the trigger, but the boy’s eyes seemed to hold him in their own paralyzing grip, and as Michael moved steadily closer, Carl felt the gun slipping from his fingers. “No,” he muttered, clutching at the weapon as his heart began to race, pounding in his chest with a terrifyingly erratic rhythm that warned him of what was to come a split second before it happened.
As Michael reached out to him, and Carl’s fear turned into blind panic, a violent stab of pain slashed through his chest, shooting down into his arms and legs. The gun dropped from his fingers as his right hand fell to the ground.
The baby rolled onto the thick carpet of pine needles as Carl’s left arm went limp.
Pain tore through Carl’s head then, a blinding, searing agony that rent his sanity into shattered pieces a moment before he died.
As his mind collapsed, Carl saw demons rising up out of the nether world, coming toward him with pitchforks and torches, intent on torturing his body for eternity.
And an eternity, it seemed, in those last seconds before his death, as the demons fell upon him, ripping his skin from his muscles, jabbing sharp slivers beneath his fingernails and into his joints, tearing his limbs from his body and laying open his belly to spill his intestines onto the ground.
He screamed, flailing at the creatures that beset him, but his struggles were nothing more than the twitchings of a dying man, and though the Hell into which he had plunged seemed to him to go on forever, his body soon lay still beneath the pine tree.
In the silence that followed Carl’s death, Michael stared at the body with an odd detachment, as if it had nothing to do with him.
And then a voice spoke inside him.
Take back what is yours.
He crouched down next to Carl Anderson’s body, then ripped open his shirt to expose the old man’s sunken chest. Nothing was left of the robust figure that the man had been only yesterday, for today all the years he had stolen had come back to claim him.
His ribs, brittle and soft, crumpled as Michael touched his chest, and when the boy’s fingers tore into his flesh, the desiccated tissue gave way as if it had been cooked.
Michael ripped through the old man’s sternum, tearing open his chest cavity, reaching inside the man, finally feeling what he was searching for.
>
A tiny fragment of bloody tissue, resting just above the old man’s lungs, close by his heart.
Michael ripped it loose, and then, his hands covered with blood, stuffed the withered vestige of Carl Anderson’s thymus into his mouth.
He swallowed the bit of tissue, his stomach heaving as he choked, but then the spasm passed.
A strange warmth he had never felt before spread out through his body, and he remained where he was, letting the aura envelop him, letting it expand into his mind, and fill him up.
The emptiness he’d felt all his life was suddenly gone, and he felt whole.
For the first time in his life Michael began to cry.
He felt the hot tears running down his cheeks, tasted the salt of them with the tip of his tongue.
He let the tears run free, washing away the pain of sixteen years.
Only when his tears were finally exhausted did he pick up the baby, cradling it in his arms.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Nothing’s going to hurt you now.”
The baby began to cry, but Michael held it close, kissing it gently on the forehead, and soon its sobbing began to die away. At last, the baby calm in his arms, Michael left the thicket and went to the edge of the water.
Setting the baby gently on the ground, he washed himself clean of Carl Anderson’s blood.
Finally he picked the baby up again and started making his way through the swamp toward the tour headquarters.
He was whole again, and once the baby in his arms was safe, he knew what it was he had to do.
He and Kelly, together.
26
Mary Anderson was in her bedroom, staring at the last box that still remained unopened from the move from Atlanta. She knew what was in them—old albums, ledgers remaining from Ted’s failed attempt to start a business three years ago, her own report cards from grade school and high school—all the things everyone always saved but rarely looked at. She toyed briefly with the idea of sorting through the box, but quickly realized that in the end she would simply repack it anyway. She picked it up to take it out to the garage, where it would join her father-in-law’s own collection of memorabilia on the metal storage shelves that lined the south wall. But as she passed through the living room, the doorbell chimed softly, and she set the box down next to the sofa. She opened the door to find Barbara Sheffield standing on the porch, an air of anxiety surrounding her that made Mary’s welcoming smile fade quickly into a worried frown. “Barbara? What is it? What’s happened?”
Barbara fleetingly wondered if she shouldn’t simply turn around and go back home. But after last night and this morning, when the thoughts that had been growing in her mind ever since Jenny’s funeral had coalesced into a deep-seated conviction, she’d known she had no choice.
She had to talk to Mary Anderson, had to find out the truth of Kelly’s origins.
If Mary even knew.
She hadn’t called first, hadn’t wanted to tell Mary why she was coming. After all, how would she feel if one of her friends called her up to announce that she was Michael’s real mother?
A stranger calling with such an announcement would be one thing—indeed, ever since she and Craig had adopted Michael, she’d always been prepared for the possibility that at some point her son’s natural mother might appear. She would have been able to deal with that, for at least she would know that Michael had no relationship with such a person.
But this was different, for Barbara had a relationship to Kelly. What if Mary thought she was planning to lay claim to her daughter?
Still, Barbara felt she simply had to know, had to lay all the doubts in her mind to rest.
“I need to talk to you, Mary,” she said at last. “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I’ve been having the most awful thoughts. I can’t seem to shake the idea that Kelly might be my daughter, that maybe Sharon didn’t die when she was born.” Speaking the thoughts out loud for the first time, she realized how bizarre they sounded. “I know it sounds crazy,” she went on, stumbling on her own words now. “It’s just—well, there’s so many little things—the way she looks … And Amelie Coulton … you know what she said at the funeral—” Her eyes flooded with tears and her voice turned into a choking sob. “Oh, Mary, I don’t know. It’s all just so awful for me. I feel like I’m coming apart, and I don’t know what to do.…”
Mary drew Barbara into the house and closed the door, then led her into the kitchen. “It’s all right, Barbara. I know how you must be feeling. It has to be horrible for you right now.” She poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove and sat down across from Barbara. “Now tell me what I can do.”
Barbara took a deep breath, struggling to control her roiling emotions, finally speaking only when she was certain her voice wouldn’t fail her. “I—I thought maybe if you could tell me where Kelly came from—”
“It was an adoption agency in Atlanta,” Mary told her. “Ted and I had been waiting for almost a year.”
“Atlanta?” Barbara echoed hollowly.
An image of the box on the living room floor popped into Mary’s mind, and she stood up. “I’ll be right back.” A moment later she came back into the kitchen, the box in her arms. Opening it, she began piling its contents on the table, and finally lifted out a photo album. “Look through this,” she said, handing the album to Barbara. “It’s full of pictures of Kelly, from the day we picked her up at the agency right up until a year or so ago.” Her voice took on a wistful quality. “The last couple of years I’m afraid we didn’t take many pictures. Ted’s business wasn’t doing well, and …” Her voice trailed off. “I guess the last couple of years there just wasn’t much we wanted to remember.”
Barbara opened the album and began flipping through the pages. The early pictures, when Kelly was an infant, meant nothing. But as Kelly grew, and her features began to develop, Barbara felt the same familiarity as she had when comparing Kelly to her niece Tisha. From the age of four on the resemblance was there. The two children, apparently unrelated, looked enough alike to have been sisters.
“I found it,” Mary said a few minutes later, interrupting Barbara’s reverie as she sat gazing at a picture of Kelly when she was about the same age as Jenny.
Again, she looked nothing like Jenny, who took after her father, but her resemblance to Tisha, and even more so to Barbara’s own sister, was eerie. At last Barbara looked up from the page. Mary, her expression almost sorrowful, was holding out a folded sheet of heavy paper. “It’s Kelly’s birth certificate,” she said softly. “I—well, I think it tells you what you want to know.”
Barbara took the certificate, her fingers trembling, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to look at it for a moment. Finally she unfolded it, her eyes misting over as she studied it.
It was from a hospital in Orlando that she’d never heard of.
It recorded the birth of a baby girl, born a week after Sharon had been born.
The baby had been given no first name, its identification stated impersonally as “Infant Richardson,” the daughter of Irene Richardson.
Father unknown.
Barbara felt her heart sink, but as she studied the signature of the attending physician, something stirred inside her.
Philip Waring.
She’d never heard the name before.
Yet there was something familiar about the signature, something flicking around the edges of her mind.
Then it came to her, and she reached into her purse, digging through it until she found the prescription Warren Phillips had given her the morning Jenny had died.
The prescription she’d never filled.
She flattened the form out and laid it next to the birth certificate.
The scrawl of the attending obstetrician’s first name matched the last name of her own doctor.
The first three letters of the obstetrician’s last name matched the corresponding scribble of the first syllable of Warren Phillips’s own signature.
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p; She stared at the two signatures for a long time, telling herself it wasn’t possible, that it was merely a strange coincidence, that neither of the signatures was actually even legible.
They were nothing more than doctors’ scribblings.
The denials still tumbling in her mind, she spoke to Mary Anderson. “There’s something wrong,” she said quietly. “Mary. I think this birth certificate is a fake.”
Mary Anderson’s eyes clouded. “Barbara, it’s the certificate we were given by the agency. Why would they—”
“Let’s call the hospital, Mary,” Barbara broke in. “Please?”
Ten minutes later Barbara felt a cold numbness spreading through her body.
The hospital in Orlando was real.
The birth certificate was not.
There was no record of an Irene Richardson giving birth to a child in the hospital.
No record of an Infant Richardson at all.
No Dr. Philip Waring had ever been connected with the hospital in any way.
When the phone call was over, the two women looked at each other, Mary Anderson now feeling as numbed as Barbara Sheffield. “What are we going to do?” Mary asked, suddenly fully understanding—and sharing—Barbara’s obsession to find the truth of Kelly’s origins.
Barbara barely heard the question, for she already knew what had to be done.
She wondered if she would be able to bear to stand in the cemetery one more time, gazing at the crypt in which her first child lay.
She wondered if she would be able to watch them open it.
But most of all, she wondered if she would be able to stand the awful reality of finding it empty.
Tim Kitteridge sighed heavily, his large hands spreading across his desk in a gesture of helplessness as he faced Ted Anderson. “I still don’t see what it is you expect me to do. If your father’s sick—”
“He’s worse than sick,” Ted exploded. “He’s dying. He’s dying, and he’s gone off into the swamp somewhere!”
“Now, you don’t know that,” Kitteridge replied. “All you know is that he wasn’t in his office. That’s a big development out there—”
